This is my blog. I'm the lead singer and guitarist in the danish indie act "Late Night Venture" and although the blog probably will contain some Late Night Venture junk, it's more my personal blog, a playground for all of my late night illusions, ideas, thoughts.
Sometimes very music related, sometimes arts, sometimes just thoughts.
Just a couple of recommendations on bands that I've been listening to lately, typically discoveried late at night as always :-). All bands that I find very interesting and different in their own ways. I guess I'm in a sort of post-rock mode at the moment so many of them have aspects of that.
Gregor Samsa
So first up, is this post-rock act from Brooklyn, NY, US.
A very nice and clean sounding dream piece, with focus on simplicity and pure vocal harmonies.
This is what makes them quite different from many other post-rock acts.
The usage of vocals, to this extend, that this band do, kind of makes them come closer to some of the nice lush & dreamy sounds you hear in for example Slowdive, The Zephyrs and even some Sparklehorse.
The music really don't stop at guitar arrangements, but in fact lifts to a higher peace of organic wellness, when the other part of the band kicks in, namely the strings.
So with Gregor Samsa you get an ouverture. It lends from Sigur Ros but does have it's own feel towards building excellent songs.
Gregor Samsa is releasing their new album "Rest" digitally around start of April 2008, and the physical version which comes in 3 different flavours will be available around May 2008. But already now you can listen to the album in full, streamed on their Myspace page.
This band is in my opinion very experimental with the sounds they do.
Sometimes it sounds like some psychedelic stuff taken from the 60's/70's and sometimes you're brought back to the present day by the way they arrange and use noisy guitars, blended together with samples.
In general The Besnard Lakes lives for details and putting together elements from all around into their music. It makes them hard to categorize and I like that a lot. The reason I think there's a little post-rock in it as well is because they tend to have these long evolving songs with lots of repetition. But where most post-rock bands goes on same theme for a long time, The Besnard Lakes constantly evolves.
There is a bit of the "Arcade Fire" feel around, but this band is just more towards experimental music.
To give you an idea what I am talking about I have put this live bootleg video of the band playing an excellent and beautiful song called: "Because Tonight"
Last one up this night is Our Broken Garden, a danish act, which in it's essence only comprises of the singer Anna Brønsted, which normally is found together with the danish act Efterklang.
Even though its just Anna in "Our Broken Garden", she has recorded the debut with a nice lineup from the danish scene, counting for example Moogie Johnson on bass and Lise Westzynthius on Piano along with Peter Sommers backing band.
Our Broken Garden is nice and quiet, eternally warm, but also kind of dark music. Crossing in between the country sounds of Munck/Johnson and some of the more beautiful pieces by Nick Cave and at times Heather Nova.
This is in it's essence very nice background for a moody piece of relaxing music, but what really makes this music fly, is the vocals of Anna Brønsted that makes everything rise to a higher level.
Currently "Our Broken Garden" is touring UK with Efterklang and has recently been signed to the nice UK label : Bella Union
Listen to a song from the debut EP "Lost Sailor" :
I've always been a sucker for those dreamy, belly-picking, soundscape bands that in the late 80'es early 90'es got characterized as "SHOEGAZE" bands.
But so much has happened from that period of time up till now, where some of the new breeds of the shoegaze scene have come out.
Some have been here for years and some are new. I would like to come up with a couple of recommendations on very interesting post-shoegaze bands, that I personally enjoy listening to.
But to set the scene, let me just start off with a couple of bands from the original shoegaze era that have had a lot of influence on that post-shoegaze scene.
MY BLOODY VALENTINE
My Bloody Valentine. The band that kind of introduced the shoe-gaze world to me.
Their twangy guitars, their kind of slacky drums, the walls of noise totally outplaying the long and dreamy vocals of Kevin Shields and Deb Googe, was what made me listen to their breakthrough EP "You Made Me Realise" and the album "Isn't anything" over and over and over again.
Everything they play is served with a lazy, almost drugged feel, with themes circling around suicide and depression, in that way took over in a good way from the scene that had been occupying up till then. The more goth and new wave scene, that circled around these themes as well.
My Bloody Valentine has always been in my favourite list of bands, and I got everything they have ever released. But everyhing has been a bit quiet around them since their last regular album release - the beauitiful and sonic "Loveless" from 1991. But now they're back and touring this summer, this will be quite interesting, although I do fear a disappointment coming in.
SLOWDIVE
Another important band from that time is Slowdive.
A lush and more bright dreamscape band, that more have roots in the Cocteau Twins sound, but nonetheless just as effective a band as My Bloody Valentine.
The band ceased to exist in 1995, but since then Neil Halstead & Rachel Goswell has continued making lush, but way more country and singer/songwriter songs in the really good band Mojave 3.
Even though My Bloody Valentine has been a huge inspiration for many. Slowdive have had just as much influence, and tributes are plenty. For example the elegnat electronia tribute Blue Skied & Clear. A nice electronica tribute with contributions from Manual, Future 3, Lali Puna, Ulrich Schnauss to name some.
Slowdive evolved very much during their relatively short career. The first full length album "Just For a Day" had some of their best songs in my opinion, with one smash hit "Catch The Breeze" a song that I've listened to a lot of times.
But at the time they had reached the last album : Pygmalion, it was a more complex Brian Eno'ish sound that surrounded them, almost electronic at times.
SWIRLIES
The last band I am going to name from those days are the US band The Swirlies.
One can discuss whether this band really fit in the shoe-gaze bowl, but I think they have some of the lazyness and dreamy guitar stuff that My Bloody Valentine also has. So in my head, they fit fine here.
The Swirlies were just quite more experimental than the two other bands I've wrote about above here.
In my opinion the band were best when they released the album "They spent their wild youthful days in the glittering world of the salons", which has the good heavy twangy guitars, combined with a fat sound.
One really remarkable thing about this band is that they have chosen upon giving away their full albums, so every release they have made, you can simply download from their website here.
Thats a lot of music completely for free.
One more side information that is quite interesting is that their lead vocalist produced the first Mew album, and that the drummer is now very active in the excellent rhythmic indie band Mice Parade.
BACK TO NOW
Today, the original shoegaze bands, have had so much influence on so many bands.
You can hear the remains from the old shoegaze bands just reinvented in new forms. There's a huge amount of bands that has taken the influence from the dreamscape bands that I named above and mixed it together with their own sound universe making the reinvention of shoe-gaze, sometimes all the way and sometimes only with small ideas here and there.
I will come with a couple of examples on interesting bands that I think uses the influences of these bands more directly.
ULRICH SCHNAUSS
Ulrich Schnauss has a very interesting different approach of using the shoe-gaze sound, using pure electronica sounds to really reinvent the sounds of shoegaze.
When I listen to Ulrich Schnauss it's very much the My Bloody Valentine & Slowdive feeling I get, and it's excellent driving music, we've used it on a lot of tours, driving on the autobahn :-)
What makes the sound of Schnauss best, is that he uses a lot of up tempo beats, to drive the songs, and is not afraid to just make a song last for 7-10 minutes, repeating themes again and again. It's very addictive to listen to.
This is a danish band that I personally like a lot and even have had the pleasure to tour with in Denmark. Rumskib is also very electronica influenced, but uses a more traditional setup, with guitars, bass and drums.
Rumskib (Danish for spaceship) takes a lot of the sound as you know it from My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins and mixes it in to their fine own version of a lush and beautiful shoegaze. It's very bright, very up-beat and very catchy.
The first Rumskib album was made together with another danish electronica act : Manual , which is a bit more like the Ulrich Schnauss stuff, pure electronic, but with guitars. Another act that i do enjoy listening to.
These three actually played a show together recently in London.
A small side bonus information, is that the other guitarist - Peter - from my own band "Late Night Venture", used to be guitarist in Rumskib.
The frontman from Rumskib also has his solo project in his own name, which is a lot like Rumskib, you can visit it here : Keith Canisius.
Listen to the excellent song Dreampoppers tribute just below, this is in my opinion one of their best songs, where Tine really hits it off vocally.
This is a pretty new act in my mind.A band that I haven't known for so long, but happened to stumble over, on MySpace and I really enjoy their sound.
Soundpool is a bit like Swirlies were more experimenting, also more experimental. I think they have a more psychedelic approach, where they mix elements from 60's and 70's pop songs with the infernal sounds of My Bloody Valentine and on top of that adds the long and wavy sounds from organs and high pitch synths.
Below here I've added a live video of the song "On High" from a show they played at ALOFT in NYC
But there's also a kind of interesting darker version on YouTube , that sadly can't be embedded but you can see it here.
M83
So last recommendation and example for this post is the french band M83.
Again one band that uses a lot of electronics, but kind of change forth and back when they are pure electronic and when they are not.
The most resemblant part of M83 sound, that points me towards the shoegaze, is their use of keyboards which I think have some of the same lush and vivid space as you find on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless album.
Specially the song, I've posted a video for here : Don't Save Us From The Flames has that very broad synth played with excellence.
And as a bonus here's an alternate version than the official video. I think I actually prefer the unofficial one .-)
ROUNDING UP
There's so many bands to mention in these post-shoegaze days and I've tried, to cover up some of the new interesting show gaze bands, that I personally like to listen to, but the list is long.
There's so many "new" bands that use the beautifulness of the original soundscaped shoegaze. So here's just a couple of quickies:
Serena Maneesh , The norwegian psych, garage, shoe gaze rock band. Manual, As I've mentioned above briefly Secret Shine, UK retro-gazers Blonde Redhead, which I think have a lot of shoegaze sounds on their last album
And then also all the bands that uses elements here and there in their music.
My own band Late Night Venture is definately using some of the elements you know from the originals.
For example try listening to this song from our coming album.
Late Night Venture - Skylights
I remember recording the guitars on that song, where I used the tremolo arm all the way through the chorus, to make that wavy sound.
Up to the last weekend, I had the opportunity to go to two concerts in copenhagen area.
One of the concerts I attened, was one that I really had looked forward to, due to my rising interest in that peticular bands evolving universe of dark and cracked tales.
It was the release party of the band "Said The Shark"'s new album "Silly Kings", held at Loppen in Christiania at thursday the 13. of march.
I have already seen one other "Said The Shark" show, when my own band "Late Night Venture" had the pleasure to share stage with them at Hildesheim in germany. One really good show, that I enjoyed a lot, but due to us playing a bit later that night, didn't have the focus enough on the "Said The Shark" show.
But what they did this thursday, was a bit like what they did there in Hildesheim. They set up a mood by having a visual appearance on stage that is at one time very playful and casual, but at the same time also very aesthetic and out of this world. A bit like being invited to a party in the outer rim of a deserted forest, but with sparkles all around, a dark forest circus.
The setting was pulled off great by those visuals and contrasts in between Maya dressed up for the show, and the rest of the band supporting around her.
During the show lots of different instruments and ideas were pulled off, using the almost 30" bass drum (it was huge) parts from 1930's record players, bells, whistles, various percussion and just plain charisma.
Said The Shark delivered every song with a strong belief in the force of that very song and it was such a joy to hear the song "Took You" delivered with even more soul and loudness than on their album.
So the essence of "Said The Shark", which is kind of supernatural dark tunes, is delivered beautifully by the band when they play it live.
Take a look at this video from one of the songs from "Silly Kings", fits very well with their universe.
So after a pleasant night in company with the sharks and other nice people, time to go home.
The day after was a "Late Night Venture" rehearsal day and Peter and Jonas had been talking about going to a concert with "Blue Foundation" after our rehearsal. I've recently seen them live at "Store Vega" in copenhagen and wasn't sure whether I should go, but finally decided upon going along, since I do enjoy Blue Foundation.
The setting for Blue Foundation was a smaller, but very nice, venue just outside Copenhagen and it was obvious that there were not as many people as there usually is to their shows (When I saw them last time it was a sold out show at one of the biggest venues in copenhagen).
I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but it seemed like the band were a bit more casual than last time, and gave more in to experiments, playing songs you didn't expect.
Blue Foundation started out years ago as a more "Trip Hop"/"Electronica" act but has with their new album transformed themselves into a more "indietronica" band. Since I like that kind of music I really thought it was good for them to make such a change, but fact is that they just do the whole Trip Hop thing way better, specially live.
Where some of the more regular new "indie" songs fell a bit to the ground, they rised effectively when their "older" songs were performed. Specially the song "Ricochet" from their first album was delivered very very good..
One important force of Blue Foundation is their frontwoman: Kirstine Stubbe Teglbjerg, which is the core of the bands sound in my opinion. Not only is she one of the best singers in the world, but she's also a very good guitarist with a great "The Cure" sound, I enjoy that.
And at this show she sang as perfect as ever, it was really a dream.
Below here is the video to their old hit "End Of The Day", this song was absolutely perfect at the show.
So two nice concerts in two days, who was best ? .. It's not really a competition, the bands are very different with their own qualities, and taste is always individual, but I think for my taste, even though I really like "Blue Foundation" it's "Said The Shark" that makes my mind go on a journey and gives me the surreal moods of something undefinable.
But it's for sure, that I am going to see both bands perform live again.
I'm just playing a bit around with including an audio player in a post, to see if that will work on this blog so bear with me.. Might be a disaster :-) trying even with more songs.. A demo, that probably only will be online shortly.
Late Night Venture - Love/Respect Call
Late Night Venture - Carousel
Take Note that the last song Carousel is just a home demo recorded entirely by myself, for an idea to a song, so when it's been through the Late Night Venture machine, it will probably sound pretty different
Just a post about some of the interesting and really great music I'm listening to at the moment
Snowden
To start it all off I was introduced to this band in such an old school way as by "word -of-mouth", the other guitarist from Late Night Venture, Peter, had visited a friend that told him to check this band out, and he then told me, and I went to the myspace page of the band, having no expectations what so ever.
But what hit me here was this sound that just caught my attention right away, somehow it kind of reminded me a bit of Interpol but at the same time it also had some references to the playfulness of Arcade Fire . Very rhythmic and with the excellent voice of the lead singer that proved a great diversity between the different songs. That along with dreamy yet staggering guitars, the distorted pumping bass and the cool drums, is just really hitting it off.
It took me a very short while to realize that it would take at least 3-4 weeks to get their record sent to denmark, so had to go and buy it right away on itunes.
That record has just been growing on me ever since, every song has its own forces, from the danceable, hit song : "Anti-Anti" to the more noise and abrupt "Counterfeit Rules" to the warm and melancholic acoustic "Sisters".
The thing is that Snowden is just way more and way deeper than for example Interpol, even though there's some references, snowden brings a dark & warm feeling with a down to earth approach.
I can highly recommend you to go and get this record.
Next up is a band i discovered because one of my friends on MySpace, had one of their songs on her profile for a while and I really thought that this was something. Then just a couple of days later Late Night Venture played a show with the swedish band immanu el and I had the guys sleeping at my house after the show, because they didn't want to take the long drive to sweden after. I talked with the piano/cello/guitar guy Jonatan about all sorts of stuff and just as I was about to introduce him to Kyte he was just typing the webpage as we spoke, kind of fun .-) but the point was that I heard some more songs from their mini album and then I was quite sure that I had to have that album, so as with Snowden, I couldn't really wait so bought it on iTunes.
So what is this music, well it's somewhere inbetween post-rock and electronica, very bright and clicky. Somewhat inbetween The Postal Service and swedish band Jeniferever. Very lush with extremely catchy songs. After buying the album it has been on my iTunes playlist every day, it's really an excellent 6 track mini album.
Now a danish one I'm listening to a lot these days. It's kind of a rediscovery. Because they have had their debut album out "Always prattling about wolves" about 2 years now. But now they're releasing their second album "Silly Kings" and you can already listen to some songs from that album on their MySpace page. I bought the debut album already, when it was released the first time, but kind of rediscovered the magic universe of their music, when we had the pleasure to play a show with them in Hildesheim, Germany at the Schallgrenzen festival (will probably blog about that at another occasion :-) ). They played a very genuine and warm concert, and since then I've been listening to their debut much more and always end up on their MySpace page, where the song "Runaround" always greeted me welcome. A perfect simple dark song. However, it's now the song "Took Away" that greets, and this is just as perfect and enchanting.
So what's the thing with Said The Shark. It's the fact that i can't pinpoint exactly what it sounds like other than they sound like a very deserted place out in the woods, where there is more between life and earth than meets the eye, it is kind of adventurous and very dark, but with a twist of warmth. Really effective music.
Someone would probably say Cat Power and someone would probably say PJ Harvey, but even there might be a slight resemblance, Said The Shark is much more interesting in my ears. It's due to the very original and genuine vocals of Maya, the soundscapes that Kim makes (also from Windermere, another great danish band) along with Rasmus, Mikkel and Hans pulling it all together.
I will strongly encourage you to go visit said the shark at their MySpace page here
I know I will buy my copy of it on the 13th of may, where Said The Shark is having their release party at Loppen in Copenhagen.
This Will Destroy You
Last one for this post, is kind of a post-rock act, but one of the more interesting and brutal, "This Will Destroy You" have some sort of resemblance towards the more heavy sounds that you find in the post-hardcore scene. Played by bands like Cult Of Luna, Isis, Pelican, Neurosis and the likes. But where these bands have growl vocals in common, This Will Destroy You are more pure melodic and instrumental (only with a few highly effected vocals), making a lot of room to have every single note played coming out where it should. In Front. Therefore This Will Destroy You is getting a bit closer to bands like Explosions In The Sky, Godspeed You Black Emperor and Mogwai.
The thing is though, that This Will Destroy You have a way more "Ambient" soundscape approach, where they often mix electronica elements with the pure and the ripping guitars, it's a fine mix in between the handplayed infernos and the delicate electronic pulses that drives the work. When this is blended with the fact that "This Will Destroy You" makes very catchy melodylines that you can remember and the fact that they have a perfect sound for what they make, you end up with sort of a reinvention of post-rock. So with "This Will Destroy You" you get one brutal, yet dreamy and at times very lush and light, companion for Late Nights watching stars.
Give yourself the opportunity to go and listen to This Will Destroy You on their myspace page here
Go see them live at Loppen in copenhagen, where I will be supporting with the late nighters on the 29th of April
.. This pretty much sums it up for now .. I'm a music addict, so I listen to a lot of other stuff at the moment as well, but these 4 have been on heavy rotation the last couple of weeks.
When "Late Night Venture" tour around in europe, we always carry a pretty old digitall video camera, and sometimes we even have someone filming our shows, so just to give an idea of what it sounds like when we play concerts, I've put together an approx 10. minute video clip with excerpts from different songs that we played at some shows in germany.
It's a bit muddy and you know "Amateurist" .-) , but it gives a good view and listen, I think it kind of proves that we're another kind of band live, than on record.
The video clip contains excerpts from the songs : - Lazy Star .. A good old song that has been in the repertoire the last 5 years, but was finally released on our album. It's kind of the essence of our soundscape sound - Love/Respect Call .. Personally one of my favorites at the moment, a quite new song, kind of experimental and groovy .. You can hear the whole song on our myspace page. - Skylights .. The wavy electronica'ish noisepiece that you can also listen to in its full length on Myspace - Ready For The Knife .. A pretty new song, that haven't been recorded yet, but promises well - Sidekick Trip To Mars .. A lush dreampiece with loads of twists put into a basic (long) popsong, with an inferno ending it all.. Also this can be listened to in full at our MySpace site. - Condition Lost .. The cool opener from our album - Modesto .. The small radio hit that hit the danish charts, and has also had much airplay around the world.. also from our album - Drift in a slipstream .. The song from the dark nights, also available at the moment on our myspace site in full length. But is to found on our album as well
Well, first of all, there's just loads of places on the net to talk, chat, meet people and discover all sorts of stuff and I admit that one of the best places I know by now, is definately MySpace, I've met so many interesting people there and not the least interesting bands that I hadn't heard of ever before.
So obviously I have a profile there and so does the band that I'm a part of have. You should by all means go and take a look.
The band: an indie-soundscape or maybe even a "Dark Pop, Alternative Electro Pop, Nordic Dark Voice, or Underground Vibrato Exalted Sound Of Heavenly Masses" band (last quotes taken from a UK review of our album :-) ) is called LATE NIGHT VENTURE and we origin in Copenhagen, Denmark .. You can hear the music, read about us, see the upcoming shows and buy the album and all that at : - MySpace -> http://www.myspace.com/latenightventure
... So why this blog then, when I've got one at MySpace... Well the blog at myspace is kind of boring i think, i wanted a more dedicated blog with some nice tools around to help you get nice posts and all that, so yet another blog is online, and is mostly just for letting thoughts out on this and that, recommend music, link to good videos, and occasionally probably also have some "Late Night Venture" related stuff as well.
So thats pretty much it. I'm gonna start off by posting a video in the next post .-)
The thing had to have a name, so "Late Night Illusions" is the name of the blog, it fits fine with me, since I'm really a "Late Night" person.
So first up, is this post-rock act from Brooklyn, NY, US.
Next up is Toronto based The Besnard Lakes.
Last one up this night is Our Broken Garden, a danish act, which in it's essence only comprises of the singer Anna Brønsted, which normally is found together with the danish act Efterklang.
