Berlin ! .
We've played quite some times in Berlin for now, we've played goth clubs, soup kitchens, minor zoos and this time we ventured right in on an indian summer night to the fabulous ruins of Antje Öklesund. Placed in the backyard of common buildings in the mid of Rigaer Strasse, in between squads, punk afficianado stores, yellow light kebab pushers and just plain berlin condos, with no sort of indication that there could be a club here, we found the place...
This is kind of a dream place to play a gig, very flexible, you can refurnish the stage you can move things about and on top of it all, there were really nice people helping us out with sounds, carrying, serving us mexicans.
That night we played with UK band, The Rhythm Method, really nice guys that we hanged out with, drank some beer and wasted time until it was around showtime. So to kick it off the place offered us Mexican shots ( bloody mary with a bit more tabasco i would guess ) , and shortly after we were about to start.
Everyting about the show was perfect for us.. cool setting, a dedicated crowd listening to every single noise burst and that just gives us so much energy, so ended up being a real cool show and also a really good afterparty.
I've put up some videos to show what it was all about (all of them pretty lofi and recorded by Peter from Quartermain Records, crawling around :
Opening song that evening :
Not so long after, we took on Sidekick Trip To Mars from the "Illuminations" EP
And then some postcore .. Acorns Fall again from the "Illuminations" EP, with a bit of "Dawn" new song in the beginning
and one of the finals.. Carisma
enjoy!
Monday, September 28, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Tour update September 2009
A couple of days around europe, playing at cool venues in Luxembourg, Berlin and Leipzig has ended.
It was a very joyful experience, playing for dedicated listeners at all three venues.
Luxembourg was a once again a joy to attend. You can't really say that there was a lot of people because that was really not the case. However, every single person seemed to enjoy the show.
Luxembourg is somehow a very quiet town, mostly consisting of a population of bankers ( several people attending our show was actually bankers :-) ), but the d:qliq venue is something apart from that, it's run by Fred, the very dedicated manager of the place, and is in a very big contrast to the rest of the luxembourg life a place where alternative music can thrive.
A bit before the show, we had a visit at the Disagreement.net Radio to give an interview, talking a lot about distortion, and who the typical LNV fan is.. Puzzling questions :-).. A german reviewer said in a review that we only do the kind of music we do, to hook up with girls and get summer festival crowds to wave their arms in euphoria. That's kind of funny :-) .. maybe that's our fans then, hard to tell.
Anyway.. Luxembourg was kind of as we expected, we had a good time, went late to bed and quite a hangover the day after.
In a later post I will put some recordings from the show here ( i just have to hear them through to make sure I don't post the ones with all the mistakes in ).
Day after was travelling day. 10 hr. drive to Berlin in a hot bus, arriving late, and went to our sleeping place. of course went out to have a couple of white russians and some beer before sleeping in.
Second show was at the venue Antje Öklesund i Rigaerstrasse in the heart of Friedrichshain, Berlin.
And what a cool place, completely DIY, with lots of art and a nice stage. Really one of our best shows was played there, more people, again very dedicated listeners, and a nice afterparty along with UK band : the rhythm method.
Pictures and video to be posted a bit later.
Finally we went to Leipzig to play at the Cafe Mule, a special place for me, since I met my wife there. This night was the last night the cafe would have live music ever, so quite a special night. Lots of people came, we played a longer show, and again had a really good time.
I will Post a bit more in detail about the days, along with som live clips and pics, but for now you can watch this lo-fi video taken at the Cafe Mule in Leipzig.
A pretty new song, in the beginning of the show :
It was a very joyful experience, playing for dedicated listeners at all three venues.
Luxembourg was a once again a joy to attend. You can't really say that there was a lot of people because that was really not the case. However, every single person seemed to enjoy the show.
Luxembourg is somehow a very quiet town, mostly consisting of a population of bankers ( several people attending our show was actually bankers :-) ), but the d:qliq venue is something apart from that, it's run by Fred, the very dedicated manager of the place, and is in a very big contrast to the rest of the luxembourg life a place where alternative music can thrive.
A bit before the show, we had a visit at the Disagreement.net Radio to give an interview, talking a lot about distortion, and who the typical LNV fan is.. Puzzling questions :-).. A german reviewer said in a review that we only do the kind of music we do, to hook up with girls and get summer festival crowds to wave their arms in euphoria. That's kind of funny :-) .. maybe that's our fans then, hard to tell.
Anyway.. Luxembourg was kind of as we expected, we had a good time, went late to bed and quite a hangover the day after.
In a later post I will put some recordings from the show here ( i just have to hear them through to make sure I don't post the ones with all the mistakes in ).
Day after was travelling day. 10 hr. drive to Berlin in a hot bus, arriving late, and went to our sleeping place. of course went out to have a couple of white russians and some beer before sleeping in.
Second show was at the venue Antje Öklesund i Rigaerstrasse in the heart of Friedrichshain, Berlin.
And what a cool place, completely DIY, with lots of art and a nice stage. Really one of our best shows was played there, more people, again very dedicated listeners, and a nice afterparty along with UK band : the rhythm method.
Pictures and video to be posted a bit later.
Finally we went to Leipzig to play at the Cafe Mule, a special place for me, since I met my wife there. This night was the last night the cafe would have live music ever, so quite a special night. Lots of people came, we played a longer show, and again had a really good time.
I will Post a bit more in detail about the days, along with som live clips and pics, but for now you can watch this lo-fi video taken at the Cafe Mule in Leipzig.
A pretty new song, in the beginning of the show :
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
AND .... back on the road
I know it's been a long time.. pretty much no activity on the blog, I got personally and professionally overhauled and have had little time to update my blog, although I do enjoy doing that.
And then comes the time when I sit there once again at the backstage of a venue, with bandmates sleeping and me awake, getting ready for the show tonight at the fabulous d:qliq venue in luxembourg.
Time to write a bit on the blog, and within the next couple of days also post some memoires and some music and hopefully also some video footage, which will be recorded in the next couple of days.
Our small tour will this time include a stop at d:qliq in Luxembourg, Antje Öklesund in Berlin and Cafe Mule in Leipzig.
We're touring a bit here and there to support our release of the Illuminations EP, which is now available lots of different places around europe, for example at amazon.de.
But you can go and listen to all the songs and even a couple of pretty new demos that we have put online on our myspace.
At the moment just getting ready for tonight, hanging around in luxembourg, listening a bit to Lali Puna and the new Yo La Tengo stuff..
More to come
And then comes the time when I sit there once again at the backstage of a venue, with bandmates sleeping and me awake, getting ready for the show tonight at the fabulous d:qliq venue in luxembourg.
Time to write a bit on the blog, and within the next couple of days also post some memoires and some music and hopefully also some video footage, which will be recorded in the next couple of days.
Our small tour will this time include a stop at d:qliq in Luxembourg, Antje Öklesund in Berlin and Cafe Mule in Leipzig.
We're touring a bit here and there to support our release of the Illuminations EP, which is now available lots of different places around europe, for example at amazon.de.
But you can go and listen to all the songs and even a couple of pretty new demos that we have put online on our myspace.
At the moment just getting ready for tonight, hanging around in luxembourg, listening a bit to Lali Puna and the new Yo La Tengo stuff..
More to come
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Europe Venture - Part 7
So for the last Europe tour update, a bit late, but the last couple of shows and places we got to sleep there was no access to WIFI, so had to wait until we got home with updating here.
And getting home from those 14 days, was kind of a knockdown. Pretty tired after 2 weeks of approximately 2-5 hours sleep every night.
So to round up the tour (which is really not over until tomorrow evening where we play Prague) heres some notes on the last couple of shows, and off course also some live music.
04.06.2008 - d:qliq - Luxembourg
After our show in Reims the night before, we chose upon driving the approx 200km to Luxembourg where we had an apartment available, supplied by the d:qliq venue. After a pretty obvious quiet drive with most of us sleeping we did arrive in Luxembourg in the middle of the night and after being confused that the supplied address of the apartment was in fact the address of the Luxembourg ministry of finance, we finally stumbled upon the real address which turned out to be exactly the venue to play the day after : d:qliq and how nice it was, basically a big room on top of the venue. Manu, one of the nice arrangers made sure we got what we need and showed us around, before everyone went to bed.
The day after we obviously had some time off before sound check, so a stroll through the city, some breakfast/lunch and then a couple of beers later, we were ready for soundcheck. d:qliq is one of the very nice venues where everything is about making the mood good for both musicians and people coming to the place, and I might guess the only of its kind in Luxembourg. The fact is that arrangers and people at d:qliq generally made a good effort of making us feel at home, even by kick-starting us with some absinth.
Soundcheck, great vegan dinner at the side restaurant, time to kill in Luxembourg (there was a cycling event.. not that i could care less :-) ), and just hanging about around in our apartment until showtime.
The place wasnt exactly overcrowded, but the people that were there really seemed to enjoy every bit of the show, and for us it was indeed a good show, we enjoyed it a lot and just below here you can listen to two songs from the show, and you can read a review here.
After the show everything just ended up in a party, ultimately ending with us and the arranger Manu and the DJ drinking Absinth till we were dead.. such a 72% absinth kind of hits.
Late Night Venture - Ready For The Knife - Live From d:qliq, Luxembourg
Late Night Venture - Love/Respect Call - Live d:qliq, Luxembourg
Setlist of the night:
- Silent Carriers
- Skylights
- Carousel
- Acorns Fall
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Trapped In Glass
- Love/Respect Call
Tourbus playlist:
Only the silent and calm sounds of people snoring all the way from Reims to Luxembourg
05.06.2006 - Cafe Yeti - Lille
Pretty wasted from the Luxembourg show, we went to Lille to play at Cafe Yeti, a very small place in downtown Lille. However, misunderstandings at the cafe, made it pretty clear that they didnt expect us to come :-) .. told us nicely that we could play if we wanted, but after an hour of discussing, we chose upon heading for Paris straight away instead, taking the night off. And we do apologize if any stopped by. It's first time in the Late Night Venture history ever, that we have cancelled a gig, and looking back i think we kind of regret.
Well the place was extremely small and with only access to a toilet through the stage.. could have been quite different.. "Oh you have to go now, well we just stop playing for how long ?. ok 5 minutes pea break" .-) ..
What we didnt regret, was the fact that we were in Paris later, and had the opportunity to get out in the paris nightlife, getting food, naively try to find the eiffel without a map, and just relax. Once again it was a late night.
Tourbus playlist:
Indietronica mostly.. Album Leaf, Fennesz, Manual, DNTEL, Postal Service, People Press Play, Future 3, Opiate and then when we got near Paris we fired up the metal again and had a bowl of Slayer, Sepultura, Isis, Neurosis and Cult Of Luna.
06.06.2008 - La Scene Bastille - Paris
Last show of the tour. This night in quite a big club in the bastille district of Paris. a very cool venue, which was very nice, friendly and open when we arrived. Everything going pretty smooth with soundcheck and all that. Even gave us some time to go out and have some nice food.
Paris is really the mecca of food, i mean to watch how the culture is build up around having decent products available for everyone, it was a joy to see this and experience this. My Confit de Canard that night were sublime .-)
Playing the show at La Scene was just a nice way to end everything up, big stage, large sound, good fun, and a nice after party with a lot of french people.. We enjoyed a lot. This was just a fine way to end up the tour this far..
just below you can listen to Lazy Star from the show.
Late Night Venture - Lazy Star - Live From La Scene, Paris
Setlist of the night:
- Silent Carriers
- Skylights
- Carousel
- Acorns Fall
- Ready For The Knife
- Lazy Star
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Love/Respect Call
----
So now its almost over, but not yet, I'm heading for Prague tomorrow to not only have one spectacular show at the Planet Festival , but also to just have some excellent quality time in Prague.
I will post stuff from that as well .. and then we're having a small break until 2nd of july where we play roskilde warm up with Baby Woodrose.
And remember to stop by our Flickr for the last couple of pictures.
And getting home from those 14 days, was kind of a knockdown. Pretty tired after 2 weeks of approximately 2-5 hours sleep every night.
So to round up the tour (which is really not over until tomorrow evening where we play Prague) heres some notes on the last couple of shows, and off course also some live music.
04.06.2008 - d:qliq - Luxembourg
After our show in Reims the night before, we chose upon driving the approx 200km to Luxembourg where we had an apartment available, supplied by the d:qliq venue. After a pretty obvious quiet drive with most of us sleeping we did arrive in Luxembourg in the middle of the night and after being confused that the supplied address of the apartment was in fact the address of the Luxembourg ministry of finance, we finally stumbled upon the real address which turned out to be exactly the venue to play the day after : d:qliq and how nice it was, basically a big room on top of the venue. Manu, one of the nice arrangers made sure we got what we need and showed us around, before everyone went to bed.
The day after we obviously had some time off before sound check, so a stroll through the city, some breakfast/lunch and then a couple of beers later, we were ready for soundcheck. d:qliq is one of the very nice venues where everything is about making the mood good for both musicians and people coming to the place, and I might guess the only of its kind in Luxembourg. The fact is that arrangers and people at d:qliq generally made a good effort of making us feel at home, even by kick-starting us with some absinth.
Soundcheck, great vegan dinner at the side restaurant, time to kill in Luxembourg (there was a cycling event.. not that i could care less :-) ), and just hanging about around in our apartment until showtime.
The place wasnt exactly overcrowded, but the people that were there really seemed to enjoy every bit of the show, and for us it was indeed a good show, we enjoyed it a lot and just below here you can listen to two songs from the show, and you can read a review here.
After the show everything just ended up in a party, ultimately ending with us and the arranger Manu and the DJ drinking Absinth till we were dead.. such a 72% absinth kind of hits.
Late Night Venture - Ready For The Knife - Live From d:qliq, Luxembourg
Late Night Venture - Love/Respect Call - Live d:qliq, Luxembourg
Setlist of the night:
- Silent Carriers
- Skylights
- Carousel
- Acorns Fall
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Trapped In Glass
- Love/Respect Call
Tourbus playlist:
Only the silent and calm sounds of people snoring all the way from Reims to Luxembourg
05.06.2006 - Cafe Yeti - Lille
Pretty wasted from the Luxembourg show, we went to Lille to play at Cafe Yeti, a very small place in downtown Lille. However, misunderstandings at the cafe, made it pretty clear that they didnt expect us to come :-) .. told us nicely that we could play if we wanted, but after an hour of discussing, we chose upon heading for Paris straight away instead, taking the night off. And we do apologize if any stopped by. It's first time in the Late Night Venture history ever, that we have cancelled a gig, and looking back i think we kind of regret.
Well the place was extremely small and with only access to a toilet through the stage.. could have been quite different.. "Oh you have to go now, well we just stop playing for how long ?. ok 5 minutes pea break" .-) ..
What we didnt regret, was the fact that we were in Paris later, and had the opportunity to get out in the paris nightlife, getting food, naively try to find the eiffel without a map, and just relax. Once again it was a late night.
Tourbus playlist:
Indietronica mostly.. Album Leaf, Fennesz, Manual, DNTEL, Postal Service, People Press Play, Future 3, Opiate and then when we got near Paris we fired up the metal again and had a bowl of Slayer, Sepultura, Isis, Neurosis and Cult Of Luna.
06.06.2008 - La Scene Bastille - Paris
Last show of the tour. This night in quite a big club in the bastille district of Paris. a very cool venue, which was very nice, friendly and open when we arrived. Everything going pretty smooth with soundcheck and all that. Even gave us some time to go out and have some nice food.
Paris is really the mecca of food, i mean to watch how the culture is build up around having decent products available for everyone, it was a joy to see this and experience this. My Confit de Canard that night were sublime .-)
Playing the show at La Scene was just a nice way to end everything up, big stage, large sound, good fun, and a nice after party with a lot of french people.. We enjoyed a lot. This was just a fine way to end up the tour this far..
just below you can listen to Lazy Star from the show.
Late Night Venture - Lazy Star - Live From La Scene, Paris
Setlist of the night:
- Silent Carriers
- Skylights
- Carousel
- Acorns Fall
- Ready For The Knife
- Lazy Star
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Love/Respect Call
----
So now its almost over, but not yet, I'm heading for Prague tomorrow to not only have one spectacular show at the Planet Festival , but also to just have some excellent quality time in Prague.
I will post stuff from that as well .. and then we're having a small break until 2nd of july where we play roskilde warm up with Baby Woodrose.
And remember to stop by our Flickr for the last couple of pictures.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Europe Ventures - Part 6
It's early morning and I woke up just a short while ago, I'm pretty much always the first one up from sleep in Late Night Venture. When touring, I consider 5 hours sleep like a good long sleep, everythings working on the pumps.
I don't feel tired at all, just a way of living for a while. I'm sitting here at d:qliq's office in luxembourg after sleeping in their apartment. We got a show here tonight and I'm looking real forward to it. d:qliq is a cool place.
Remember to go check the new pictures at : FLICKR
Sunday - 01.06.2008
This was just our day off in the Amsterdam area, so we didnt do anything than just go to Amsterdam and relax, having some good food and just inhaling the moods of the canals. Amsterdam is such a nice city, I will definately come back another time, when I'm not touring.
My Cellphone broke this day, its very annoying, cause it works, but the microphone is broken, which means people can call me and talk to me, but they shouldnt expect an answer.
It's frustrating, the cellphone is good when we're apart to get things going and all that and then pretty annoying to not be able to speak
Monday - 02.06.2008 - Tübingen
Amsterdam -> Tübingen : 684 km . Thats just a very long drive, so we had to get up pretty early and drive the bus at 6AM towards Tübingen. When we left Amsterdam the GPS kindly said : Arrival: 12:15 , but wiser from knowledge of the european traffic infrastructure, we knew that this was a pure lie.
Arrival: 15:52 . This was the actual arrival time, due to loads of traffic queues different places in Germany, but definately worst around Stuttgart. Sitting in the bus with 30 degrees outside and just boiling, we had to once again put Faithless - We Come 1 on for FULL blast. Theres nothing like queues to stress you.
After arrival we split up and the rest of the band went to the arranger and after that to the place of concert, a small club with stone floor called Carisma. Tonights job was a backline job, meaning that we only needed a pretty short soundcheck and then a decission upon setlist.
We were the only band playing that night, so we chose upon a 2 set approach with more songs, which showed out to be a very good disposition.
Tübingen is a university town, but seems kind of small even though it isnt that small, its one of the southern germany cities with lots of old houses. Expectations were that not that may would arrive, but at the point of showtime, the place was pretty good booked and what a good night. Audience were very focused, listening enjoying, having a small in the middle and then even after playing set 2, we needed extra songs.
The setlist of the night :
Set 1:
- Silent Carriers
- Ready For The Knife
- Carousel
- Acorns Fall
- End Of I
Set 2:
- Skylights
- Lazy Star
- Trapped in glass
- Drift in a slipstream
- Love/Respect Call
- After
Extra:
- Condition Lost
Tourbus playlist:
Tired of the metal, we went for the more electronica like stuff, so it was : The Album Leaf, Air, Charlotte Gainsbourgh, Björk, DNTEL, The Postal Service, People Press Play and some Camera Obscura to round things up.
Tuesday - 03.06.2008 - Reims
After one excellent night in Tübingen, we got up and ready to drive for France and what a joy, only 1 queue on that distance, so it was a peaceful drive, that mostly consisted of a passionate driver and sleeping passangers.
Destination in Reims were the Pop Art Cafe, a small club with volume restrictions. We're getting used to conform ourselves change set and even playstyle to this, so we ended up playing a nice low-key set, with not very much noise in it. It's quite a contrast actually, because when we play the full live sound out, it get's really really noisy and infernal, but then when we change for low-key it just gets more dreamy and spacey its actually quite fun to do.
Setlist of the night:
- Lazy Star
- Carousel
- Trapped In Glass
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- After
- Love/Respect Call
Tourbus playlist :
Silence, only a bit of Camera Obscura towards the end.
I don't feel tired at all, just a way of living for a while. I'm sitting here at d:qliq's office in luxembourg after sleeping in their apartment. We got a show here tonight and I'm looking real forward to it. d:qliq is a cool place.
Remember to go check the new pictures at : FLICKR
Sunday - 01.06.2008
This was just our day off in the Amsterdam area, so we didnt do anything than just go to Amsterdam and relax, having some good food and just inhaling the moods of the canals. Amsterdam is such a nice city, I will definately come back another time, when I'm not touring.
My Cellphone broke this day, its very annoying, cause it works, but the microphone is broken, which means people can call me and talk to me, but they shouldnt expect an answer.
It's frustrating, the cellphone is good when we're apart to get things going and all that and then pretty annoying to not be able to speak
Monday - 02.06.2008 - Tübingen
Amsterdam -> Tübingen : 684 km . Thats just a very long drive, so we had to get up pretty early and drive the bus at 6AM towards Tübingen. When we left Amsterdam the GPS kindly said : Arrival: 12:15 , but wiser from knowledge of the european traffic infrastructure, we knew that this was a pure lie.
Arrival: 15:52 . This was the actual arrival time, due to loads of traffic queues different places in Germany, but definately worst around Stuttgart. Sitting in the bus with 30 degrees outside and just boiling, we had to once again put Faithless - We Come 1 on for FULL blast. Theres nothing like queues to stress you.
After arrival we split up and the rest of the band went to the arranger and after that to the place of concert, a small club with stone floor called Carisma. Tonights job was a backline job, meaning that we only needed a pretty short soundcheck and then a decission upon setlist.
We were the only band playing that night, so we chose upon a 2 set approach with more songs, which showed out to be a very good disposition.
Tübingen is a university town, but seems kind of small even though it isnt that small, its one of the southern germany cities with lots of old houses. Expectations were that not that may would arrive, but at the point of showtime, the place was pretty good booked and what a good night. Audience were very focused, listening enjoying, having a small in the middle and then even after playing set 2, we needed extra songs.
The setlist of the night :
Set 1:
- Silent Carriers
- Ready For The Knife
- Carousel
- Acorns Fall
- End Of I
Set 2:
- Skylights
- Lazy Star
- Trapped in glass
- Drift in a slipstream
- Love/Respect Call
- After
Extra:
- Condition Lost
Tourbus playlist:
Tired of the metal, we went for the more electronica like stuff, so it was : The Album Leaf, Air, Charlotte Gainsbourgh, Björk, DNTEL, The Postal Service, People Press Play and some Camera Obscura to round things up.
Tuesday - 03.06.2008 - Reims
After one excellent night in Tübingen, we got up and ready to drive for France and what a joy, only 1 queue on that distance, so it was a peaceful drive, that mostly consisted of a passionate driver and sleeping passangers.
Destination in Reims were the Pop Art Cafe, a small club with volume restrictions. We're getting used to conform ourselves change set and even playstyle to this, so we ended up playing a nice low-key set, with not very much noise in it. It's quite a contrast actually, because when we play the full live sound out, it get's really really noisy and infernal, but then when we change for low-key it just gets more dreamy and spacey its actually quite fun to do.
Setlist of the night:
- Lazy Star
- Carousel
- Trapped In Glass
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- After
- Love/Respect Call
Tourbus playlist :
Silence, only a bit of Camera Obscura towards the end.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Europe Ventures - Part 5
Friday - 30.05.2008 - Eindhoven
Friday was in many ways a very stressful day, we had to leave Duisburg a bit early to drive to Amsterdam and record a live session at Amsterdam FM radio and then after that drive to Eindhoven to play at TAC.
We always calculate for some amount of queues, but not quite this much, so after an immensely and unfair long drive from Amsterdam to Eindhoven we arrived unacceptably late at the venue, like at 7.30PM .
This always leaves us in a stressful situation because we then have in sight that the soundcheck will be non-existent and time to just get ready for the show would be too short for us to relax.
But nothing like that happened and this is very much thanks to the crew at TAC, a bunch of well organized and very kind people, that in every way were extremely helpful making sure we had what we needed, could answer questions, had planned the evening good.
Really a place of generosity and good moods.
This meant we could do a very good soundcheck in just a very short time, with everything sounding great. I really liked this stage and this place in general.
The show itself went very well, there was really good feedback and we got to sell cd's and just talk with people before the place closed and the nice people at TAC took us out in the city to a rock club in the "party" district.. Nice and late evening before heading back to the place to sleep. Pretty tired..
The setlist of the night :
- Silent Carriers
- Carousel
- Skylights
- Trapped In Glass
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Acorns Fall ( listen to the live recording below )
- Love/Respect Call
Tourbus Playlist :
Well its still post-hardcore, metal and post-rock mostly but then also some nice quiet electronica vibes going through the stereo. But still 2 songs seem to come back all the time. Which is Sepultura - Roots and Cult Of Luna - Finland.
Late Night Venture -Acorns Fall ( Live From TAC in Eindhoven )
Late Night Venture - Acorns Fall - Live From TAC, Eindhoven
Saturday - 31.05.2008 - Amsterdam
Friday was in many ways a very stressful day, we had to leave Duisburg a bit early to drive to Amsterdam and record a live session at Amsterdam FM radio and then after that drive to Eindhoven to play at TAC.
We always calculate for some amount of queues, but not quite this much, so after an immensely and unfair long drive from Amsterdam to Eindhoven we arrived unacceptably late at the venue, like at 7.30PM .
This always leaves us in a stressful situation because we then have in sight that the soundcheck will be non-existent and time to just get ready for the show would be too short for us to relax.
But nothing like that happened and this is very much thanks to the crew at TAC, a bunch of well organized and very kind people, that in every way were extremely helpful making sure we had what we needed, could answer questions, had planned the evening good.
Really a place of generosity and good moods.
This meant we could do a very good soundcheck in just a very short time, with everything sounding great. I really liked this stage and this place in general.
The show itself went very well, there was really good feedback and we got to sell cd's and just talk with people before the place closed and the nice people at TAC took us out in the city to a rock club in the "party" district.. Nice and late evening before heading back to the place to sleep. Pretty tired..
The setlist of the night :
- Silent Carriers
- Carousel
- Skylights
- Trapped In Glass
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Acorns Fall ( listen to the live recording below )
- Love/Respect Call
Tourbus Playlist :
Well its still post-hardcore, metal and post-rock mostly but then also some nice quiet electronica vibes going through the stereo. But still 2 songs seem to come back all the time. Which is Sepultura - Roots and Cult Of Luna - Finland.
Late Night Venture -Acorns Fall ( Live From TAC in Eindhoven )
Late Night Venture - Acorns Fall - Live From TAC, Eindhoven
Saturday - 31.05.2008 - Amsterdam
Amsterdam.. such a nice city .. uptil now we've only had 2 parking tickets . Both in amsterdam . Had a long chat with the parking officers though about music and football (not that I even remotely care about football, but the others do :-) ).
Amsterdam is a very nice city with lots things going on and on this night we played Club Meander just in the heart of Amsterdam.
To be honest I didn't this club very much, it was kind of careless, I mean it seamed like noone really cared about playing a show at this place, the staff was pretty indifferent and hospitality was a city far away in the outskirts of nowhere.
These things affect everything and the fact that we had to play really early wasnt helping, so all in all i would consider this job the worst on the tour so far.
Fairly speaking I will say that the sound people there were very kind and helpful, but this place doesnt get a karma star in my book.
Did have the pleasure to make an interview with a magazine though. That was very nice and the girl interviewing were quite professional, had good questions and had made some good research up front. I like that ..
Setlist of the night :
- Silent Carriers
- Carousel
- Skylights
- Trapped in Glass
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Acorns Fall
- Love/Respect Call
Tourbus Playlist :
Sepultura - Roots .-) , Cult Of Luna - Finland .. getting a bit tired of it now.. will soon have to change to Slayer and some Neurosis .. again garnished this with Cypress Hill and some Mercury Rev.
Today its offtime .-) we have a day off music here in Amsterdam, looking forward to that.. relax eat some good food, before the long drive tomorrow.
Remember to visit our flickr space.. link below .. its getting updated all the time with loads of pictures.
Today its offtime .-) we have a day off music here in Amsterdam, looking forward to that.. relax eat some good food, before the long drive tomorrow.
Remember to visit our flickr space.. link below .. its getting updated all the time with loads of pictures.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Europe Ventures - Part 4 - Radio
Just after the show in Duisburg and a late night venture in the nice peoples garden, we head off for Amsterdam to play some songs in Amsterdam FM radio.
It was a fun experience, a bit hectic, but we got to play two songs in a minimalistic setup with acoustic guitar, piano and only one drum.
We played the two songs
- After
- Love/Respect Call
Both songs were recorded intermistic with a camera and put online by the staff from Amsterdam FM
So here you can watch it
and
You can also go to the amsterdam fm site and listen to the show : Amsterdam FM
It was a fun experience, a bit hectic, but we got to play two songs in a minimalistic setup with acoustic guitar, piano and only one drum.
We played the two songs
- After
- Love/Respect Call
Both songs were recorded intermistic with a camera and put online by the staff from Amsterdam FM
So here you can watch it
and
You can also go to the amsterdam fm site and listen to the show : Amsterdam FM
Europe Ventures - Part 2
As the days go we have a good time doing the tour rituals, which is pretty much.
1. Wake Up
2. Panic for Coffee
3. Freshen up and get the gear together
4. Drive for quite some while in an extremely hot tourbus
5. Make soundcheck
6. Play show
7. Get late to bed
It's pretty much that mantra we live by these days. It's a bit hard, but for every day that goes everything just goes more and more smooth towards excellence and we play better and better shows, changing the setlist everyday to make some difference.
Thursday - 29.05.2008
This night was at the venue called Steinbruch in Duisburg in northern germany, close to the netherland border. Probably the best venue this far in the tour, with very kind people, a perfect stage and really good sound.
Steinbruch is situated just on the outer rim of Duisburg and is a pretty popular place for both music and food. Which is no wonder since its a cozy place, where you can sit outside in the great weather and have your food and then go into the dark club to get some earache.
It was one of the best shows on the tour this far in terms of sound, but it wasnt exactly overvisited :-) bit of a shame, for this venue.
Still. We had a great time and ended up in one of the locals houses (arranged by the place) to sleep, but didnt really go to sleep, just had a good time in the garden. Just below is a mood picture of this. Sitting in the garden listening to "People Press Play" and "Faithless" was very nice.
I have put up the song Carousel recorded at that show for anyone interested to enjoy, I personally think it has pretty good sound.
Setlist of the night :
- Silent Carriers
- Carousel
- Skylights
- Trapped In Glass
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Acorns Fall
- Love/Respect Call
Tourbus playlist :
Metal again... seems like Cult Of Luna has hit the playlist for good :-) .. some more Sepultura a bit of Seigmen and then some
Late Night Venture - Carousel ( Live From Steinbruch in Duisburg )
Late Night Venture - Carousel .. Live from Steinbruch in Duisburg
-- Very soon i will post a whole lot of pictures here but just need to get a bit better net connection for that.
1. Wake Up
2. Panic for Coffee
3. Freshen up and get the gear together
4. Drive for quite some while in an extremely hot tourbus
5. Make soundcheck
6. Play show
7. Get late to bed
It's pretty much that mantra we live by these days. It's a bit hard, but for every day that goes everything just goes more and more smooth towards excellence and we play better and better shows, changing the setlist everyday to make some difference.
Thursday - 29.05.2008
This night was at the venue called Steinbruch in Duisburg in northern germany, close to the netherland border. Probably the best venue this far in the tour, with very kind people, a perfect stage and really good sound.
Steinbruch is situated just on the outer rim of Duisburg and is a pretty popular place for both music and food. Which is no wonder since its a cozy place, where you can sit outside in the great weather and have your food and then go into the dark club to get some earache.
It was one of the best shows on the tour this far in terms of sound, but it wasnt exactly overvisited :-) bit of a shame, for this venue.
Still. We had a great time and ended up in one of the locals houses (arranged by the place) to sleep, but didnt really go to sleep, just had a good time in the garden. Just below is a mood picture of this. Sitting in the garden listening to "People Press Play" and "Faithless" was very nice.
I have put up the song Carousel recorded at that show for anyone interested to enjoy, I personally think it has pretty good sound.
Setlist of the night :
- Silent Carriers
- Carousel
- Skylights
- Trapped In Glass
- Ready For The Knife
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Acorns Fall
- Love/Respect Call
Tourbus playlist :
Metal again... seems like Cult Of Luna has hit the playlist for good :-) .. some more Sepultura a bit of Seigmen and then some
Late Night Venture - Carousel ( Live From Steinbruch in Duisburg )
Late Night Venture - Carousel .. Live from Steinbruch in Duisburg
-- Very soon i will post a whole lot of pictures here but just need to get a bit better net connection for that.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Europe Ventures part 1
Monday - 26.05.2008
After a well relaxed weekend together with Utopium, having some good food and in general getting ready for the tour, for example by panicking over a lost Fender Amp, that we forgot after the gig at Studenterhuset last friday, we took off in good shape monday morning towards Witten.
Previous plans about bringing a PA system acoustic guitars, extra amps and other nice additional gear was pretty fast neglected due to a not so big bus for the tour. Since we are 7 touring (5 Late nighters, a sound engineer and a healthcare manager) all carrying luggage as well.
We arrived fine at Witten pretty much on time, discovering that the place was huge, but the actual room and stage of the place we were going to play was not the biggest, but very sufficient.
It was a bit slow night, not so many audience but nonetheles we still managed to sell a good stack of CD's.
Setlist of the night:
- Silent Carriers
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Skylights
- Acorns Fall
- Carousel
- Love/Respect Call
- Ready For The Knife
Tourbus playlist:
- Lali Puna, Notwist, People Press Play, Faithless, Björk, Flaming Lips, Snowden, The Postal Service, Manual, dEUS, Duran Duran, DJ Shadow, Mice Parade ...
Tuesday - 27.05.2008
Next day, I woke up early as I usually do and had the pleasure of one cold shower at the nice peoples apartment that we lend after the Witten show.
I just went for a stroll in the city of Dortmund while waiting for the other guys to wake up. Later it turned out I just had been unlucky with the icy temperature in the bath, since this didnt seem to be an issue for the rest of the guys. Well it woke me up pretty good.
Dortmund -> Leipzig is quite a trip so we head off pretty early with me behind the wheels since I was pretty well rested and the closer we got to Leipzig the more the celsius arised outside, making it pretty obvious why its a good idea to have aircondition in your bus. Something that we hadn't thought about, so we went for the more old-school airconidition called windows which noised things up a lot and had the small side effect of the drivers feeling like driving in a tumbledryer.
Nonetheless the spirits were high, Leipzig is a beautiful city and has a good cultural scene and generally a lot of charm and last time we played in Leipzig at "Noch Besser Leben" it was extremely nice, so expcetations we're high.
This time it was at Cafe Mule. A very cool place with a small stage and room, but with loads and loads of atmosphere, placed in an old cotton factory. So definately a backing gear job with not that much to o for our sound engineer. The hospitality of Mule was excellent, an extremely good Chili, free bar, nice accomodation for almost all of us and a niceb breakfast the day after. Something I personally didnt need :-) .
The show was as those kind of shows often are: intimate and for us very very good. It seems like these kind of gigs always turns out great, and this night were in every way excellent. Just below here you can listen to one of the songs from the show, a new piece called Silent Carriers.
Setlist of the night:
- Lazy Star
- Silent Carriers
- Skylights
- Acorns Fall
- Carousel
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Love/Respect Cal
- Ready For The Knife
Tourbus playlist:
A whole lot of metal & post hardcore. Cult Of Luna, Sepultura, Tool, Raconteurs, Neurosis, Isis, This Will Destroy You, Cypress Hill.
Late Night Venture - Silent Carriers ( Live From Cafe Mule Leipzig )
Late Night Venture - Silent Carriers .. Live from Leipzig
Wednesday - 28.05.2008
Tuesday was one long day and everyone of us was pretty worn out and tired, so a small drive to Berlin was very welcome. The target of this night : Monkey Club is a small Berlin venue in a cellar and since we were in so good time on the day, we had time to spend in Berlin. It's not exactly the first time in Berlin for us, but the first time in this venue. The venue is one of those places where there is a volume restriction, saying you can not play over 95db.
It might be another discussion, but I personally don't understand why clubs that has such restrictions book rock bands. I mean the drums alone can easily go beyond 95DB.
It doesn't matter that much, but it does mean that we play some other songs than when in places with no restrictions like that. The setlist belows shows the more mellow and spacious set.
Setlist of the night:
- Lazy Star
- Carousel
- Skylights
- After
- Trapped In Glass
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Ready For The Knife
- Love/Respect Call
Tourbus playlist:
Very quiet, none music what so ever :-) .. tired from Leipzig..
After a well relaxed weekend together with Utopium, having some good food and in general getting ready for the tour, for example by panicking over a lost Fender Amp, that we forgot after the gig at Studenterhuset last friday, we took off in good shape monday morning towards Witten.
Previous plans about bringing a PA system acoustic guitars, extra amps and other nice additional gear was pretty fast neglected due to a not so big bus for the tour. Since we are 7 touring (5 Late nighters, a sound engineer and a healthcare manager) all carrying luggage as well.
We arrived fine at Witten pretty much on time, discovering that the place was huge, but the actual room and stage of the place we were going to play was not the biggest, but very sufficient.
It was a bit slow night, not so many audience but nonetheles we still managed to sell a good stack of CD's.
Setlist of the night:
- Silent Carriers
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Skylights
- Acorns Fall
- Carousel
- Love/Respect Call
- Ready For The Knife
Tourbus playlist:
- Lali Puna, Notwist, People Press Play, Faithless, Björk, Flaming Lips, Snowden, The Postal Service, Manual, dEUS, Duran Duran, DJ Shadow, Mice Parade ...
Tuesday - 27.05.2008
Next day, I woke up early as I usually do and had the pleasure of one cold shower at the nice peoples apartment that we lend after the Witten show.
I just went for a stroll in the city of Dortmund while waiting for the other guys to wake up. Later it turned out I just had been unlucky with the icy temperature in the bath, since this didnt seem to be an issue for the rest of the guys. Well it woke me up pretty good.
Dortmund -> Leipzig is quite a trip so we head off pretty early with me behind the wheels since I was pretty well rested and the closer we got to Leipzig the more the celsius arised outside, making it pretty obvious why its a good idea to have aircondition in your bus. Something that we hadn't thought about, so we went for the more old-school airconidition called windows which noised things up a lot and had the small side effect of the drivers feeling like driving in a tumbledryer.
Nonetheless the spirits were high, Leipzig is a beautiful city and has a good cultural scene and generally a lot of charm and last time we played in Leipzig at "Noch Besser Leben" it was extremely nice, so expcetations we're high.
This time it was at Cafe Mule. A very cool place with a small stage and room, but with loads and loads of atmosphere, placed in an old cotton factory. So definately a backing gear job with not that much to o for our sound engineer. The hospitality of Mule was excellent, an extremely good Chili, free bar, nice accomodation for almost all of us and a niceb breakfast the day after. Something I personally didnt need :-) .
The show was as those kind of shows often are: intimate and for us very very good. It seems like these kind of gigs always turns out great, and this night were in every way excellent. Just below here you can listen to one of the songs from the show, a new piece called Silent Carriers.
Setlist of the night:
- Lazy Star
- Silent Carriers
- Skylights
- Acorns Fall
- Carousel
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Love/Respect Cal
- Ready For The Knife
Tourbus playlist:
A whole lot of metal & post hardcore. Cult Of Luna, Sepultura, Tool, Raconteurs, Neurosis, Isis, This Will Destroy You, Cypress Hill.
Late Night Venture - Silent Carriers ( Live From Cafe Mule Leipzig )
Late Night Venture - Silent Carriers .. Live from Leipzig
Wednesday - 28.05.2008
Tuesday was one long day and everyone of us was pretty worn out and tired, so a small drive to Berlin was very welcome. The target of this night : Monkey Club is a small Berlin venue in a cellar and since we were in so good time on the day, we had time to spend in Berlin. It's not exactly the first time in Berlin for us, but the first time in this venue. The venue is one of those places where there is a volume restriction, saying you can not play over 95db.
It might be another discussion, but I personally don't understand why clubs that has such restrictions book rock bands. I mean the drums alone can easily go beyond 95DB.
It doesn't matter that much, but it does mean that we play some other songs than when in places with no restrictions like that. The setlist belows shows the more mellow and spacious set.
Setlist of the night:
- Lazy Star
- Carousel
- Skylights
- After
- Trapped In Glass
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Ready For The Knife
- Love/Respect Call
Tourbus playlist:
Very quiet, none music what so ever :-) .. tired from Leipzig..
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Europe tour
So this is it. We're now officially kicking off the Europa tour together with the french band Utopium.
I'm pretty sure it is going to be a nice and adventurous journey the next 14 days, bringing us through Germany, Netherlands, Luxembourg and France, starting off with the first show tomorrow in Witten and ending up in Paris. After that a very short intermezzo to recover before hitting the Czech republic.
I will post tales and media from the tour, whenever I get near a WIFI hotspot.
Below here you can see the tourplan
I'm pretty sure it is going to be a nice and adventurous journey the next 14 days, bringing us through Germany, Netherlands, Luxembourg and France, starting off with the first show tomorrow in Witten and ending up in Paris. After that a very short intermezzo to recover before hitting the Czech republic.
I will post tales and media from the tour, whenever I get near a WIFI hotspot.
Below here you can see the tourplan
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
A Quick Recommendation from abroad
I've just had the pleasure to go to San Francisco and I'm currently recovering from the jet-lag, trying to convert to the copenhagen timezone.I like San Francisco a lot and been there a couple of times, it's a city with lots of diversity and a very good cultural aspect spiced up with so different areas of residence blended with differences.
It's also a sad sign to see how society really is divided in the rich and the poor and the amount of homeless people is pretty scary and in my opinion shows a selfish and superficial policy.
One good thing about SF is the Haight District. The district that evolved as a hippie society in the late 60's early 70's. The district still have that "feel" to it, and this is the place to go if you wanna grab that rare 12" you've been looking for. So, as the music addict I am I went there again to visit the Amoeba Records store. This is a quite big store that really has everything in new and used records. So this is a recommendation if you ever get around San Francisco, you should go visit the Haight District and definately take some hours off in the Amoeba store.
I went out of the store with loads of nice records I've had a hard time finding, including some Album Leaf, Yo La Tengo, Múm, God is an Astronaut, Manual, Jason Collett and loads of others.
Amoeba records is not only CD's, you can also catch the indie bands live on stage from time to time.
But Haight is more than just records, its also the place for independent book stores, vintage clothing, psychedelic curiosity stores and cool cafe's.
Here is a map showing you directions :
Amoeba Music: Vintage New Concert Posters-Buy & Sell
1855 Haight St, San Francisco, CA
(415) 831-1200
Link: Amoeba Records
Monday, April 21, 2008
A Couple Of Words From The Cold South
Well - "south" - is maybe a bit of an exageration, but it was south of the danish border, when I was on a short germany club tour with the band Late Night Venture last thursday and friday.
I thought i'd just put a couple of words and launch some pictures from the tour.
By now, we have played quite a lot of shows here and there in all sorts of venues in denmark as well as in other countries such as Sweden, UK, Finland and off course also Germany, and this time it was the time of playing small clubs : Astra Stube in Hamburg and Intersoup in Berlin.
It seems like everytime we go to germany it always ends up in ourselves having a really good time, which is due to a very enthusiastic audience, venues that cares about making everything work as best as possible, and then just good vibrations.
This time was no different, than the other times, making both shows a very nice experience.
17.04.2008 - Astra Stube - Hamburg
First show was at the small club Astra Stube in Hamburg, a really cool and pretty smashed place, just like we like it. We've played there before, but this time, they had improved the place, making a bigger stage and some better monitoring gear, so we could actually fit on the stage this time (last time both Peter and myself had to stand on the floor instead of the stage) .
One could think that these small places are not good for our pretty broad sound, but it really doesn't matter, in fact we feel quite comfortable at these small venues. It feels a bit more like the rehearsal space and it's very nice to be so close to audience, and that night there was a lot of dedicated listeners in the audience, making it even better to play the songs.
These things all added up to a good atmosphere which kind of developed into a party afterwards, being able to talk with a lot of the locals and just have a good time, drinking all the Astra's in the Stube.
Hospitality is not an issue in Hamburg, so we had a good sleep, and on the day after, the arrangers had us out for brunch, before we were off to Berlin.
Astra Stube is definately a good place to stop by when touring in Germany, and we will be back there for sure, just not on our forthcoming Europe tour, because its too close.
The Setlist of this night was:
Berlin is definately a nice city, I've been there lots of times by now, mostly when playing concerts but also at other occasions and one thing that Berlin has a lot of, is those combo places, where they have a bar, some cafe stuff and then also a small club for live music, all packed into a former resident area and typically with very mixed interior, made out of old 70's furniture, antique looking divans, colored carpets and in general a lights design that makes the places very cozy.
Intersoup is one of those places. In general, it's a bar, it's an asian eating place, and has a club where we would set up and play a show.
I must admit that I had bit crisis, when discovering that the PA system in this place, was really really, and I mean really small, the smallest PA speakers I think I've seen, not really suitable for a full blown rock band, which we are.
So there definately some sound issues with Vocals and Keyboards, but we tried to get the best out of it, and tweaked it to its max output. Nonetheless not optimal, but still the show ended up being one of those connecting experiences, where the audience is really with you and we had the same show as in Astra Stube, but had to put in one more encore.
As in Hamburg, there was quite a good mood and everything ended up in a nice party afterwards, until we had to depart with the gear. Luckily had some extra hands to carry for us this time. Thanks André .
Before we played the show, we we're fed by the intersoup kitchen, and that was really something. I enjoy "Dim Sum" a lot, and the "Dim Sum" they made here was so excellent, I don't think I've had better Dim Sum since a time in Chinatown, San Fransisco. I lived long on those Dim Sum :-)
Below here I've posted a couple of pictures to give you an idea of the setting, it was very cozy and atmospheric club in my opinion. To see all the pictures go to our Flickr here
The Set list of the night was the same as Astra Stube, but with a 2nd encore, where we played Condition Lost.
19.04.2008 - Home
After this short tour, we had to pack up and get back on the road, nothing exciting about that. Just a short pit-stop 30km's from Rostock made us pretty nervous.
The tour bus broke down, and just wouldnt start. Time was running, the ferry probably wouldn't wait on us !
After half an hour of boxing with the bus, calling the rental company, having a german tank-stop guy helping us, we finally got it running, and actually made the ferry.
But this just ends up in one more experience that we should add to the list of what to do when you tour.
Two major things to remember next time.
As with most older bus'es you don't get a CD player in it, and even though our friendly healthcare manager and driver had brought along his cassette IPOD converter, it didn't really work, so we didn't get to listen to much music on this tour, but the Macbook Pro was nonetheless playing :
I thought i'd just put a couple of words and launch some pictures from the tour.
By now, we have played quite a lot of shows here and there in all sorts of venues in denmark as well as in other countries such as Sweden, UK, Finland and off course also Germany, and this time it was the time of playing small clubs : Astra Stube in Hamburg and Intersoup in Berlin.
It seems like everytime we go to germany it always ends up in ourselves having a really good time, which is due to a very enthusiastic audience, venues that cares about making everything work as best as possible, and then just good vibrations.
This time was no different, than the other times, making both shows a very nice experience.
17.04.2008 - Astra Stube - Hamburg
First show was at the small club Astra Stube in Hamburg, a really cool and pretty smashed place, just like we like it. We've played there before, but this time, they had improved the place, making a bigger stage and some better monitoring gear, so we could actually fit on the stage this time (last time both Peter and myself had to stand on the floor instead of the stage) .
One could think that these small places are not good for our pretty broad sound, but it really doesn't matter, in fact we feel quite comfortable at these small venues. It feels a bit more like the rehearsal space and it's very nice to be so close to audience, and that night there was a lot of dedicated listeners in the audience, making it even better to play the songs.
These things all added up to a good atmosphere which kind of developed into a party afterwards, being able to talk with a lot of the locals and just have a good time, drinking all the Astra's in the Stube.
Hospitality is not an issue in Hamburg, so we had a good sleep, and on the day after, the arrangers had us out for brunch, before we were off to Berlin.
Astra Stube is definately a good place to stop by when touring in Germany, and we will be back there for sure, just not on our forthcoming Europe tour, because its too close.
The Setlist of this night was:
- Lazy Star
- Love/Respect Call
- Ready For The Knife
- End Of I
- Sidekick Trip To Mars
- Trapped In Glass
- Skylights
- After
- Acorns Fall
- Encore : Silent Carriers
Berlin is definately a nice city, I've been there lots of times by now, mostly when playing concerts but also at other occasions and one thing that Berlin has a lot of, is those combo places, where they have a bar, some cafe stuff and then also a small club for live music, all packed into a former resident area and typically with very mixed interior, made out of old 70's furniture, antique looking divans, colored carpets and in general a lights design that makes the places very cozy.
Intersoup is one of those places. In general, it's a bar, it's an asian eating place, and has a club where we would set up and play a show.
I must admit that I had bit crisis, when discovering that the PA system in this place, was really really, and I mean really small, the smallest PA speakers I think I've seen, not really suitable for a full blown rock band, which we are.
So there definately some sound issues with Vocals and Keyboards, but we tried to get the best out of it, and tweaked it to its max output. Nonetheless not optimal, but still the show ended up being one of those connecting experiences, where the audience is really with you and we had the same show as in Astra Stube, but had to put in one more encore.
As in Hamburg, there was quite a good mood and everything ended up in a nice party afterwards, until we had to depart with the gear. Luckily had some extra hands to carry for us this time. Thanks André .
Before we played the show, we we're fed by the intersoup kitchen, and that was really something. I enjoy "Dim Sum" a lot, and the "Dim Sum" they made here was so excellent, I don't think I've had better Dim Sum since a time in Chinatown, San Fransisco. I lived long on those Dim Sum :-)
Below here I've posted a couple of pictures to give you an idea of the setting, it was very cozy and atmospheric club in my opinion. To see all the pictures go to our Flickr here
The Set list of the night was the same as Astra Stube, but with a 2nd encore, where we played Condition Lost.
19.04.2008 - Home
After this short tour, we had to pack up and get back on the road, nothing exciting about that. Just a short pit-stop 30km's from Rostock made us pretty nervous.
The tour bus broke down, and just wouldnt start. Time was running, the ferry probably wouldn't wait on us !
After half an hour of boxing with the bus, calling the rental company, having a german tank-stop guy helping us, we finally got it running, and actually made the ferry.
But this just ends up in one more experience that we should add to the list of what to do when you tour.
Two major things to remember next time.
- Always have your own PA along, you never know what's in the place (this is mainly for the small places, bigger venues always have decent gear)
- Always rent a "newer" bus, we've recently had 3 busses breaking down on us, last time in germany we had two breakdowns before we even left denmark.
- 29.04.2008 : Loppen, Copenhagen. Playing a show with "This Will Destroy You" from U.S. I'm looking forward to that, I really enjoy This Will Destroy You.
As with most older bus'es you don't get a CD player in it, and even though our friendly healthcare manager and driver had brought along his cassette IPOD converter, it didn't really work, so we didn't get to listen to much music on this tour, but the Macbook Pro was nonetheless playing :
- This Will Destroy You
- Snowden
- Dinosaur Jr
- Sonic Youth
- Kyte
- DJ Shadow
- The Cult
- Cult Of Luna
- Afghan Whigs
- Charlotte Gainsbourgh
- Band Of Horses
- Blue Foundation
- Mice Parade
- Manual
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Blondes vs. Twins
Once again I've had the opportunity to go to two shows near eachother, with two completely different bands. First of all I went to the highly expected "Blonde Redhead" show at Pumpehuset last Thursday and then Yesterday to another show filled with expectations, namely "The Gutter Twins". Let me just try to tell a bit what I think, and maybe spice it with a bit of background.
BLONDE REDHEAD
First show was a show with the NY act Blonde Redhead. A band that I have enjoyed a lot on record. Specially their two last albums:
Arrived at the scene just 20 minutes before show start and got a good spot up front, to see the music up close.
I had thought a bit about how they would pull their sound off, when playing live. Specially on the new album "23" there's lots of layers, double vocals, many guitars, samples and all that.
So it wasnt a surprise for me to see that one of the musicians in the show was in fact a sampler/sequencer that could help them out in the passages where layering was needed.
After all, they are only 3 persons in the band (essentially bass, guitar, drums.. Sometimes guitar, guitar, drums and sometimes piano, guitar, drums).
The show started off really good. The 1 girl and the 2 guys had lots of nerve and looked like they wanted to play, but as the show progressed I was kind of surprised how much of the "Live" concert actually was playback or to put it nicely "sequenced"... All sorts of stuff was sequenced.
I'm used to hear drums, some percussion, some samples, some keys sequenced here and there, but one thing that is not sequenced that often is vocals. There were heavy use of vocal sequencing here, to back it all up.
So what's the point in playing live when you just "playback". Well it's not entirely playback, they did play guitar, bass, nord, drums, vocals and the bottom line is that even though, I did have the feeling "Come on, bring some musicians then" I was really entertained and loved the songs they played and in the end had the feeling "Please play more".
So I guess even though it felt a bit like they cheated I think it was a good show, cause they played a lot of songs from the two latest album which is the sound of Blonde Redhead i prefer.
That said, I think it would be more cool if they actually played some more stuff themselves, for example by adding 1 or 2 extra musicians for the live thing. Maybe I'm old-school, but just think that live should be more "live".
Try take a look at this video for "23"
And then this Live version of "23"
What do you think ? I guess I think both are great :-) so what if there's some excessive sequencing :-)
Then take a look at this
Messenger - Live (from Misery is a butterfly album, a really great song)
THE GUTTER TWINS
The Gutter Twins has quite a history behind them even though - by name - it's a new band.
Essentially as I see it (and there will probably be people disagreeing :-) ), The Gutter Twins is a band that is existing around frontmand: Greg Dulli that essentially has made the band out of his other band The Twilight Singers which essentially was made out of the band Afghan Whigs. Greg Dulli is the engine, he's the one that writes the songs, there really is a red thread all the way from 1991 Afghan Whigs debut : Up In It up til the recent release of The Gutter Twins : Saturnalia.
Fact is, that even though - in my opinion - The Gutter Twins, Twilight Singers and Afghan Whigs is painted by Greg Dulli - it's really just as much the presence of Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, Queens Of The Stone Age) that makes up the image of The Gutter Twins.
It just have to be no secret that I've never really been into neither Screaming Trees or QOTSA. I do think Mark has a fabulous voice, but never found the music that interesting.
This is quite opposite to my addiction to Afghan Whigs and Twilight Singers.
What Afghan Whigs had back in 1991 was the sound of the black sheep of grunge. There was all those Mudhoney, Tad, Nirvana, Soundgarden etc.. all evolving around rock as basic ingredient, then fuzzed and punked up.
This is where Afghan Whigs really were the originals and the outsiders, cause they took way more inspiration in Soul music. An inspiritation that evolved a lot on the excellent Afghan Whigs records released from time to time. For every record put out there, everything became even more soul oriented, but still with the rock, punk, grunge flavour of noisy guitars and off course Greg Dulli's intense voice.
To just give you an idea what I'm talking about, try looking at these to Tubes :
My Curse - Live Bootleg ( This is a very good example of the soul sound, where even Greg Dulli had to back out and let a woman sing it instead, a cool song )
My Enemy - Live Bootleg
It was a hard pill to swallow when they broke, but when Dulli arrived with The Twilight Singers it was pure relief. A new sound more mellow, even more electronic and quiet was found on the debut album of The Twilight Singers.
Here's one by Twilight Singers.
King Only - Live Bootleg (from their first album)
From there it went more traditional again, with rock as basic ingredient, and leaving the soul a bit behind. A couple of nice records, some songs with Mark Lanegan, and now ended up in Saturnalia. To me, that album sounds as a natural addition to The Twilight Singers repertoire, with Lanegan added off course. But that's not so weird, cause Lanegan was almost full member of Twilight Singers in the late days.
It' a long journey from the first times I saw Afghan Whigs live at different venues in Copenhagen, till now where I was going to see them live at Vega at exactly the same stage where I saw Afghan Whigs on their 1965 tour. That show was epic, with an alive Greg Dulli that really knew how to entertain. So with that as unreasonable expectation Peter (the drummer from LNV) and myself went off to see the show.
The show was the first after a short break in The Gutter Twins tour, due to Greg Dulli had to visit the hospital because he had a "Hypothermia" incident :-) . So I guess it might have been due to that, they had a somewhat slow start, that seemed a bit vague, not really putting any charisma outside of the stage.
But as the show progressed, Dulli, kind of woke up, and started doing what he is good at: Entertaining. And that he did. Dulli is good at getting people going, and he did put his voice out to the brim that night.
As for communication, it also seemed like there was a good chemistry between exactly Dulli and the rest of the band. But there was almost non-existing communication between Dulli and Lanegan. I found that kind of weird. But maybe it's the Lanegan style. Lanegan did not move one inch from the show started till it ended, and the only words he spoke was introducing Greg Dulli. I guess his style is, being a crooner, put both hands on the mike stand, close his eyes and sing, that was pretty much what he did.
He did sing very very good, and specially when the two: Dulli+Lanegan sang together it lifted the roof, what a good mix. Lanegans deep voice and then Dulli's raw and more high pitch voice on top. Excellent.
But where Dulli entertained and had communication both with the band and the audience, Lanegan was more a statue. It didnt mean so much to me, cause Dulli worked on it instead, but a bit more contact wouldnt kill him.
The Gutter Twins delivered a good show, had really good sound, used a bit of sequencer :-) but played the thing LIVE! . as opposed to Blonde Redhead.
Take a look at this Live Bootleg, it's pretty much as it was yesterday.
All Misery/Flowers (One of my favourites from the Saturnalia album)
VERDICT
I know this is really hard to decide upon, two shows with pretty different bands, with very different backgrounds. Which was best ?? . This is really hard to decide upon, but in the end i think I actually enjoyed the Blonde Redhead show the most. Yeah they sequenced themselves through the show, but two factors is making it win the "competition". For one i think they were better on stage doing what they do, than the whole of Gutter Twins were. Gutter Twins we're pretty much Greg Dulli, and you didn't really notice the rest.
The other factor is that I just like Blonde Redheads music better than Gutter Twins, making it a bit unfair off course. In the end, two fine shows, none of them to the skies, but worth the money.
Resources : The Afghan Whigs, The Gutter Twins, Queens Of The Stone Age, Screaming Trees, Twilight Singers , Blonde Redhead
BLONDE REDHEAD
First show was a show with the NY act Blonde Redhead. A band that I have enjoyed a lot on record. Specially their two last albums:- Misery is a butterfly, which is a beautiful masterpiece, very artistic and minimalistic, filled with excellent compositions that you cannot really can't find a match for. In my opinion a very unique sound.
- 23. A more "traditional" album, that lends a whole lot from the shoegaze scene. I've already mentioned this earlier in my post further down about "Reinvention of Shoegaze". I love this album as well, specially the opening song which is as taken and delivered as a direct follow up to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless.
Arrived at the scene just 20 minutes before show start and got a good spot up front, to see the music up close.
I had thought a bit about how they would pull their sound off, when playing live. Specially on the new album "23" there's lots of layers, double vocals, many guitars, samples and all that.
So it wasnt a surprise for me to see that one of the musicians in the show was in fact a sampler/sequencer that could help them out in the passages where layering was needed.
After all, they are only 3 persons in the band (essentially bass, guitar, drums.. Sometimes guitar, guitar, drums and sometimes piano, guitar, drums).
The show started off really good. The 1 girl and the 2 guys had lots of nerve and looked like they wanted to play, but as the show progressed I was kind of surprised how much of the "Live" concert actually was playback or to put it nicely "sequenced"... All sorts of stuff was sequenced.
I'm used to hear drums, some percussion, some samples, some keys sequenced here and there, but one thing that is not sequenced that often is vocals. There were heavy use of vocal sequencing here, to back it all up.
So what's the point in playing live when you just "playback". Well it's not entirely playback, they did play guitar, bass, nord, drums, vocals and the bottom line is that even though, I did have the feeling "Come on, bring some musicians then" I was really entertained and loved the songs they played and in the end had the feeling "Please play more".
So I guess even though it felt a bit like they cheated I think it was a good show, cause they played a lot of songs from the two latest album which is the sound of Blonde Redhead i prefer.
That said, I think it would be more cool if they actually played some more stuff themselves, for example by adding 1 or 2 extra musicians for the live thing. Maybe I'm old-school, but just think that live should be more "live".
Try take a look at this video for "23"
And then this Live version of "23"
What do you think ? I guess I think both are great :-) so what if there's some excessive sequencing :-)
Then take a look at this
Messenger - Live (from Misery is a butterfly album, a really great song)
THE GUTTER TWINS
The Gutter Twins has quite a history behind them even though - by name - it's a new band.Essentially as I see it (and there will probably be people disagreeing :-) ), The Gutter Twins is a band that is existing around frontmand: Greg Dulli that essentially has made the band out of his other band The Twilight Singers which essentially was made out of the band Afghan Whigs. Greg Dulli is the engine, he's the one that writes the songs, there really is a red thread all the way from 1991 Afghan Whigs debut : Up In It up til the recent release of The Gutter Twins : Saturnalia.
Fact is, that even though - in my opinion - The Gutter Twins, Twilight Singers and Afghan Whigs is painted by Greg Dulli - it's really just as much the presence of Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, Queens Of The Stone Age) that makes up the image of The Gutter Twins.
It just have to be no secret that I've never really been into neither Screaming Trees or QOTSA. I do think Mark has a fabulous voice, but never found the music that interesting.
This is quite opposite to my addiction to Afghan Whigs and Twilight Singers.
What Afghan Whigs had back in 1991 was the sound of the black sheep of grunge. There was all those Mudhoney, Tad, Nirvana, Soundgarden etc.. all evolving around rock as basic ingredient, then fuzzed and punked up.
This is where Afghan Whigs really were the originals and the outsiders, cause they took way more inspiration in Soul music. An inspiritation that evolved a lot on the excellent Afghan Whigs records released from time to time. For every record put out there, everything became even more soul oriented, but still with the rock, punk, grunge flavour of noisy guitars and off course Greg Dulli's intense voice.
To just give you an idea what I'm talking about, try looking at these to Tubes :
My Curse - Live Bootleg ( This is a very good example of the soul sound, where even Greg Dulli had to back out and let a woman sing it instead, a cool song )
My Enemy - Live Bootleg
It was a hard pill to swallow when they broke, but when Dulli arrived with The Twilight Singers it was pure relief. A new sound more mellow, even more electronic and quiet was found on the debut album of The Twilight Singers.
Here's one by Twilight Singers.
King Only - Live Bootleg (from their first album)
From there it went more traditional again, with rock as basic ingredient, and leaving the soul a bit behind. A couple of nice records, some songs with Mark Lanegan, and now ended up in Saturnalia. To me, that album sounds as a natural addition to The Twilight Singers repertoire, with Lanegan added off course. But that's not so weird, cause Lanegan was almost full member of Twilight Singers in the late days.
It' a long journey from the first times I saw Afghan Whigs live at different venues in Copenhagen, till now where I was going to see them live at Vega at exactly the same stage where I saw Afghan Whigs on their 1965 tour. That show was epic, with an alive Greg Dulli that really knew how to entertain. So with that as unreasonable expectation Peter (the drummer from LNV) and myself went off to see the show.
The show was the first after a short break in The Gutter Twins tour, due to Greg Dulli had to visit the hospital because he had a "Hypothermia" incident :-) . So I guess it might have been due to that, they had a somewhat slow start, that seemed a bit vague, not really putting any charisma outside of the stage.
But as the show progressed, Dulli, kind of woke up, and started doing what he is good at: Entertaining. And that he did. Dulli is good at getting people going, and he did put his voice out to the brim that night.
As for communication, it also seemed like there was a good chemistry between exactly Dulli and the rest of the band. But there was almost non-existing communication between Dulli and Lanegan. I found that kind of weird. But maybe it's the Lanegan style. Lanegan did not move one inch from the show started till it ended, and the only words he spoke was introducing Greg Dulli. I guess his style is, being a crooner, put both hands on the mike stand, close his eyes and sing, that was pretty much what he did.
He did sing very very good, and specially when the two: Dulli+Lanegan sang together it lifted the roof, what a good mix. Lanegans deep voice and then Dulli's raw and more high pitch voice on top. Excellent.
But where Dulli entertained and had communication both with the band and the audience, Lanegan was more a statue. It didnt mean so much to me, cause Dulli worked on it instead, but a bit more contact wouldnt kill him.
The Gutter Twins delivered a good show, had really good sound, used a bit of sequencer :-) but played the thing LIVE! . as opposed to Blonde Redhead.
Take a look at this Live Bootleg, it's pretty much as it was yesterday.
All Misery/Flowers (One of my favourites from the Saturnalia album)
VERDICT
I know this is really hard to decide upon, two shows with pretty different bands, with very different backgrounds. Which was best ?? . This is really hard to decide upon, but in the end i think I actually enjoyed the Blonde Redhead show the most. Yeah they sequenced themselves through the show, but two factors is making it win the "competition". For one i think they were better on stage doing what they do, than the whole of Gutter Twins were. Gutter Twins we're pretty much Greg Dulli, and you didn't really notice the rest.
The other factor is that I just like Blonde Redheads music better than Gutter Twins, making it a bit unfair off course. In the end, two fine shows, none of them to the skies, but worth the money.
Resources : The Afghan Whigs, The Gutter Twins, Queens Of The Stone Age, Screaming Trees, Twilight Singers , Blonde Redhead
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
The Mountain Came To Us
So yesterday evening was the night where I got the pleasure to see the canadian symphonic ensemble Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band.A band once a side project of the massive post-rock act Godspeed You Black Emperor.
The Memorial Orchestra defines itself in making long symphonic and dark voyages beyond what is normally done in neither post-rock or indie as such. It's sort of psychedelica meets orchestra.
One of the strengths of TSMZ&TLLB is that they use a lot of vocal harmonies. Everyone in the band, counting all 7 of them, has a microphone and everyone uses it from time to time.
Nevertheless there's a feel of Efrim being their "lead singer" (even though he doesn't see himself as such) and the rest is just in for support, but they actually do a very fine job making harmonies and beautiful moments that makes the songs very fulfilled and does make it feel like a whole experience.
So last night I got to see them once again. Last time was a couple of years ago and at the exact same venue.
This time they did the show exactly as last time, standing in a half circle fronting each other.
I kind of like that, it shows a band being in focus on playing together as a whole and not as a band of individual presence and performance persons.
Yesterday evening this felt very fine as well.
So the only difference from last time was the songs they played, else it was pretty much the same experience.
The experience of drifting away to their long repetetive escapades that evolves and diminishes in & out of everything and nothingness, quite effective & quite spellbinding.
The fact that the band also seems very relaxed, down to earth, and had a good sense of humour, talking about everything from losing their gear in london, making Ian the guitar player forced to play a shitty epiphone guitar that he leased, all the way over to the fact that the internet is made of dead people, that essentially is diamonds that also is used for blood transfusions, gave just another view of a relaxed and humoristic band.
Silver Mt. Zion is an interesting band and I definately prefer to see them live rather than listen to their albums, but that's a taste thing i guess. Nonetheless i will encourage to go to this YouTube video and just see a nice clip, what they're all about (sadly i can't embed it).
THEE SILVER MOUNT ZION ORCHESTRA & TRA-LA-LA BAND @ YOUTUBE
And just take a look at this live bootleg video, a song they also played yesterday.
Last off, here's also the song they opened the show with : 1.000.000 Died to made this sound :
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Late Night Discoveries
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.
Listen to a song from their album "55:12" here :
Gregor Samsa - Young & Old
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.
The Besnard Lakes
Next up is Toronto based The Besnard Lakes.
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"
And a more "regular" video : For Agent 13
This is the essence of The Besnard Lakes.
Our Broken Garden
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" :
Our Broken Garden - When Your Blackening Shows
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.
Listen to a song from their album "55:12" here :
Gregor Samsa - Young & Old
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.
The Besnard Lakes
Next up is Toronto based The Besnard Lakes.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"
And a more "regular" video : For Agent 13
This is the essence of The Besnard Lakes.
Our Broken Garden
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" :
Our Broken Garden - When Your Blackening Shows
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The reinvention of shoegaze
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.
Below is a song from his last album.
Ulrich Schnauss – Look At The Sky (Rob McVey)
RUMSKIB
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.
Rumskib – Dreampoppers
SOUNDPOOL
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.
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.
Below is a song from his last album.
Ulrich Schnauss – Look At The Sky (Rob McVey)
RUMSKIB
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.
Rumskib – Dreampoppers
SOUNDPOOL
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.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Foundation vs. Sharks
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.
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 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.
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