ARP video interview for Bomb Magazine
October 31, 2010Comments Off
BOMBsessions: ARP from BOMB Magazine on Vimeo.
Lindstrøm & Christabelle: Real Life Is No Cool (out now)
October 29, 2010Comments Off
After the release of Lindstrøm’s critically acclaimed solo album Where You Go I Go Too, in 2008 and 2009`s collaborative album with Prins Thomas, II, Norway’s maestro of disco returns once again. This time he teams up with sultry vocalist Christabelle, to bring us Real Life Is No Cool, an edgy pop album of structured chaos and hypnotic beats.
Hans-Peter Lindstrøm actually began work on Real Life Is No Cool before Where You Go I Go Too, it just so happened WYGIGT was finished first. It was his work on this new album, containing 10 short pop songs with vocals, which became the impetus behind creating the epic and colossal masterpiece, WYGIGT (with only 3 long tracks and a opening track clocking in at 28 minutes). Essentially, WYGIGT was a kind of reaction to his work on Real Life Is No Cool. When WYGIGT began making waves around the world, Lindstrøm went back into his studio to complete Real Life Is No Cool.
Christabelle (also known as Solale to Lindstrøm followers) has been working on and off with Lindstrøm since 2001. Their relationship began when she immediately fell in love with his sound after hearing her brother Dennis (a friend of Lindstrøm) play some of his tracks at home. Upon listening, she proceeded to lay down vocals on some of his tracks, and her brother then delivered them to Lindstrøm. His first impression was, “Wow! This sounds totally fresh, wild and quirky”. A meeting was set up and the two found a common ground. ”We found out that we shared many of the same musical references, such as Motown, Grace Jones, 80s soul, Vanity 6, etc.” says Lindstrøm. “We even tried to make a cover of Zapp`s ‘Computer Love’. This meeting led to a collaboration resulting in two 12”s — 2003’s “Music In My Mind” and 2005’s “Let’s Practice” (then under the name Lindstrøm and Solale). They never planned on making an album together, but the collaboration slowly evolved into a collection of songs that ended up becoming Real Life Is No Cool. (The title is a line taken from the album track ‘Keep It Up’ — a track about violent relationships.)
Christabelle, whose full name is Christabelle Silje Isabelle Birgitta Sandoo, was born in 1981 to a Norwegian mother and a father from Mauritius (an island in the Indian ocean) in Oslo, Norway. Her father is a musician and music teacher, her mother a vocalist, and her brother a drummer. “All my life I have been surrounded by music, musicians, and instruments, so it was kind of obvious that I would also make music”. She started working with some of the best producers in Norway, but got off to on the wrong foot as she soon rebelled against their slick sound and attitude. As she said, “There was simply no room for going crazy and having fun, and I didn’t want to sell my nomad soul”. One of the things that attracted Lindstrøm was this rebellion against being “produced”. He would just let Christabelle do what she was inspired to do – she found room for improvisation and was able to let herself loose working with him. She created most of the lyrics on the spot, while the two were jamming, and recorded half of the tracks’ vocals at home and on her own, using a simple Shure SM55 “elvis”-mic, which gave her vocals an intimate and raw character. Lindstrøm would then edit and produce the jams later. Christabelle was not into the house music that Lindstrøm was into at the time, which forced him to think differently. The result was a more loose and improvised sound than what Lindstrøm had done before.
Lindstrøm calls their collaboration “structured chaos”, him being the structure and Christabelle bringing the chaos. This chaos is also very much a part of Christabelle`s personal life. She has always been a nomad — impulsive and restless, she’s a self-described “on-the-road girl”. She moved to London when she was 16, and, since then, has lived in Paris, Marseille, Mauritius, and Stockholm. She now lives in Oslo. She is, in many ways, the total opposite of Lindstrøm, who lives a quiet family life and makes disco nine to five, Monday to Friday, traveling to play one gig a month so that he can have time with his family.
Real Life Is No Cool is a meeting of these two different personalities.
Lindstrøm
October 29, 2010Comments Off
Lindstrøm MySpace
Raised on country and western music in the outskirts of the Norwegian oil town Stavanger, Lindstrom now lives in Oslo where he is making contemporary disco and running his Feedelity label. Claiming that “Hans-Peter Lindstrosm is closing in on Henrik Ibsen and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as being Norway’s poster boy of choice” (quoting an article on Piccadilly Records website) is obviously quite an overstatement, but nonetheless his original approach to dance music is currently causing quite a stir. Following a consistent flow of highly acclaimed EPs and remixes for names like Franz Ferdinand and LCD Soundsystem and The Juan Maclean, expectations were rocketing to the Lindstrom & Prins Thomas album, which also marks Eskimo Recordings long player debut. Judging from the press and record buyers alike, the album – which might be described as downbeat space disco with a singer/songwriter feel – more than lived up to its expectations. Whether it was that specialist dance music website or the broadsheet critic, they all seemed to pick up on the fact that these boys are not your average electronic music makers. (To avoid confusion: Lindstrom works both as a solo artist and in collaboration with Prins Thomas). Hans-Peter never listened to dance music growing up, and the first time he really listened to it, was a few years back figuring out how to make it. He prefers quiet nights in with his family, and Hans Peter never really goes clubbing unless he’s Lindstrom. As for artistic background, he used to play the piano in a gospel choir and the Hammond organ in a Deep Purple tribute band in his early twenties, before getting into Bob Dylan and folk/country music. Around 99′ he got all fed up with music, sold his instruments, and moved from Stavanger to study literature at the University of Oslo. As retirement often proves unbearable to music lovers, he soon found himself busking the main street of Oslo with his guitar. One thing led to the other: he bought a sampler, borrowed a few 12″s to study the structure of dance music, and had a go at it. It’s quite impossible to pinpoint the exact origins of his musical originality, although traces might be found in the aforementioned background. Coming from gospel choirs, country and rock bands without any knowledge of dance music whatsoever, he entered the scene rather freed from any preconceived notions of style and trend parameters. He hung on to the habit of making music by playing melodies on real instruments, and the fact that he plays all the instruments on his recordings – guitars, bass, keyboards, drums and percussion- enables him to make music inspired by whatever his influences are at the moment Last time we spoke to him he was mostly listening to 60s and 70s rock and pop, and he reckons that music from that era is much more interesting, both in terms of song writing and production values. His first success was the jazzy “Granada”, being championed by the likes of Giles Peterson and Francois Kevorkian and signed to numerous compilations. Wanting to take charge of his own career, he set up Feedelity Recordings – referring to the contrast between feedback and high fidelity – in 2003, and released “the untitled EP” which at first sold the massive amount of 150 copies. The track being included on the Chicken Lips DJ-Kicks compilation did the job though, and the recent club monster “I feel Space” shifting more than 17.000 twelve inches tells of a tale that went quite well in the end. Lindstrom today enjoys a cult-like status within dance music circles, and although the humble guy himself seems quite happy doing what he loves on an underground scale, it will be an interesting watch to see what the future holds for the Norwegian talent. (written by Marius Jøntvedt, may 2006)
Timo Kaukolampi of K-X-P interview/documentary
October 27, 2010Comments Off
Timo Kaukolampi – A Day in the Mouth from Sami Sänpäkkilä on Vimeo.
DJ Strangefruit (Mungolian Jetset) & Todd Terje on DJ tour in Japan this week
October 26, 2010Comments Off
Annie in Sex and the City 2
October 26, 2010Comments Off
Annie has the track Songs Remind Me Of You in Sex and the City 2
Diskjokke in Banksy’s Exit Through The Giftshop
October 26, 2010Comments Off
Diskjokke is on the soundtrack on the great Banksy film Exit Through The Giftshop. The film is out on DVD now.
Lindstrøm & Christabelle in Cadillac CTS-V
October 26, 2010Comments Off
Kim Hiorthøy
October 26, 2010Comments Off
Kim Hiorthøy MySpace
My Last Day is the second full-length album from Kim Hiorthøy since his critically acclaimed debut Hei from 2000. Since then he has also released the 2002 album Melke (a collection of remixes, 7 inches, rejected tracks and tracks for compilations), several 7 inches and 12 inches as well as his three EPs in 2004: Hopeness, Live Shet (a live recording) and For The Ladies (a limited edition collection of field recordings). Since his debut album he has also toured the USA, Europe and Japan several times, as well as a tour in China.
Extraordinarily talented and expressive, Kim Hiorthøy operates in many different fields in addition to music. As a graphic designer he is responsible for the Rune Grammofon artwork, as well as most of Smalltown Supersound’s artwork. He is also an artist (check out HYPERLINK “http://www.standardoslo.no” www.standardoslo.no for more information about his art) and a writer. Kim wrote the book Du kan ikke svikte din beste venn og bli god til å synge samtidig on Norwegian literary publisher Oktober Forlag. He has released a book of photography in Japan, a book of drawings, Alt Fins, and a design book, Tree Weekend on Die Gestalten Verlag in Germany. Additionally, Kim has illustrated several children’s books. Kim has worked in film as a photographer, having shot the acclaimed Norwegian movies “Kroppen Min” and “Ungdommens Raskap”, as a video director for the concert film “Supersilent7”, and as a filmmaker, having just debuted as a director/screenwriter with the Swedish/Norwegian co-production, ”Hur Man Gor”.
Kim Hiorthøy is based in both Berlin and Oslo, but has mostly lived in Berlin over the last couple of years. He has worked on My Last Day on and off throughout the last two years; most of it was recorded at his Berlin studio. Compared to Hei, My Last Day is less fragmented and more song based. It is also more melodic and complete, all with Kim’s characteristic sound. He often has an organic and folk-like tone to his music which XLR8R magazine recognized when they placed him in the forefront of the new electronic folk music movement with artists such as Herbert, Matmos and Four Tet. Kim Hiorthøy’s music draws influences from folk, jazz (his live sets these days are with free-jazz drum virtuoso Paal Nilssen-Love), lo-fi/leftfield electronics, acid, hip-hop, field recordings and samples. All his music is created on an MPC sampler, the original hip-hop instrument. The use of the MPC also makes Kim’s live performances much more physical than the often mundane laptop live sets in electronic music.
The music and everything else Kim Hiorthøy creates has his own unique and strong signature — that Kim Hiorthøy feeling, you might call it. On “My Last Day” Kim Hiorthøy continues to create great electronic pop music all in his distinct way and style, and all in his very own universe.
What they say:
“Gorgeous, all lush electronics and sparse beats.” (NME)
Hiorthoy has added another string to his bow with this exercise in lo-fi electronica”
(4/5, THE TIMES)
“An album so delicate it could almost fly away. Hold down your copy.” (NOVA)
“Perhaps the strongest reference point would be the Aphex Twin of I Care Because You Do, but unlike Richard James, Hiorthoy still sounds as though he gives a damn” (THE WIRE)
“Weird fun Scandinavian style – clean, convival and utterly wonderful” (MOJO)
“Reminiscent of Chicago post-rock, it marks the entrance of a really special talent” (WALLPAPER)
“This is definitely music of the future” (9/10, FUTURE MUSIC)
“An ambitious and at times breathtaking debut” (ESQUIRE)
“… hot property as a filmaker, photographer, fine artist and graphic designer. So his music is bound to be crap, right? Wrong!” (4,5 out of 5, DJ MAGAZINE)
“Esoteric debut album from Norwegian multi-media artist” (Q)
“Beautiful and highly recommended” (GROOVES)
“This Norwegian overachever is almost too clever for his own good. But still it`s comforting to know that someone out there is playing music box garage and harmonium house” (I-D)
“Hiorthoy`s talents don`t just cross artistic disciplines, they cross emotional boundaries as well” (NME)
“Delicate, ethereal yet breathtaking stuff” (4/5, UNCUT)
“A carefully assembled collage of delicate, at times beautifully haunting, organic, lo-fi weirdbeats and unsetteling edgy, crunchy electronica” (DJ MAGAZINE)
“Hiorthøy makes music with the charm and abandon of a Cy Twombly sketch and the realist attention to detail of Antonio Lupez Garcia`s oil on canvas” (RECORD COLLECTOR)
“Hiorthøy has a knack of injecting humanity, warmth and playfulness into his electronica –and that can`t be bad” (IDJ)
“… bewitching blend of twitchy, beats-driven electronica” (TIME OUT LONDON)
Toy
October 26, 2010Comments Off
Toy MySpace
“Prozac-flavoured glory” (BBC Radio 3) Toy is an electronic duo formed by UK composer Alisdair Stirling and producer Jorgen Traeen from Bergen, Norway. Toy’s playful tunes mix kids TV (Pingu, Radiophonic Workshop) and Japanese style electronica (YMO and Cornelius) with a touch of Scandinavian electro weirdness. They also manage to combine a flavour of incidental/elevator music with beats and grooves to create infectious pop. Stirling is behind the Bergen pop workshop/collective ‘House of Hiss’, working with Bergen producers The Sensible Twins (Hans Petter Gundersen and Kato Adland) which released ‘Holland Park/Sugar Shoop’ seven inch vinyl on New Records last year. Traeen is a well know producer who among others has produced Sondre Lerche, Magnet and Jaga Jazzist.He also has his own solo project Sir Dupermann on Smalltown Supersound. The band released ‘Rabbit Pushing Mower/Valley Cars’ as a vinyl seven inch on Telle Records described by the BBC as “an amusing cream puff of a tune”. Their second vinyl single ‘Sedan Through Tunnel/Decorama’ is about to be released on Smalltown Supersound.
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