It is not often that instrumental music has a lasting appeal for me. This has something to do with how I see vocals as an integral part of music. I admit though that good instrumentation can cover up for bad vocals more so than the opposite. However I would like to say that the music benefits from having both sides integrated. Unfortunately a lot of instrumental songs I have come across tend to last eons, unable to find a fitting ending, continuing this uninspiring endless journey in one sitting. The melodies don’t seem to have many exciting layers and easily fall into repetition without the aid of a vocal range.
The instrumental composers that I find interesting have been film/video-game related which isn’t something I usually listen to outside the visual/engaging experiences. However, now I have finally found an independent artist that is instrumental, and seems to hit the right notes with me – while keeping the music interesting until the end.
The Tallest Man on Earth, otherwise known as Kristian Matsson, is a fantastic Swedish folk musician. He’s already released a selftitled 5-track EP, a beautiful full-length album by the name Shallow Graves as well as touring with Bon Iver.
To say we’re impressed with Matsson’s debut album is a massive understatement. He made one of the best folk albums I’ve heard to this date.
Suffice to say, we’ve been looking forward to a follow-up for quite some time, and we’ll probably end up fighting a while over who of us should get to review it.
The Swedish indie pop band Heart-Sick Groans have, with the help of a bunch of students from a Danish drawing academy, made a really cool music video for their song “Three Day Blow,” which will be featured on their upcoming EP Gentlemen, If you aint right, get right.
The video has a very DIY-feel over it and is downright charming, though I must say that the faces of the paper dolls kind of creep me out. Well, take a look yourself. The video is cool and the song is nice and catchy.
Throughout your life there are certain albums and musicians that really strike you as different, special, otherworldly even. They mold and shape you and at the most extreme they might make you reconsider your whole way of life. The albums I’m featuring in this series of articles are the ones that did something like that to me, or at least the most prominent ones.
Being a non-religious person, these albums are probably the closest thing to a religion in my life. Some believe in God, some believe in Buddha, some even believe L. Ron Hubbard. I Believe in Magnus Moriarty™.
Now We’ve Got Members, concidered to be the flagship of the small Oslo-based CD/CD-R label, Metronomicon Audio, are celebrating ten years as a band by playing through big parts of their catalogue, starting at the beginning, before they’ll release a new album titled Repulsive Force sometime this fall.
In the beginning, the band didn’t have any members at all. Today, the band has ten members, and in some live situations they’re augmented by additional musicians, forming an ensemble of as many as fifteen members. They describe their music as a mixture of musical styles from near and distant hemispheres, all relative to which hemisphere the listener might be situated. The sound has elements of both balkan folk music and arabian funk, as well as progressive rock (without the rock), disco (without the mirrorballs) and free jazz (without the jazz) and it’s all neatly merged together in their complex yet hummable pop tunes.
Klak Tik comes from the Faroe Islands, which is quite a unique place. For those who don’t know, it’s an island group located between Scotland and Iceland. Even to this day it’s still part of the kingdom of Denmark. People might be familiar with the folk artist Teitur who is also native to the islands.