The year goes by fast and we’re already in the middle of February, which means it’s time for By:Larm again. By:Larm is an annual festival and conference in Norway with the purpose of promoting new norwegian bands. I guess it’s quite similar to SXSW. Anyway, I thought I’d give you some tips on who I think is worth seeing.
Hiawata! and their label SellOut! Music are feeling the christmas spirit extra early this year and wants to give something to you, so they’re releasing a Hiawata! single for free.
Casa Murilo is an up and coming Oslo-based band led by two english lads; Chris Winfield and Dan Hesketh. I caught their gig at Mono the other day and was really impressed.
They’re great live, but they’re also quite good on record. I reviewed their EP a few days ago. The full EP is even free to listen to on their myspace page.
I recently met with Chris and Dan at a local café to ask them some questions about Brazil, the EP and the future.
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.
Dave Mahler is a 17-year-old from Australia and he has just recently finished making a music video for the song “All The Jokes Are On Me” from the Norwegian band Firefly Effects. He’s also made videos for Le Corbeau and Koppen.
The video is made up of as much as 1640 hand drawn and water colored frames and it took him four months to make it. With pastel colors and a that hand drawn style, it looks really good. Most people will probably think of A-ha’s “Take on Me”, though I’d say this one has a lot more charm.
The say that My Little Pony is the coziest band in Norway, but the coziest Singer-songwriter is definitely our very own superstar, Egil Olsen (not to be confused with the football coach with the same name). Egil writes dreamy and catchy pop songs about love and his hard life as a wannabe superstar.
He first started a band called Uncle’s Institution and released several albums (you can download them for free on his website), but after a trip to the states to find himself, he found the solo artist within. After releasing his beautiful debut album, I am a singer/songwriter in 2007, as well as a hip hop cover-album (freely available for download here), he’s releasing the album Nothing like the love I have for you, which will be out on CD, vinyl and mp3 download on 5. October.