Moddi, or Pål Moddi Knutsen, is a curly haired musician from an Island called Senja, far up north in norway. He’s already played at by:Larm twice and once at the Øya festival, the latter gave him good words from the guys over at Pitchfork. He’s also released a split-vinyl with Einar Stray and a self-released live album, but Floriography is his first studio album. It’s recorded in Greenhouse Studio in Iceland and produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson, who’s worked with artists like Björk and Múm.

I have to admit, I’m not much of a patient person. I tend to get bored easily and there’s a high threshold for me to really enjoy instrumental or quite calm and slow music that’s not very catchy. The first few times I heard through the album I liked some parts of this and that song a lot, but the rest felt a bit boring. Kind of like how you’d like particular scenes of a movie and skip forward to them. I actually feel bad when it’s like that, guilty that I don’t appreciate or understand the music. Listening through it several times more however, usually separates the boring from the genius. Floriography went through that test and prevailed.

Moddi’s music is a beautiful landscape inhabited by an accordion and tender strings, as well as piano, guitar and the usual stuff. It sounds a bit like Beirut, if you swap the balkan-inpiration with Norwegian folk music.

Even if there’s a fair amount of instruments playing, the music is quite minimalistic really. It’s all built around the vocals. Pål’s vocals go all the way from careful whispering and up to a loud and passionate scream. What strikes you is how real it is, he’s not afraid of putting emotions into his singing. At first you might feel that he’s screaming just a bit too loud, but that’s the thing, it’s supposed to be that way. Emotions control his volume, not how his voice sounds the cleanest.

All in all, Floriography is a brilliant album, but I’ll have to save the full score for later. I have a feeling that there’s potential for even more in this guy. There’s a 10 with your name on it Moddi, so come get it!

Moddi – Magpie Eggs

Sunglasses

One thing for certain is that you can hear the hip hop influences, and I am not normally a fan of that genre. It’s just that I haven’t really found any satisfying music that is strictly hip hop related. However, this duo is offering an amazing crossover combining the unique aspects of both hip hop and psychedelic music. The music isn’t constantly the same loop, and the melody progresses playfully, which I fail to hear with hip hop. The beats are incredible and makes you want to move unconditionally, even if you aren’t usually into spontaneous dancing patterns.

It’s very pleasing to hear these styles and references come together so uniquely. This helps make them one of the most promising bands to look out for this year. I am certainly looking forward to the inevitable debut, though so far there is no news of such a release. In the meantime, before we unravel the mysterious future of these geniuses, lend your ears to these tunes!

Sunglasses – Referee

myspace.com/putsunglasseson

This is absolutely a good debut from the norwegian octet with members from (among others) Le Corbeau, Serena Maneesh, Far From Tellus, Mindy Misty and Donjon Doxy. I wouldn’t call it a supergroup, but rather a collaboration beetween experienced musicians from the underground scene in Oslo. And as I said, it starts really good with “Narcoleptic Highway,” which is a good indicator of how the rest of the album is. It’s a bit noisy, a bit drony, full of counterpoints, complex drumming and polyrythmic, but tight. Everything is really thight, just as tight as Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin.

“Narcoleptic Highway” and the rest of the album draws a lot of inspiration from late 80’s and 90’s indie music. Last time I wrote about them, I described them as shoegazenoisehypnokrautpsychedelic rock. I think that genre fits them, and their kind of genre eclectism. They play music of a variety of different genres, but all the genres are subgenres or another kind of alternative rock.

Even though they draw a lot of inspiration from other bands, they manage to create their own distinctive sound. A song I think really shows this is the great “Skull and Bones.” It starts quietly with just a clean guitar, before a synth and a fast strumming guitar, then the rest of the band comes in. The drums make an atmospheric beat, helped by the repeating melody in the synth. Then the vocal comes in, both asking, proclaiming and answering. And then it continues, atmospheric and droning before it ends in cacophony and noise filled with synth beeps and glitches.

I don’t have much to complain on with this album. It’s tight and as a whole it’s awesome. The songs are good, even though some of them lack a bit of catchiness. The biggest problem is that both guitar and vocal can tend to get a little bit futile, and don’t catch your attention as much as you’d like. Still, this is one of my favourite albums of 2010 so far, and it’s a great debut from what I believe is a band with a bright future.

Below is their new video for the song “Jor-El,” made by drummer Øystein Monsen.

Now it’s the wonderful band Children and Corpse Playing in the Street that he’s lending his magic hands to. The video is quite gloomy, but in a beautiful way. Check it out!

Oh, and be sure to check out more of their music over at myspace.com/childrenandcorpse.

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.

He is far from being as complicated as I make music sound like at times. The music here is simple and colourful. Therefore I find it worthwhile to feature the first instrumental artist to have blown my ears away. Musette is a project by Joel Danell who is based in Stockholm. His arsenal consisting of whistling, guitar, violin, accordion and piano, help shape these pleasurable melodies. Even if the music doesn’t have any singing vowels, his whistling is great. I would say his whistling quality is comparable to that of Andrew Bird. It is used beautifully with some range and vibratos. This sheer simplistic music with carefully composed instruments create a playful, fresh and beautiful experience. The songs are expansive and diverse. The latest album Datum is a shining example of what I’ve attempted to describe here. There’s no album I could recommend more than this one.

Musette – 23 oktober

myspace.com/musettes

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 new album will be named The Wild Hunt and is scheduled to be released 13. April on Dead Oceans. They’ve released a free mp3 of the song “King of Spain,” which will be featured on the new album and you can listen to it below. It’s a great song and if it’s representative for the rest of the album, I think we have something great to look forward to.

Tracklist:

1. The Wild Hunt
2. Burden of Tomorrow
3. Troubles Will be Gone
4. You’re Going Back
5. The Drying of the Lawns
6. King of Spain
7. Love Is All
8. Thousand Ways
9. A Lion’s Heart
10. Kids on the Run

The Tallest Man on Earth – King of Spain

The first thing you notice is that By This Time Last Year.. sounds a bit “bigger,” more polished and focused than their last album, while gracefully avoiding that awful “stadium rock”-sound. You’d think polishing it up would make it lose a bit character, but it works extremely well.

The production is great and the sound perfectly complements Lyseid’s other project The Little Hands of Asphalt. Monzano is kind of a noisier big brother, where Little Hands is more of a mellow middle child; you clearly notice that they’re from the same “father” and are a lot like each other, but like other siblings, they have some distinct differences. Little Hands is more acoustic and folksy, a bit similar to a less mopey Bright Eyes or a poppier and more accessible Elliott Smith. Monzano are leaning more against shoegaze, but they still keep their feet firmly planted in the territory of catchy indie pop.

From the quiet beginnings of “The Mannequin Wakes,” through great songs like “Yes, We Can’t” and the brilliant “Cold Waters” featuring Thea Glenton Raknes from Norma Sass, It’s a damn solid album. It’s deliciously familiar, yet fresh and promising. Oslo’s indie pop king has done it again.

First of all, you’ve got Blood Command. I’ve seen them live once. It was last winter when they played as support for Silver at Sub Scene. They played really well, had a great energy on stage and the songs are catchy!  They play a mix of Jr. Ewing and the San Diego hardcore-scene with Silje Tombre in front with a voice reminding me of Karen O from Yeah Yeah Yeahs. By:Larm also has a lot of other hardcore/metal bands, like Social Suicide and Manhattan Skyline and other more familiar bands. A completely new name for me is Kollwitz. They play an eclectic mix of different subgenres of hardcore and metal. The music is desperate, cacaphonic and it can go from  almost complete silence to dark and grim noise. Full of contrasts.

By:Larm doesn’t just have good hardcore and metal, they also have everything from pop to garage and jazzrock. Like Elephant9, maybe norways best musicians; Torstein Lofthus from Shining on drum, Nikola Eilertsen from BigBang on bass and Ståle Storløkken from Supersilent on keys. They play good old-fashioned jazzrock in “bitches brew”-style. You can call it a blend Hansson och Karlsson, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Soft Machine and Tony William’s Lifetime. I haven’t seen them live, but on their debut-album Doodovodoo, they are super tight, super organic and their presence is clear.

Svermere is another jazz band that I really fell for. They are a modern folk jazz-band that follow the footprints norwegian and swedish jazz musicians made over thirty years ago. Just like Farmers Market does with Balkan-music, Svermere make old folk tunes into groovy and complex jazz songs. When it comes to booking jazz, By:Larm has done a great job. They’ve booked a lot of great jazz bands, even though most of them don’t play pure jazz. Most of them fuse jazz with other genres like metal, electronica, folk, rock and so on. You have Jaga Jazzist with their electro jazz-thing, Shining and Chrome Hill with their jazz metal, Elephant9’s jazz rock and Svermere’s folk jazz.

The festival is also good when it comes to another genre I’m very fond of; noise. They’ve booked a lot of noise bands this year. First, you have my favourites in Izakaya Heartbeats, a quite new band (though they were formed like four or five years ago, their consisting lineup was created early last year.) They play music that is hard to put in a genre, but if you’re creative you can call them something like shoegazenoisehypnokrautpsychedelic rock or something like that. Their new album, which was released in January is great. It is atmospheric and in some ways very catchy. Sometimes, it can seem quite chaotic with three (sometimes four) guitars and one old analouge synth, but thanks to strict disipline (I guess) and good drumming, they make it work.

Megaphonic Thrift is a band I have big faith in. They released their EP this autumn, which rocked, and their album is set to be released sometime this spring. I can’t wait. I love their noisy rock with pop harmonies, several layers of guitar that make complex patterns and generally good songs. I’ve also heard that they are fantastic live.

A band that surprised me is the finnish Joensuu 1685. I’m not familiar with the finnish music scene at all, but at least I have Joensuu 1685. They play psychedelic space rock, maybe a bit like earlier mentioned Izakaya Heartbeats. I’ve just heard what they have up on myspace, but it seems very promising, so let’s hope that they are just as good live.

Over to more poppy music, we’ve got Dunderhonning. Originally from Harstad, Dunderhonning plays hard-hitting pop rock with strong aspects of noise rock. They sound a bit like NME, a bit like poppy Sonic Youth and a bit like 00’s typical indie rock band. You might’ve heard it before, but the combination works, so why not? The lyrics are also in Norwegian, which is a really big plus for me. I love it when bands sing in Norwegian. Especially when they nail it like Kråkesølv. And if you haven’t seen Kråkesølv live yet, then By:Larm is your chance. Kråkesølv is an awesome band from Bodø that play a great norwegian kind of indie rock mixed with post rock and other good things.

Death By Unga Bunga is something you also should see. They have a raw and primitive sound, catchy garage riffs and songs that could just as well have been made in the 60s. They have a crazy show and they sound just as raw as the old Stooges. Their live show is great, they have a lot of energy, and I believe they’re likely to play one of the best shows of By:Larm this year.

Folk rockers are also represented, and my two favourites are Jens Carelius and Navigators. Navigators are actually quite big, having a contract with Sony and all, but the singer is one of Norway’s best rock vocalists, Trond Andreassen. They have already released the single Wall Of Stone, and it sounds very promising. I saw their show at Øya, then just under the name Trond Andreassen, and that was great. I believe many of the songs I heard there will be on the album, and if they are, the album will probably be awesome! Even though Navigators have a bit more credibility, I believe Jens Carelius can be just as good. I’ve seen him live a few times and it’s fantastic. He and his band play with a fantastic feeling that they manage to convey in a furious, electrifying and honest way.

Well, that’s some of the bands that I recommend you see, and although By:Larm books a lot of great bands each year, I’ll have to finish of with a question for By:Larm; next year, why not book my band instead of Donkeyboy?

For more info, you can go to their website – bylarm.no

Milne is also a member of The Reduction Agents and has among other things played bass for Okkervil River and The Brunettes. Chant Darling is his second album and it’s packed with musical references. The overall sound is similar to that of 60’s guitar pop, but it’s mixed with britpop, country and various other things. Lots of beautiful guitar hooks and a lot of choiring. The song “Eye A” will probably remind you of a certain song by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, while “Fine Old Friends” has something of a similarity to Blur.

There are also a few similarities that are a bit annoying, like the guitar in “Auckland CBD,” which sounds almost exactly like some Vampire Weekend song. And then there’s “Apple Pie Bed”. My better half made me aware of how much the bass line sounds like a cheesy song by a Norwegian humour group called KLM (The melody’s originally from Little Peggy March’s “I Will Follow Him.”) They’re still amazing songs though, you just have to ignore the similarities.

Lawrence Arabia’s sound isn’t really too original and the album has its ups and downs, but there’s no doubt that milne has a knack for making great pop songs sewn together from lots of different styles. It also helps that it’s all done with a bit of humour and great production. It’s a varied and fun album and though Chant Darling probably isn’t among the very best albums we’ll see this year, James Milne is definitely a name to watch out for.

The first thing you notice this time around is that there is less of the classical style of the first album. We hear more electronic sounds and effects, and despite this minimal change the African-inspired rhythms and tempo stand out more. The band’s style seems much more refined this time. I’ll try to describe what makes this album a development from the debut and how it manages to stand on its own legs.

The opening track “Horchata” introduces playful African rhythms and quirky styles intertwined. It gives you a good picture of the overall style of the the album album. A strong first track is always a good thing, and this one’s an incredibly catchy and well crafted melody. The electronic sounds and effects are very welcoming and cleverly added. This distinct quality we are witnessing here continues throughout the first half of the album. The songs are diverse and different from another which effectively keeps the music interesting. It is very common for bands to resort to using the same sounds, effects, style and openings in most of their tracks. Luckily, here things are more varied, playful and interesting. The blend of contemporary styles complimented with afro beats and classic touches makes this album fresh.

On the other hand, there are a few setbacks that keeps this album from being a possible highlight of the year. Despite how original the band is with their style, some songs are easily forgettable and rather unimaginative, some overdone when it comes to styles and effects. These songs aren’t terrible, by all means, but very underwhelming and unoriginal in contrast to their incredible counterparts. It’s still a good album though, with some great and memorable songs among some that are more just “filling.”