Nordic music
Kieron Tyler
Goods, the second album by Sweden’s Edda Maganson was one of last year’s highlights. With a playful jazz sensibility which intertwined with a quirky pop, Magnason’s approach was unusual and refreshing. Coinciding with the release of her new EP, theartsdesk premieres the video for its lead track “Jona”.Magnason’s time is currently filled playing the lead in a biopic about the legendary Swedish jazz singer Monica Zetterlund. Being shot in Sweden and New York, it’s directed by Denmark’s Per Fly (the director of 2010’s The Woman Who Dreamed of a Man, made for Lars von Trier's company Zentropa).“ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Two things are certain with music coming from the north: there will be some wonderful surprises and some of it will sound like nothing else on earth. It’s even more enticing when the two merge. Making the peculiar accessible is a uniquely Scandinavian knack. There are more than a few examples of that – the creation of new micro-genres – in this round-up of current and new releases, but some straightforward albums are equally striking. First, however, we head for the offbeat end of the spectrum.After my first encounter with Denmark’s Sleep Party People, I remarked they were “a peculiar Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It began with a warning. Opening the fourth Tallinn Music Week, Estonia’s President Toomas Hendrik Ilves cautioned, “In a free society, it’s risk-free. In an un-free society, it’s not risk-free. It’s not all fun.” From behind a hotel conference room lectern, he then began rolling a video of Russia’s Pussy Riot being arrested in Moscow a few days earlier. Not everyone can make their point, make their music, choose how they want to get it across.The contrast between Pussy Riot’s fate and a festival that celebrates new music in all its forms, held in a country bordering Russia, was marked by Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Norway’s bouncy electropoppers Casiokids release their new single “Kaskaden” next week. They’ve chosen to premier the video on theartsdesk. Directed by their long-term collaborator Blank Blank, the fantasia takes in Kung Fu films and the Hollywood of the Eighties, mixing them with a Norwegian flavour.The video for “Kaskaden”, a track from their recent Aabenbaringen over aaskammen album, is produced and directed for Casiokids by the Finnish/Colombian/Norwegian collective Blank Blank and choreographed by the Dutch contemporary dancer Marjolein Vogels. The band describe the video as a “ a film- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Oh Land is Nanna Øland Fabricius. A proper pop star in her native Denmark, based on last night's show there’s no reason why she can’t be one here too. She’s been living in Brooklyn and the international market is clearly in her sights. The highlights from her packed gig at Heaven - "Sun of a Gun", "Wolf & I", "White Nights" and "We Turn it Up” - are sweet confections that ought to prove irresistible. Providing, that is, they’re served up correctly. But more on that later.Fabricius’s quality electropop is heavy on memorable singalong choruses and staccato vamps. It wasn't helped by Heaven’ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the four days of Norway’s 15th by:Larm Festival were dominated by the presentation of the second annual Nordic Music Prize, there were plenty of other distractions: a sobering tour of Norwegian black metal’s infamous sites, a talk by legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, what felt like millions of shows in millions of venues, and weather confounding all expectations of what Oslo ought to be like in February.Previous visits to by:Larm have involved negotiating snow three-foot deep, urban pack ice and temperatures of minus 18 centigrade. This year, the sun shone, temperatures hovered Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Long winters, when most outdoor activities are off the menu, must encourage creativity. Judging by the new releases in from Scandinavia, almost-constant dark and sub sub-zero temperatures would do the music of more temperate regions some good, feeding inspiration. Whether it’s Norwegians with a yen for the spooky, irresistible accordionists and disturbing singer-songwriters from Finland, or do-it-yourself Danes, all and more are here.Amongst the aspects which make Scandinavia’s music striking, especially music from Norway, are songs which don’t initially reveal where they’re going. Twists and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s about the bass and the drums. The choirboy high vocals and sugary melodies catch the ear first, but they’d be so much soufflé without the room-shaking, stomach-wobbling bass throb, the Chic-style disco drumming and its tsk-tsk-tsk hi-hat shuffle. Combined, the soft and airy, the propulsive and grounded make the audience move. Not tap a toe, but actually move – dance.Casiokids need that connection as, despite every other person at this sold-out show being Norwegian, there’s the language barrier. A rarity amongst Norwegian musical exports, Casiokids sing in their native language. There was Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bergen’s going to be pretty cold in January, but Aabenbaringen over aaskammen by the Norwegian city’s Casiokids will thaw the most frozen of feet. Their twinkly, occasionally Afro-assisted, sometimes New Order-ish electropop brings a smile too.Casiokids have been on the radar for half a decade, but Aabenbaringen over aaskammen is only their second album proper, following 2006’s Fück midi. Since then, there’s been a smattering of singles and 2010’s compilation/remix album Topp stemning på lokal bar. Aabenbaringen over aaskammen's 11 tracks include a remake of “London Zoo”, first heard on a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It could have been Fleet Foxes’s Helplessness Blues, or maybe The War on Drugs’s Slave Ambient, but this is the one that keeps being returned to. Lykke Li’s Wounded Rhymes kept forcing its way to the top of the pile, insisting it had to be heard. The music was forceful, the melodies instantly unforgettable but it was also impossible not to be distracted by the lyrics of “Get Some”: “Don’t pull your pants before I go down… Like the shotgun, I need an outcome, I'm your prostitute, you gonna get some”.She told me earlier this year that “Get Some” was “not sexual. It’s not really submission Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Glass crunches underfoot. It’s been raining constantly, but the odour reveals that a fair amount of what's in the cobbled street's central gutter is urine. Everyone appears to be drunk. The French equivalent of crusties aren’t content with one dog-on-string. Some have four. During the annual Trans Musicales festival, Saturday night in and around the Place St-Anne of Brittany’s capital Rennes is a keep-you-on-your-toes experience.Later, while walking south towards the Place République, a woman smells English-speaker in the air, rushes up and exclaims, “I have to tell you, Of Mice and Men, John Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although they're beginning to get cold, the winds blowing in from Scandinavia have recently brought enough music to keep anyone warm through long, dark nights. Finnish intensity, pop and introspection from Denmark, Swedish luxuriousness, Icelandic keyboard quirk, Norwegians that enfold - all are here. Along with Estonian haziness.Finland hits hardest with a new EP from K-X-P. theartsdesk has met them before, live and on album. Previously with Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound, Easy is their first outing for Manchester’s Melodic. It’s an extraordinary thing, coalescing a vision marrying a Read more ...