Category Archives: norway

[Podcast] terje rypdal is a motherfucker

Here we go all Norwegian once more, with Nils of Ella Guru marking the weirdest spots on the mellifluous map of Norway. Hurrah. Here’s the podcast feed.
お楽しみに! Hope you enjoy.. Don’t let that first track scare you off. And do read the explanation for the selections, you get brownie points for that too.

tracklist

darkthrone – transilvanian hunger

as my last mixtape was titled ‘I hate black metal’, I found it only suitable to open this one with my favourite black metal track, my favourite norwegian blackmetal track that is, my all-favourite would have to be ‘Rivfader’, by finnish ‘Finntroll’, known as the blackmetalband even people who hate blackmetal love. But this is norwegian, one of the pioneer bands I’ve been told…I think their bass player got murdered by some  blackmetal/devilworshipping/churburning/nazi-guy back in the nineties, though I might be wrong, maybe it was the bass player in Mayhem…I honestly don’t know…anyway, I kinda like this song. I cut it quite early though, you’re not missing much really, it goes on like that for another four minutes or so…and I apologise for the poor sound-quality, blame it on the guy who gave me the mp3…


side brok – likandes kar

Norways best hip-hop act I would say. They’re a funny bunch. And as I remember it when they first came, I didn’t really give a damn then, didn’t even like rap, many people sort of wrote them of as just a funny bunch, singing in their weird local dialect of Ørsta, or is it Volda…I’m not sure…But listening to their albums now they stand out as a personal favourite…they’re not only funny, they’re also damn good.

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eiko – to macrocosm

eiko, ah…I love her.

she is by far the coolest woman I’ve ever seen on a stage, or anywhere else for that matter.

though, I’m not really sure how norwegian she really is…I think she might actually be from switzerland or something…but she is somehow norway-affiliated, I think…I don’t know, I don’t care…

She could scare the shit out of you, using a laptop and a microphone…

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monomen – divide divide


making a desperate attempt of escaping the haunting world of Eiko, with some catchy tunes from synth-pop-hipsters Monomen…

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kjøtt – metamorfose


Kjøtt (Meat) was one of the leading acts of the norwegian punk-scene…largely overrated in my opinion, but some of their songs aren’t to bad…like this one…

The drummer later founded one of the most popular bands in the country during the eighties and early nineties, Raga Rockers, they’re actually quite good. Some other members of Kjøtt continued making music in a rather horrible new-wave band called ‘Cirkus modern’… really utterly horrible…


hiss – sirkel (im kreis)


Found it in this record store I used to work in…I have no idea what it is…have seen one of the names on it credited as producer for something, but can’t remember where…if anyone know anything about this band, please let me know…

PapaFahr – Welcome to Odessa

Heh…I just had to ad this. Papafahr is an old local singer-songwriter (I have no idea how old he actually is…somewhere between fifty and one hundred I would guess, but he could very well be somewhere between twentyfive and onehundredandfifty). You can sometimes see him playing the streets in trondheim, some times, as on this recording, backed by myself on drums and percussion, and Marcellius from the rather brilliant band Spring Collection on bass. When we recorded this the bass player was heavily influenced by this christian country record which was lying around in the studio kitchen…he doesn’t normally play like this…it sounds good though, great song, smells of summer, sun, cold beer, pretty girls and all things nice…

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Fra Lippo Lippi – Out of the ruins

Fra Lippo Lippi  is best known for having been famous in the Philippines. But before they started making dreary eighties popmusic (though their hit single ‘Shouldn’t have to be like that’, is quite catchy), they were portrayed as beeing a norwegian Joy Divison…heh…at least it sounds as if they really tried to be, hard.

On this album, ‘in silence’, from 1981, they sound more like New Orders first album ‘Movement’ though. I think they made some EP’s before this (I ain’t got an internet connection at my place, so I can’t check up any facts, unfortunately).

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Domestic Duck – super cool



Norways best ‘krautrock’ band perhaps…I don’t really know anything about them…this guy up in the fourth floor in my building knows them though, and apparantly they don’t play much…too bad…

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Motorpsycho – wearing your smell


When you go to a indie-rock gig with a local band in trondheim, you can usually classify them by referring to a particular Motorpsycho-album. Their status as Norways greatest indieband is undisputed, at least here in Trondheim. I really can’t think of any others worth mentioning. Choosing one song from their vast and varied back-catalogue is one very ungrateful task…I chose this one…I don’t know why…

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Manna – Vi vil ikke ha mer krig

‘People who don’t like reggae are essentially bad people, I don’t trust them’ – I said that, or so I’m told…I don’t know if I can stand for it though, I know of at least two people I like who don’t like reggae-music…and just recently my dad got into dub, at the age of 54.

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G.O.D.S. – Trondheim



These guys can get anyone from six to sixty and far beyond to dance. masters of crowd control. this song, a hommage to the town we live in; ‘sun, summer and snow, that’s trondheim you know’…or something like that.

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Dog & Sky – Hammer

this was the first band I really dug after moving in to town…ah, imagining Matt, singer of D&S, in a slightly oversized suit making a tiny jump clinching his eyes yelling kiss me!, man, I could’ve kissed him right there…but that was another song, at some other gig, some other time… according to the cover booklet the singer of the band ‘det glade vanvidd’ plays hammer in this song, but I’ve not been able to dechipher where. I could watch the drummer for hours, love her style, and she’s so good, I almost find it  provoking(I’m a drummer myself), she must be a jazzer or something, wich reminds me of…


PELbO – the star


…Pelbo, whom someone somehow have given the honour of havin’ made tuba sexy…that’s absurd, when was tuba not sexy? all bass is sexy. If someone who knows the band by any chance hear this mixtape, they might wonder what happened to the final part…well, I’ll tell you what. It sucks. I hate it. So I cut it. I’m sorry guys. Everything you her on the recordings the also do live, looping of vocals, putting on effects and such.

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Chilsmissebarna – Gregor Samsa ain’t dead

heh…me and the percussionist in my band once took initiative for a spontanious rehersal, but noone else were available, and also we didn’t have keys to the bandroom, so we went back to my place, shared one pathetic bottle of bear, and started making sounds with whatever stuff we could find in my room, a vacuum cleaner, a guitar flight case, a recordplayer etc. That was the beginning of Chillsmissebarna. The band who managed to chase just about every participant of a friends birthdayparty arranged at my place, playing on vacuumcleaner, casserolles and guitarfeedback, everyone fleed into the kitchen or to the toilets…at the other of the two gigs of our career we started fighting out of frustration of the fact that none of us knew what we were doing, or maybe because we were bored, rolling around in the dirt, einar tore my shirt…this australian guy with a barbercue said he really liked it…

Babi Jar – Babi Jar

a friend of mine popped in, asked me ‘what are you doing?’, I told him what I was doing, ‘oh’, he said, ‘I’ve got some stuff you could use’, and brought me a usb-stick with music. this one was the only one to sneak through the needle’s eye this time.

120 days – come out (come down, fade out, be gone)


so hip it almost makes you sick, but that doesn’t keep them from being good, does it? I don’t know. I have a disease that makes me unable to listen to music, at least modern music, without immideatly coming up with a bunch of references, whom the band I’m listening to never really can live up to, in my eyes. It sucks really, prevents me of liking a lot of music that’s probably not really to bad, it’s just that this other band from the sixties or seventies or eighties, was better…there’s always some other band…

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123 – Graveyard paradise

but let’s forget all that and enjoy this sixties beauty. Dylanesque you say? Yeah…but please don’t ruin it by reminding me. Actually the sickness is only contaminous for music made after y2000. This is ripped from an original seven inch my aunt gave me, real worn…listen to the scratching…

Ghost-writer: Nils of Ella Guru on (good) Norwegian music

Here we are gathered today to dispel any myths or stereotypes about Norwegian music (weird? yes; all heavy metal? no). A great write-up from a music fan that knows the deal.

hmm…where to start? ah…right, the beginning.

DePress

was along with The Aller Værste, whom will be discussed further down, just about the only norwegian post-punk band who was found worthy to be mentioned on norwegian televisions “the history of norwegian rock” series a few years back. Many great bands weren’t. Well well let’s not hold that against them, all they did to make what is widely acclaimed to be one of the best, if not the best norwegian album ever. It took a Polish immigrant to do it though. Depress founder and fourfingered singer/bassplayer Andrej Njebb came to Norway sometime in the seventies, and was fascinated by norwegian poetry and art, and not to mention the norwegian gastronomic speciality of fish-pudding. “Bo jo cie kochom”, that’s polish, most of DePress’s material was, come from their debut album “block to block” (1981), and I think it’s based on a Polish shepardssong. Both this and their next album, wich is might even better, was produced by the British John Leckie who had previously worked with Plastic ono band and pink floyd, and would eventually produce great acts as the fall and public image as well as Radiohead and Stone Roses. Andrej Njebb would also go on to do great things after DePress disintegrated, we’ll get back to him later…

01 Bo jo cie kochom

Alle Tiders Duster

I love this band, best norwegian band ever, best norwegian album ever, and practically unknown of course… Continue reading Ghost-writer: Nils of Ella Guru on (good) Norwegian music

Rocketotthesky – Neolullaby

When Jenny Hval (aka Rockettothesky) tagged the music on her myspace as trance/ a cappella/ shoegaze, she must have had no other option but to settle for what was pre-defined. Trance must be short for “transcendental” or “puts you in a trance”, shoegaze is more like stargaze or seagaze, and a cappella is something she slides in and out of. Words have been made up to describe this music. Words that you can only hear in other songs, and only if you listen. So try listening to Cocteau Twins and you’ll see the spirit of Rocketotthesky.

Poetry is how she talks and writes, as far as I can see on her Myspace, and she leaves unattended bits and pieces of unmanicured life, hard to explain, as if she got a certain feeling and then immediately scribbled something on a napkin in her mind, next to a doodle of Amelia Earhart. Most of us would shake off that feeling but she holds on to it for a while, and starts singing to it.

Jenny’s from Norway, has been signed to Trust Me Records earlier this year, and, can anyone try and pre-order the album To Sing You Apple Trees without feeling like a dufus for not knowing Norwegian? To Sing You Apple Trees is the fruit of many a summer day and night spent in a “dungeon”, as Jenny puts it (aka studio), and she claims to have thoroughly enjoyed it. Jan Martin Smørdal and Andreas Paleologos are also part of the band since then. Boy oh boy, I can’t wait to hear this.

Rockettothesky – A Flock Of Chestshire Cats (demo) mp3

Rockettothesky – A Cute Lovesong Please mp3

PS Check out Jenny’s writing on singingwhale, where she discusses consonants, vowels, choirs of clitoris-crayons. The usual. 😉