#danish bassist

[n0rdic-kn1ght]

Me, my Viking hat, my sword, and my cool little music room. 😼🎸⚔️

[hotniatheron]

everything about aziraphale is so unappealing to me except for the fact that he's a cunt

[tutyayilmazz]

The sheer number of older and more experienced professionals involved in Måneskin introduces a tension between the rock conventions that characterize their songwriting and the fundamentally pop circumstances under which those songs are produced. They are four friends in a band, but that band is inside an enormous machine. From their perspective, though, the machine is good.

The American visitor to Rome arrives with certain preconceptions that feel like stereotypes but turn out to be basically accurate. There really are mopeds flying around everywhere, and traffic seems governed by the principle that anyone can be replaced. Breakfast is coffee and cigarettes. Despite these orthopedic and nutritional hazards, everyone is better looking — not literally everyone, of course, but statistically, as if whatever selective forces that emerge from urban density have had an extra hundred generations or so to work. And they really do talk like that, an emphatic mix of vowels, gestures and car horns known as “Italian.” To be scolded in this language by a driver who wants to park in the crosswalk is to realize that some popular ideas are actually true. Also, it is hot.

The triumphant return to Rome of Måneskin — arguably the only rock stars of their generation, and almost certainly the biggest Italian rock band of all time — coincided with a heat wave across Southern Europe. On that Tuesday in July the temperature hit 107 degrees. The Tiber looked thick, rippled in places and still in others, as if it were reducing. By Thursday morning the band’s vast management team was officially concerned that the night’s sold-out performance at the Stadio Olimpico would be delayed. When Måneskin finally took the stage around 9:30 p.m., it was still well into the 90s — which was too bad, because there would be pyro.

There was no opening act, possibly because no rock band operating at this level is within 10 years of Måneskin’s age. The guitarist Thomas Raggi played the riff to “Don’t Wanna Sleep,” the lights came up and 60,000 Italians screamed. Damiano David — the band’s singer and, at age 24, its oldest member — charged out in black flared trousers and a mesh top that bisected his torso diagonally, his heavy brow and hypersymmetrical features making him look like some futuristic nomad who hunted the fishnet mammoth. Victoria De Angelis, the bassist, wore a minidress made from strips of leather or possibly bungee cords. Raggi wore nonporous pants and a black button-down he quickly discarded, while Ethan Torchio drummed in a vest with no shirt underneath, his hair flying. For the next several minutes of alternately disciplined and frenzied noise, they sounded as if Motley Crüe had been cryogenically frozen, then revived in 2010 with Rob Thomas on vocals.

That hypothetical will appeal to some while repelling others, and which category you fall into is, with all due respect, not my business here. Rolling Stone, for its part, said that Måneskin “only manage to confirm how hard rock & roll has to work these days to be noticed,” and a viral Pitchfork review called their most recent album “absolutely terrible at every conceivable level.” But this kind of thumbs up/thumbs down criticism is pretty much vestigial now that music is free. If you want to know whether you like Måneskin — the name is Danish and pronounced MOAN-eh-skin — you can fire up the internet and add to the more than nine billion streams Sony Music claims the band has accumulated across Spotify, YouTube, et cetera. As for whether Måneskin is good, de gustibus non est disputandum, as previous Italians once said: In matters of taste, there can be no arguments.

You should know, though, that even though their music has been heard most often through phone and laptop speakers, Måneskin sounds better on a soccer field. That is what tens of thousands of fans came to the Stadio Olimpico on an eyelid-scorching Thursday to experience: the culturally-if-not-personally-familiar commodity of a stadium rock show, delivered by the unprecedented phenomenon of a stadium-level Italian rock band. The pyro — 20-foot jets of swivel-articulated flame that you could feel all the way up in the mezzanine — kicked in on “Gasoline,” a song Måneskin wrote to protest Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. From a thrust platform in the center of the field, David poured his full emotive powers into the pre-chorus: “Standing alone on that hill/using your fuel to kill/we won’t take it standing still/watch us dance.”

The effect these words will have on President Putin is unknown. They capture something, though, about rock ’n’ roll, which has established certain conventions over the last seven decades. One of those conventions is an atmosphere of rebellion. It doesn’t have to be real — you probably don’t even want it to be — but neither can it seem too contrived, because the defining constraint of rock as a genre is that you have to feel it. The successful rock song creates in listeners the sensation of defying consensus, even if they are right in step with it.

The need to feel the rock may explain the documented problem of fans’ taste becoming frozen in whatever era was happening when they were between the ages of 15 and 25. Anyone who adolesced after Spotify, however, did not grow up with rock as an organically developing form and is likely to have experienced the whole catalog simultaneously, listening to Led Zeppelin at the same time they listened to Pixies and Franz Ferdinand — i.e. as a genre rather than as particular artists, the way my generation (I’m 46) experienced jazz. The members of Måneskin belong to this post-Spotify cohort. As the youngest and most prominent custodians of the rock tradition, their job is to sell new, guitar-driven songs of 100 to 150 beats per minute to a larger and larger audience, many of whom are young people who primarily think of such music as a historical artifact. Starting this month, Måneskin will take this business on a multivenue tour of the United States — a market where they are considerably less known — whose first stop is Madison Square Garden.

“I think the genre thing is like ... ” Torchio said to me backstage in Rome, making a gesture that conveyed translingual complexity. “We can do a metaphor: If you eat fish, meat and peanuts every day, like for years, and then you discover potatoes one day, you’ll be like: ‘Wow, potatoes! I like potatoes; potatoes are great.’ But potatoes have been there the whole time.” Rock was the potato in this metaphor, and he seemed to be saying that even though many people were just now discovering that they liked it, it had actually been around for a long time. It was a revealing analogy: The implication was that rock, like the potato, is here to stay; but what if rock is, like the potato in our age of abundance, comparatively bland and no longer anyone’s favorite?

Which rock song came first is a topic of disagreement, but one strong candidate is “Rocket 88,” recorded by Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythym band in 1951. It’s about a car and, in its final verse, about drinking in the car. These themes capture the context in which rock ’n’ roll emerged: a period when household incomes, availability of consumer goods and the share of Americans experiencing adolescence all increased simultaneously.

Although and possibly because rock started as Black music, it found a gigantic audience of white teenagers during the so-called British Invasion of the mid-1960s (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who), which made it the dominant form of pop music for the next two decades. The stadium/progressive era (Journey, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner) that now constitutes the bulk of classic-rock radio gave way, eventually, to punk (the Ramones, Patti Smith, Minor Threat) and then glam metal: Twisted Sister, Guns N’ Roses and various other hair-intensive bands that were obliterated by the success of Nirvana and Pearl Jam in 1991. This shift can be understood as the ultimate triumph of punk, both in its return to emotive content expressed through simpler arrangements and in its professed hostility toward the music industry itself. After 1991, suspicion of anything resembling pop became a mark of seriousness among both rock critics and fans.

It is probably not a coincidence that this period is also when rock’s cultural hegemony began to wane. As the ’90s progressed, larger and again whiter audiences embraced hip-hop, and the last song classified as “rock” to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 was Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” in 2001. The run of bands that became popular during the ’00s — the Strokes, the Killers, Kings of Leon — constituted rock’s last great commercial gasp, but none of their singles charted higher than No. 4. Let us say, then, that the era of rock as pop music lasted from 1951 to 2011. That’s a three-generation run, if you take seriously rock’s advice to get drunk and have sex in the car and therefore produce children at around age 20. Baby boomers were the generation that made rock a zillion-dollar industry; Gen X saved it from that industry with punk and indie, and millennials closed it all out playing Guitar Hero.

The members of Måneskin are between the ages of 22 and 24, situating them firmly within the cadre of people who understand rock in the past tense. De Angelis, the bassist, and Raggi, the guitarist, formed the band when they were both attending a music-oriented middle school; David was a friend of friends, while Torchio was the only person who responded to their Facebook ad seeking a drummer. There are few entry-level rock venues in Rome, so they started by busking on the streets. In 2017, they entered the cattle-call audition for the Italian version of “The X Factor.” They eventually finished as runners-up to the balladeer Lorenzo Licitra, and an EP of songs they performed on the show was released by Sony Music and went triple platinum.

In 2021, Måneskin won the Sanremo Music Festival, earning the right to represent Italy with their song “Zitti e Buoni” (whose title roughly translates to “shut up and behave”) in that year’s Eurovision Song Contest. This program is not widely viewed in the United States, but it is a gigantic deal in Europe, and Måneskin won. Not long after, they began to appear on international singles charts, and “I Wanna Be Your Slave” broke the British Top 10. A European tour followed, as well as U.S. appearances at festivals and historic venues.

This ascent to stardom was not unmarred by controversy. The Eurovison live broadcast caught David bending over a table offstage, and members of the media accused him of snorting cocaine. David insisted he was innocent and took a drug test, which he passed, but Måneskin and their management still seem indignant about the whole affair. It’s exactly this kind of incongruous detail — this damaging rumor that a rock star did cocaine — that highlights how the Italian music-consuming public differs from the American one. Many elements of Måneskin’s presentation, like the cross-dressing and the occasional male-on-male kiss, are genuinely upsetting to older Italians, even as they seem familiar or even hackneyed to audiences in the United States.

“They see a band of young, good-looking guys that are dressing up too much, and then it’s not pure rock ’n’ roll, because you’re not in a garage, looking ugly,” De Angelis says. “The more conservative side, they’re shocked because of how we dress or move onstage, or the boys wear makeup.”

She and her bandmates are caught between two demographics: the relatively conservative European audience that made them famous and the more tolerant if not downright desensitized American audience that they must impress to keep the ride moving. And they do have to keep it moving, because — like many rock stars before them — most of the band dropped out of high school to do this. At one point, Raggi told me that he had sat in on some classes at a university, “Just to try to understand, ‘What is that?’”

One question that emerged early in my discussions with Måneskin’s friendly and professional management team was whether I was going to say that their music was bad. This concern seemed related to the aforementioned viral Pitchfork review, in which the editor Jeremy Larson wrote that their new album, “RUSH!” sounds “like it’s made for introducing the all-new Ford F-150” and “seems to be optimized for getting busy in a Buffalo Wild Wings bathroom” en route to a score of 2.0 (out of 10). While the members of Måneskin seemed to take this review philosophically, their press liaisons were concerned that I was coming to Italy to have a similar type of fun.

Here I should disclose that Larson edited an essay I wrote for Pitchfork about the Talking Heads album “Remain in Light” (score: 10.0) and that I think of myself as his friend. Possibly because of these biases, I read his review as reflecting his deeply held and, among rock fans, widely shared need to feel the music, something that the many pop/commercial elements of “RUSH!” (e.g. familiar song structures, lyrics that seem to have emerged from a collaboration between Google Translate and Nikki Sixx, compulsive use of multiband compression) left him unable to do.

This perspective reflects the post-’90s rock consensus (PNRC) that anything that sounds too much like a mass-market product is no good. The PNRC is premised on the idea that rock is not just a structure of song but also a structure of relationship between the band and society. From rock’s earliest days as Black music, the real or perceived opposition between rocker and society has been central to its appeal; this adversarial relationship animated the youth and counterculture eras of the ’60s and then, when the economic dominance of mass-market rock made it impossible to believe in, provoked the revitalizing backlash of punk. Even major labels felt obliged to play into this paradoxical worldview, e.g. that period after Nirvana when the most popular genre of music was called “alternative.” Måneskin, however, are defined by their isolation from the PNRC. They play rock music, but operate according to the logic of pop.

In Milan, where Måneskin would finish their Italian minitour, I had lunch with the band, as well as two of their managers, Marica Casalinuovo and Fabrizio Ferraguzzo. Casalinuovo had been an executive producer working on “The X Factor,” and Ferraguzzo was its musical director; around the time that Måneskin broke through, Casalinuovo and Ferraguzzo left the show and began working with the stars it had made. We were at the in-house restaurant of Moysa, the combination recording studio, soundstage, rehearsal space, offices, party venue and “creative playground” that Ferraguzzo opened two months earlier. After clarifying that he was in no way criticizing major record labels and the many vendors they engaged to record, promote and distribute albums, he laid out his vision for Moysa, a place where all those functions were performed by a single corporate entity — basically describing the concept of vertical integration.

Ferraguzzo oversaw the recording of “RUSH!” along with a group of producers that included Max Martin, the Swedish hitmaker best known for his work with Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. At Moysa, Ferraguzzo played for me Måneskin’s then-unreleased new single, “Honey (Are U Coming?)” which features many of the band’s signature moves — guitar and bass playing the same melodic phrases at the same time, unswung boogie-type rhythm of the post-Strokes style — but also has David singing in a higher register than usual. I listened to it first on studio monitors and then through the speaker of Ferraguzzo’s phone, and it sounded clean and well produced both times, as if a team of industry veterans with unlimited access to espresso had come together to perfect it.

The sheer number of older and more experienced professionals involved in Måneskin introduces a tension between the rock conventions that characterize their songwriting and the fundamentally pop circumstances under which those songs are produced. They are four friends in a band, but that band is inside an enormous machine. From their perspective, though, the machine is good.

“There’s hundreds of people working and talking about you and giving opinions,” De Angelis said at lunch. “So if you start to get in this loop of wanting to know and control and being anxious about it, it really ruins everything.” Here lies the conflict between what the PNRC wants from a band — resistance to outside influences, contempt for commerce, authenticity as measured in doing everything themselves — and what any sane 23-year-old would want, which is to have someone with an M.B.A. make all the decisions so she can concentrate on playing bass.

The other way Måneskin is isolated from the PNRC is geographic. Over the course of lunch, it became clear that they had encyclopedic knowledge of certain eras in American rock history but were only dimly aware of others. Raggi, for instance, loves Motley Crüe and has an album-by-album command of the Los Angeles hair-metal band Skid Row, which he and his bandmates seemed to understand were supposed to be guilty pleasures. But none of them had ever heard of Fugazi, the post-hardcore band whose hatred of major labels, refusal to sell merchandise and commitment to keeping ticket prices as low as possible set the standard for a generation of American rock snobs. In general, Måneskin’s timeline of influences seems to break off around 1990, when the rock most respected by Anglophone critics was produced by independent labels that did not have strong overseas distribution. It picks up again with Franz Ferdinand and the “emo” era of mainstream pop rock. This retrospect leaves them unaware of the indie/punk/D.I.Y. period that was probably most important in forming the PNRC.

The question is whether that consensus still matters. While snobs like Larson and me are overrepresented in journalism, we never constituted a majority of rock fans. That’s the whole point of being a snob. And snobbery is obsolete anyway; digital distribution ended the correlation between how obscure your favorite band was and how much effort you put into listening to them. The longevity of rock ’n’ roll as a genre, meanwhile, has solidified a core audience that is now between the ages of 40 and 80, rendering the fan-versus-society dimension of the PNRC impossible to believe. And the economics of the industry — in which streaming has reduced the profit margin on recorded music, and the closure of small venues has made stadiums and big auditoriums the only reliable way to make money on tour — have decimated the indie model. All these forces have converged to make rock, for the first time in its history, merely a way of writing songs instead of a way of life.

Yet rock as a cluster of signifiers retains its power around the world. In the same way everyone knows what a castle is and what it signifies, even though actual castles are no longer a meaningful force in our lives, rock remains a shared language of cultural expression even though it is no longer determining our friendships, turning children against their parents, yelling truth at power, et cetera. Also like a castle, a lot of people will pay good money to see a preserved historical example of rock or even a convincing replica of it, especially in Europe.

In Milan, the temperature had dropped 20 degrees, and Måneskin’s show at Stadio Giuseppe Meazza — commonly known as San Siro, the largest stadium in Italy, sold out that night at 60,000 — was threatened by thunderstorms instead of record-breaking heat. Fans remained undaunted: Many camped in the parking lot the night before in order to be among the first to enter the stadium. One of them was Tamara, an American who reported her age as 60½ and said she had skipped a reservation to see da Vinci’s “Last Supper” in order to stay in line. “When you get to knocking on the door, you kind of want to do what you want,” she said.

The threat of rain was made good at pretty much the exact moment the show began. The sea of black T-shirts on the pitch became a field of multicolored ponchos, and raindrops were bouncing visibly off the surface of the stage. David lost his footing near the end of “I Wanna Be Your Slave,” briefly rolling to his back, while De Angelis — who is very good at making lips-parted-in-ecstasy-type rock faces — played with her eyes turned upward to the flashing sky, like a martyr.

The rain stopped in time for “Kool Kids,” a punk-inspired song in which David affects a Cockney accent to sing about the vexed cultural position of rock ’n’ roll: “Cool kids, they do not like rock/they only listen to trap and pop.” These are probably the Måneskin lyrics most quoted by music journalists, although they should probably be taken with a grain of salt, considering that the song also contains lyrics like “I like doin’ things I love, yeah” and “Cool kids, they do not vomit.”

“Kool Kids” was the last song before the encore, and each night a few dozen good-looking 20-somethings were released onto the stage to dance and then, as the band walked off, to make we’re-not-worthy bows around Raggi’s abandoned guitar. The whole thing looked at least semichoreographed, but management assured me that the Kool Kids were not professional dancers — just enthusiastic fans who had been asked if they wanted to be part of the show. I kept trying to meet the person in charge of wrangling these Kool Kids, and there kept being new reasons that was not possible.

The regular kids, on the other hand, were available and friendly throughout. In Rome, Dorca and Sara, two young members of a Måneskin fan club, saw my notebook and shot right over to tell me they loved the band because, as Sara put it, “they allow you to be yourself.” When asked whether they felt their culture was conservative in ways that prevented them from being themselves, Dorca — who was 21 and wearing eyeglasses that looked like part of her daily wardrobe and a mesh top that didn’t — said: “Maybe it turns out that you can be yourself. But you don’t know that at first. You feel like you can’t.”

Here lies the element of rock that functions independently from the economics of the industry or the shifting preferences of critics, the part that is maybe independent from time itself: the continually renewed experience of adolescence, of hearing and therefore feeling it all for the first time. But how disorienting must those feelings be when they have been fully monetized, fully sanctioned — when the response to your demand to rock ’n’ roll all night and party every day is, “Great, exactly, thank you.” In a culture where defying consensus is the dominant value, anything is possible except rebellion. It must be strange, in this post-everything century, to finally become yourself and discover that no one has any problem with that.

[maneskingroupie]

Your Biggest Fan (Thomas Raggi x f!reader)

A/N: I wrote this over the course of two days lol

Warnings: none except the mention of the ESC 2021 drug scandal

Word count: 956

It all started in 2015. You were a teenage exchange student living in Rome, and you had a few classmates who were in a band. They were just beginning their careers, but you could tell that they were going to be better as time passed. 

Somehow, though, you managed to befriend them: Victoria, the bassist; Damiano, the lead singer; Thomas, the guitarist; and Ethan, the drummer. Together, they were known as Måneskin, a nod to Victoria’s half Danish heritage. You were among their first fans, and you were around their age. Even when it was time to return home, you kept in touch with them on social media through Instagram and WhatsApp. You learned Roman phrases with them over text while at the airport in your home country and you still supported them, albeit from a distance.

You found them all to be rather cute, but Thomas in particular caught your eye. With his awkward teenage boy appearance, his braces and the long blonde hair covering his face, your teenage brain found him irresistible. Almost every day, when there was time between both of your schoolwork and when the time difference would allow it, you would talk with Thomas through texting. Reading his texts made you giggle and blush, like every teenage girl getting a reply from their crush. Except that he was now becoming an Italian celebrity, thanks to the band’s appearance on the Italian version of X Factor.

A few years passed, you and your international musician friends all graduated school, and now you were all grown up and ready to head out into the world. Flash forward to 2020, you’re trying to apply for an Italian visa so you could finally get together with your friends after talking about it for what seemed like ages now. Then covid hit, and it hit Italy hard. So, your plans were halted. But you kept up with them through texts and social media, like you had before. No big deal. 

However, something changed drastically in your world as things were getting back to normal. Thomas had posted a photo of himself with a woman, who you figured out was his girlfriend. This wasn’t really a shock, considering the other band members had relationships of their own as well. But seeing him with someone after talking to him all these years stung a little. But you moved on after seeing him so happy with her. 

By the time your visa was approved, it was time for Festival di Sanremo in Italy, and your beloved band and friends were competing in the televised festival. The night before the final day of Sanremo, you met up with your friends and caught up in person at a small restaurant. Chatting and light drinking ensued, and you kept staring at Thomas to the point where he kept asking you what was wrong. Each time that he caught you looking, you turned away and mumbled that you were just staring off into space and not looking at him. But the truth was that you had fallen head over heels with him once again after seeing his face in person. He was definitely no longer the awkward boy you had a little crush on all those years ago, and he had grown into a rather attractive young man. 

The next day, you were glued to the tv set in your hotel room, at the edge of your seat. The winners were being announced, and you waited with baited breath while watching your friends embrace each other and be embraced by their former X Factor judge, a rapper known as Fedez. 

Måneskin won. They won Sanremo. They would go on to Eurovision now. 

You were ecstatic for your contest winning friends, and now you could watch them compete in the biggest international musical competition in the world. It seemed so crazy that these guys were once the kids you saw in school talent shows, performing mostly cover songs. Now they had a new album out, a rage filled hard rock album that you loved the absolute hell out of. And now they had won Sanremo. 

The 2021 Eurovision Song Contest came closer and closer, and with each day, you could feel the excitement between them, you, and what seemed like every person on Earth, especially after they won the contest. The excitement didn’t stop at the victory and the growing international fanbase however, a drug scandal emerged. Damiano had to pick up a broken glass that Thomas had dropped and it appeared to look as if he was snorting cocaine. 

The controversy died down after Damiano’s drug test came back negative of course. You knew that a drug test would come back negative anyway, nobody in the band did any drugs. With the exception of cigarettes and alcohol, if you consider those to be drugs. 

Flash forward once again to the present day, less than a few months after Eurovision. Your visa is about to expire, so you plan on bidding your friends farewell again tomorrow. Suddenly, your phone goes off. It’s Thomas blowing up your messages. He’s asking about learning English, interviews, and telling you about the planned tour. You answer his texts with short replies. You tell him that it’s because you're busy packing your belongings in a suitcase, but in reality, it's not just that. Paparazzi photos of him and his girlfriend out and about on a date were published the previous day, and when you saw them, that stinging bitter feeling of jealousy came back. You knew that Thomas didn’t know about your feelings and therefore wasn’t trying to hurt you. Nor was the woman he was dating.

You slid your phone into your pocket and left the hotel room.

[mitamicah]

Two days ago I arrived home from the last of the See You Soon tour dates I will be attending and wow it was such a ride I have been pretty much walking in and out of existence and longingly daydreaming all day. So here’s my experience at the different gigs.

Tldr; Helsinki one was me in the seats – cozy first concert and bit of warmup for both me and the band – and Hojan!!; Helsinki two had much more energy and good vibes yet strict security made it so a few people had to almost faint before we got offered water… also I missed Jere by one and a half hours; Malmö was the one were I kept winning and I am still in awe this day even happened; Gothenburg was great especially for interactions between the members of the band although I wasn’t keen on the queue location.

Helsinki 1+2 I have decided to put these two together since they were at the same place and because I am very late to write this. I had seating tickets to the first show, so me and Anniina (@formulalakana) spend the day being käärijä city tourists in Vantaa. After that we went to Käbnb (I’d rented it for the weekend) and fanboyed some more over the apartment and wearing the bolero. Since the apartment was an hour away, we only just joined the queue right before opening of general entry at 5.50.

The show was great. If I am asked to describe it with one word, I’ll chose cozy which might seem like an odd word to use about a Joker Out show. In my defense I had been up since 4 am and had a whole day behind me of getting excited over käärijä stuff (also since I was staying at käbnb). I loved hearing the new songs (Sta Bih Ja and Bluza) live together with seeing Hojan join the encore. I was glad we got Metulji so we could use the cute little butterflies we got from people at the queue to hold up in the air (it was really quite pretty from the back). I remember thinking how Jan must’ve been warm in his furcoat on stage and that I appreciated the little hints back to Stozice with the outfits like Nace’s leg chain.

Tbh I mostly just took this gig as a warmup where I filmed lots of the songs and took in the vibe, now that I couldn’t really jump around myself. The guys might have needed time to get back into touring because I talked with some people yesterday that agreed that the band had been great if a little held back on the first day.

On the second day I joined the queue around 10.10. It was amazing meeting up with old and new faces. Everybody got so excited about being gifted stickers that I ran out a few hours before lining up for the queue started. In turn I got so many nice wristbands as well I think I managed to beat the record of most bracelets gifted to me in a day which had been Berlin previously.

Today’s vibe was completely different; there was way more energy from the stage and from the crowd, the latter possibly because I was in the pit this time, four rows from the stage. I had decided to wear my häärijä suit for the occasion together with a little Danish flag that I kept waving in the air. I was with a strong Nace girlie so we had placed ourselves by Nace and Jan. She got a few genuine smiles and nods from the bassist.

Katrina was a good opening song and while I haven’t listened much to Galaxy of Me/Behind Those Eyes/Schlager since hearing it live I remember enjoying it quite nicely. Padam was gorgeous as a piano ballad! Nace looked adorable in his glasses and holed blouse, and I enjoyed Kris’ outfit a lot. However the pit did get quite hot at one point so a few people around seemed to be feint and the security guards didn’t want to give us water until we directly cried out for help then they suddenly wanted to give us all the water we could muster. Other than that the experience was great! I felt my stomach drop hard at one point and I realized it was because Bojan’s eyes were locked with mine for solid five seconds. I loved that we got Kris bullied into singing NVGOT for the encore.

I felt almost as a celebrity when people complemented my häärijä cosplay (or Dojan as somebody later called me; the Danish Hojan). I even got asked for an autograph where I had to break it to them that I wasn’t the “real deal” yet they still wanted the autographs for the funsies.

After the concert a good portion of people collected outside by the tourbus and played Everybody’s Waiting over and over. I joined for a time yet felt ambivalent about it all given I could imagine how intimidating it must be for the band seeing such a big group of people standing around like this. Anniina suggested we catch the last bus home around 0.30 and I agreed it was probably for the best. The bus at the Pasilla station didn’t want to open its doors for me although I stood with my face more or less on the door window so I had to wait for another less convenient bus that left me gliding and sliding on ice home for 1,5 km. That together with learning the next day that had I waited one and a half hours more I could’ve met not only Bojan and Jan, but Jere soured my mood a bit I must admit. I bought myself the 3xl käärijä shirt that was offered as a nightgown and went to gift Jere his little gift (Helsinki sticker and Bojere keychain) but got lost so I had to hand in the letter at the Warner Bros Studios instead of the käärijä fanmail box – for this reason I am not sure if Jere will ever get it sadly.

All in all some great concerts although what I think I mostly will remember this trip for was the amount of käärijä related firsts that I got (first time seeing the mural, first time tasting oddly good, first time trying on the bolero, you name it) together with the joker out firsts as well (first concert, first time hearing the new songs etc. etc.)

Trinkets from the Helsinki shows including doodle from @ya-boi-joule , wrapping paper @formulalakana was so kind to buy and safe for me, merch and the many lovely bracelets and stickers :D Not shown here are the cool sparklative pin that @hazzybat made (and the cute kangaroo keychain I also got from Haz) together with the homemade Bojan earring I've basically worn nonstop since xD

Malmö I had thought about adding the two Sweden shows together but honestly the vibes were too different for me to do so.

I had gotten early entry to Malmö, so I had probably put way too much weight on making this gig the best of the bunch. For this reason, I woke up at 4 so I could be at the venue around 9. I was met by the oddest and most chill queue I have ever seen. By now point were we more than 15-20 people present before the line was formed at 5. I had been fairly certain that the only of my many goals (x) I would be able to accomplish would be gifting all my stickers away but spoilers; that didn’t happen.

At soundcheck I managed to get second row in the middle between Bojan and Kris (very strategic of me since two of my goals were related to Bojan and Kris respectfully). Having told quite a few people in the queue about my dream of getting Bojan to see my sign I had so many eyes on me cheering me on that I didn’t hesitate to throw my silly sign in the air. Bojan hesitated even less and agreed immediately (I might do another post about the whole experience with the tattoo when I have it done). In return I gave him the pencilcase full of gift and he looked at it confused until he read the little sign and said with a smile ‘gifts :D’. So that was two of the goals I had been so scared I wouldn’t in a million years be able to accomplish and the show hadn’t even started. When he later got down to slide his hand over ours I ended up being the awkward boy in the room going for a handshake (don’t know what I was thinking tbh) so instead Bojan held his hand in mind so gently for like a minute and locked eyes with me. Safe to say I was on cloud nine after that soundcheck.

The energy that had been great in Helsinki day 2 was somehow even better in Malmö! The band was fully on and so were we in the crowd. Jure wore what looked like a simplified Stozice shirt aka just a harness with a diamond down his chest. Kris and Bojan complimented each other, one wearing blue pants and the other a blue shirt and then the other way around with white shirt and white pants.

We started out strong with Sunny Side of London which I honestly hadn’t expected given I hadn’t heard it in Helsinki at all (and I haven’t looked too much into the setlist of the other dates). But that was not all: We got the demoni scream!! And NVGOT!! Padam was gorgeous as a piano ballad yet again. Me and Bojan held eye contact while screaming the bridge to Bluza together. So many different versions of Umazane Misli was sung including a version from both the people next to me that I had bonded with in the queue!! (that made me go into proud dad mode and gave me tons of dopamine seeing them win as well). We even got Bojan rapping the chorus himself from the middle of the crowd!! Fittingly he was given a crown by a fan immediately after. My last piece of Bojan eye contact came during Novi Val where I have on video him looking for five seconds at my phone and tapping his mic to his chest which threw me off for a bit rushing to make him a heart back.

Honestly this whole show was peak to me already before leaving the venue. Yet as I’d been the whole day, I was a man with a mission and now the mission was to gift away the last stickers. This quest let me to talk to Hearts, the supporting act (these guys were chill and cool as well) together with accidentally be close by when Kiki came out with two free setlists where I then ran to get one of them. What I remember most vividly was everybody I showed the setlist too being annoyed at ASTP being replaced by Sta Bih Jah and fair.

We were a small group of people that met up afterwards just to chill. At this point I didn’t even know where the tour bus was, so I didn’t expect to see the guys at all. Yet at some point one pointed out Jan walking by and me high on everything that had already happened had no shame and shouted ‘great concert :D’ at him where his response was a ‘thank you :D’ back.

It turned out that not 20 minutes later I spied Bojan in the corner of my eye down the hill where we were standing and wanting to thank him for the tattoo I went down there. I gave him a tight hug shaking a bit from everything and we ‘are you’ed each other for what felt like 30 seconds to a minute. He told me that he recognized me from Helsinki in the yellow suit and at that point I was ready to melt then and there. Bojan was just so easy and lovely to talk to I can see why Jere and so many others fall for him.

Going back up to the rest of the folk we noticed Jan and Kris hanging out, but Kris had to go when I got there. Nace stayed and we got a long talk about his turtles which meant lots of new turtle lore. I loved feeling how great of a turtle dad he is from the way he was talking about them, and I felt connected to him in the way he too speaks a lot with his hands. After Nace Jan turned up to speak to us yet I had a bit of a harder time talking to him maybe because we both can be a bit distracted (me mostly by Jure standing in a colourful sweater and smoking by the tour bus). He agreed to us taking turns taking pictures and getting hugs which was nice.

On my way home from the venue I had to record all my experiences which turned into me babbling only semi sensical at a camera for almost 3 minutes letting my legs show me the way home. I was surprised to find I didn’t get lost. I was not at all surprised to see I was close to tears in the video footage.

Trinkets from Malmö including my sign and Bojan's handwriting, the setlist and more <3

Gothenburg I only arrived at 2 o’clock for the queue given the bus I’d been able to get from Malmö. It was a bit colder than yesterday and the queuing space way less cozy being a parking lot with the bus behind a caged fence and us just outside the fence compared to the nice little park with the tourbus out of sight in Malmö. I did manage to get a wave from a person I am pretty sure was Bojan (my stomach dropped like it did in Helsinki as well so I guess this is how I recognize Bojan from now on xD).

I began doodle a bit for people and getting back into the queue vibe when I noticed the time; I had to go throw my stuff at the hotel, so I had a place to sleep and because the venue had a bag ban. I managed to get lost and curse myself for not paying extra for a closer hotel when walking around the construction heavy central station. It turned out the hotel I’d booked was a boat which I find cool (and fitting given the whole titanic thing with Bojere).

Being lost I ended up going on a tiny side quest to ICA and buy the käärijä youghurt. It tasted pretty okay (I ate it in the queue later)! I prefer dreamy lemon tho (my breakfast in Helsinki). I arrived in the nick of time because just 20 minutes later the lines were formed. Now being forced to stand close to the fence we managed to catch glimpses of the fan running back and forth (especially Jure) but none of us said anything. One person I was with told me about Jure being cornered by a fan and forced to flee into the tourbus only to be followed and to be honest that story was the cherry on cake for me; the rest of the night I found myself being in overempathetic mode to the point of later masking and stepping away when being afraid of invading somebody’s space.

The concert was great especially when it comes to gifts given to the guys and the interactions between the guys as well. I especially loved Jance’s dance during Umazane Misli (that today were mostly Swedish versions) and Bojan gently caressing Kris’ cheek to get his attention. Jure also got some action going on with the two guitarists joining in on both sides of the drumset and Bojan vibing when Bluza was playing. I really enjoyed Kris and Jan in yellow especially Kris with blondes down his arms. Everybody got tons of sunglasses, Jan got a Teletubbies hairband, Kris a crown (he threw off real fast after just one song) and Jure got a few bracelets he gently took from the hands of the people in the crowd during Novi Val (that was the one time he seemed to get eye contact with us at all – I still felt very bad).

The setlist wasn’t too different from Malmö but with Gola replacing SSOL (nice full circle moment for me since Gola also opened my first ever JO show and the first on the whole tour aka Helsinki 1), Metulji replacing Padam, NVGOT being skipped, and Katrina moved up the setlist (maybe there were more changes but that is what I recall). I seemed to have tons of eye contact yet again with the Bojan even more than the other three days combined. And that was despite being a bit farther away this time almost at the edge by Kris yet pretty close to the barricade (third row) all things considered. Once again, he gently held my hand. This time it happened during the show where he let his hand jump over a (tiny) sea of other hands to rest his in mind and he winked at me. I had to happy stim after that which is oddly not something I do a lot at shows. When Mira next to me was invited to do her choreography for UM on stage I got another rush of dopamine (Idk why I get these proud father feelings for people I’ve only just meant; I was just so happy for her).

We were a group that hung out by the venue afterwards; it was bigger than Malmö but smaller than Helsinki 2. Still big enough that my overly sensitive empathy today felt bad for being there. At the same time, I wanted to cool my nerves down after being boosted with all that dopamine. As time went on I also grew stubborn and didn’t want to repeat Helsinki 2 where I had moved home too early.

When it looked like we’d only wave at the bus today, Nace came out to the cage to say hi. At first, he seemed uncomfortable especially with how he tensed up laughing. He loosened up seeing the amazing Joker Out inspired jackets some fans had made and almost gave them both a heart attack asking for pictures of the jackets.

After that he came out to us on the other side of the fence, and we talked about the silliest topics like what signature picture pose each member have (sadly I forgot to ask about Nace’s own go to pose). I gave him a very rushed doodle of himself doing Jan’s pose (I had cold hands and wouldn’t risk him going away) and he got so genuinely excited for it my heart melted a bit.

Jan also joined yet only after Nace had gone and just before me and some others were on our way home, so we sneaked back again to chat. He was wearing his scarf as a hat so of course I had to draw and gift him a doodle like that. He too seemed genuinely happy for it. We gushed about the new songs and spread the ‘come to Denmark’ propaganda (we were two danes amongst others). Today I felt it was easier to talk to Jan. He was very nice and polite and open. We went away after Jan had said goodnight so I don’t know if any other of the guys came out to say hello. I couldn’t argue with my sense of being the crazy fan stepping over an invisible line anymore (even after dad Nace had told me that – like yesterday – he would not chose to come out and say hi if he felt uncomfortable so I shouldn’t worry … right before then saying the most people-pleaser thing like ‘I felt bad for you waiting in the cold’ so I don’t know how to interpret the two messages I got there. I guess Nace is right tho; he himself knows best what he is comfortable with and after all we were all nice and respectful).

Trinkets including the tour shirt (finally got it after three attempts) and the k youghurt

Fun fact about the blue flower bracelet: It was thrown to me by a crew member after Hearts' set - I didn't know what he had but I nodded to him when he asked with his eyes if somebody wanted the thing and so I was pleasantly surprised to see how pretty a bracelet it is. I have no idea who it was originally meant for x'D

[leviabeat]

From VolbeatSpirits.com

Written by Ryan J. Downey

Before he became the singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter in Volbeat, teenaged Michael Poulsen loved potent music (from heavy metal to rockabilly) and drinking socially. While building an English-style pub in his basement as an adult (which friends describe as “like something out of Peaky Blinders”), Michael discovered a deeper fondness for whiskey and the sense memories it can conjure.

“I was opening all these boxes and deciding what to put on the shelves and what to throw out,” he remembers. “I opened a bottle, took a sip, and my mind just flew away. Suddenly, I was six years old again, on the moped with my dad, going to pick corn for the birds he kept at home. I could taste and smell the grass, green apples, and pears on the trees. I looked at the bottle, and it was a very old Irish whiskey. After that, I wanted to know everything about what makes Irish whiskey so special.”

Plenty of rock stars and celebrities are content to simply slap a label on something. However, as demonstrated by Volbeat’s premium rums, that doesn’t cut it for Poulsen and his bandmates, including bassist and backing vocalist Kasper Boye Larsen and cofounding drummer Jon Larsen.

“At the regular corner supermarkets, they just have one brand, and it’s so terrible I wouldn’t even polish my bike with it,” explains Poulsen. “I couldn’t understand why getting good Irish whiskey around the world was so difficult. You must really know where to go. After making a lot of rum, I thought it would be a great challenge for someone to make an Irish whiskey with a Danish band.”

Enter the Great Northern Distillery, the largest independent distillery in Ireland.

Thanks to its proximity to the pure waters of the Cooley Mountains, brewing began in earnest in the historic Town of Dundalk in the late 1600s. The Great Northern Distillery operates on the former Great Northern Brewery site in Dundalk, Co. Louth; the original brewery on site was in 1896. The inaugural three-year-old Irish whiskey the Great Northern Distillery produced came of age in 2018.

The late Brian Watts, master distiller and general manager at GND worked with Michael on the original blends for what became Outlaw Gentlemen. (Sadly, Watts passed away in late 2022.) Distiller, blender, and Head of Commercial Operations Brian Mongan saw the final product through.

“We went for a walk of the distillery and saw how they were working, then sat down at a table and started talking,” Poulsen remembers. Over time, samples arrived in Denmark from Ireland. “Brian Mongan really did an amazing job helping me find the right casks, barrels, and everything for this.”

Mongan remembers the collaborative process fondly. “Some people might say, ‘Oh, that guy didn’t make the whiskey himself.’ But Michael was very active in the direction of where the finished product went. A Michelin-star chef collects the best ingredients and assembles them. They don’t necessarily farm the animals and grow the vegetables. With a blended whiskey, you’re essentially pulling levers with flavor, pulling one thing back to accentuate something else. That’s one of our core competencies as a company: we distill, we mature, and we also produce whiskey blends.”

Poulsen describes the process as not unlike songwriting. “I write songs that I want to listen to, using all the elements, inspirations, and tastes I want to put into the music. It can be very detailed or straightforward. It’s the same with whiskey, figuring out what you like the best. Do it with heart.”

Ultimately, it was important for the Outlaw Gentlemen blends to capture that same immersion Michael experienced when a single sip sent him back into a fond childhood memory. “It’s a very personal whiskey. I wanted to have that feeling of being on my dad’s moped again. Everyone can come on a journey drinking it beyond just getting drunk. Great Irish whiskey can do that for you. ‘Oh my God, I’m back at my grandmother’s house. I recognize this smell.’ It’s beautiful.”

Like Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies (the multi-platinum album from which it takes its name) and everything bearing their name, Volbeat crafted Outlaw Gentleman with passion, intention, and authenticity.

[dustedmagazine]

Human Being Human — Disappearance (April)

Human Being Human is a Danish trio led by double bassist Torben Bjørnskov with Esben Tjalve on piano and Fredrik Bülow on drums. Disappearance is the group’s second release, coming just a year after Equals. Bjørnskov, who has appeared with luminaries such as Billy Cobham, offers up a set of eight mid-length and largely slow to mid-tempo original compositions that sound simultaneously well-rehearsed and spontaneous. From an initial slap of a cymbal, tinkle of piano, or burble of bass, the tunes develop organically, with occasional martial beats giving way to gentle reveries and picking up pace again or staccato chords and percussion marking the transitions. Also crucial to their sound, the members of the group know how to hang back and make full use of the spaces among the notes.

These musicians have clearly logged a lot of practice and stage time together and learned how to play off of each other. Bjørnskov’s bass alternately provides counterpoint to the piano and locks in with Bülow’s tasteful percussion as well as providing some nice solos, as on the title track and the ballad “Together Again.” Tjalve has a sensitive touch that keeps him from dominating the sound, as keyboards sometimes do in small groups, and his meditative approach well suits the compositions. The leader also brings in electronics at times, such as on “When You Find It, You Will Know,” that add a little diversity to the sound without distracting from the overall mood.

Over all, Human Being Human contribute to what has been an excellent year for piano trios (other, quite different, examples covered by Dusted recently include Vicente Archer’s Short Stories and Vertical Motion by Anthony Davis, Kyle Motl, and Kjell Nordeson). Disappearance offers a nice balance between gentle melodic passages and moments that demand the listener’s attention. The title, according to the liner notes, refers to anxiety about the fleeting nature of life, but these Danes do not sound melancholy.

Jim Marks

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 8.31

Beer Birthdays

Johanna Heileman (1831)

Theo Flissebaalje (1949)

Michael J. Ferguson (1953)

Five Favorite Birthdays

James Coburn; actor (1928)

Van Morrison; Irish singer (1945)

Frank Robinson; Baltimore Orioles OF, manager (1935)

Glenn Tilbrook; English singer, songwriter (1957)

Gary Webb; journalist (1955)

Famous Birthdays

Richard Basehart; actor (1914)

Julie Brown; comedian, actor (1954)

Agnes Bulmer; English poet & author (1775)

Caligula; Roman emperor (12 B.C.E.)

Eldridge Cleaver; activist (1935)

Roger Dean; English illustrator, artist (1944)

Lowell Ganz; screenwriter (1948)

Richard Gere; actor (1949)

Debbie Gibson; pop singer (1970)

Arthur Godfrey; actor (1903)

Buddy Hackett; comedian, actor (1924)

Georg Jensen; Danish silversmith (1866)

György Károly; Hungarian poet and author (1953)

Foghorn Leghorn; cartoon rooster (1946)

Alan Jay Lerner; lyricist (1918)

Helen Levitt; photographer & cinematographer (1913)

Bernard Lovell; English astronomer (1913)

Fredric March; actor (1897)

Jean-Paul-Égide Martini; French composer (1741)

Maria Montessori; educator (1870)

Edwin Moses; olympic runner (1955)

Itzhak Perlman; violinist (1945)

Hugh David Politzer; physicist (1949)

Amilcare Ponchielli; classical composer (1834)

William Saroyan; writer (1908)

Montgomery "Scotty" Scott; Star Trek character (2222)

G.D. Spradlin; actor (1920)

Anthony Thistlethwaite; English saxophonist & bassist (1955)

Chris Tucker; actor (1972)

Bob Welch; singer & guitarist (1945)

Herbert Wise; Austrian-English director (1924)

Raymond Williams; Welsh author (1921)

[rhythm-catsandwine]

Pride Colors

Pink for being attracted to another guy. Blue for being attracted to girls. Purple for all genders. It was the colors of the flag hung up in HQ. It wasn’t the vegetarian that put it up. The little Danish drummer boy didn’t put it up either. No one thought it was the one that looked like the orange cat. Most thought it was the gentle giant of a bassist. 

It was a regular-size flag, but surrounding it were pictures. Eventually, the entire wall would be filled from corner to corner. Some from the ’80s and some from the ’90s somehow made it up first. They were the random ones random people took. Pictures from those with cameras chasing celebrities. But those cameras were oblivious to what was hidden right in front of their lenses. Crew and bandmates took all the rest. 

“Hey, they’re another one!” Kirk tapped the photo with his finger. “ Rember when that one was taken?”

“Yea after that you had the best sex of your life.” Lars kissed him on the cheek. 

“I thought it was the other way.”  A finger jabbed him on the hip. “ Then there was that one.” Kirk pointed to another one. “You had been as ass the entire day.”

“But I’m your ass.”

“Yeah, but you can be really sweet too.” 

“I’m a sweet ass.”

Master post and Ao3

[allmusic]

AllMusic Staff Pick: Bremer/McCoy Utopia

There are some albums that beg to be listened to from beginning to end in one sitting; Brian Eno's Music for Airports, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians come to mind. The fourth album (and Luaka Bop debut) from Danish instrumentalists Bremer/McCoy, 2019's Utopia, is also one of those albums. Featuring the talents of bassist Jonathan Bremer and keyboardist/tape delay artist Morten McCoy, Utopia showcases the duo's instrumentally expansive, often hypnotic jazz-, dub-, and classical-influenced sound. - Matt Collar

[n0rdic-kn1ght]

Introduction of myself! ✨🧚‍♀️⚔️🍃🌙🎶

Hello! My name is Lauren Phantom. I am 18 years old, and I am a singer, guitarist, and bassist. I write hard rock/heavy metal based off of medieval themes, or based off of my Nordic, and Danish Viking ancestors. I also love to draw, and write. I originally was on Instagram, but I decided to start posting here instead, because I feel the community is much better here, and Instagram has really gone to shit, honestly.

My main interests besides music, art, and writing are Pokémon, Castlevania, Berserk, Vinland Saga, Disenchantment, spirituality, witchcraft, history, reading, fashion, horror, makeup, cooking/baking, and more.

I hope to be able to share things with like-minded people, and I hope to possibly make some friends. I do have a YouTube channel, as well, and I plan on uploading there, as soon as I can.

[zombiefiilm]

— about me

— my names hazen and i’m 19

— she/her

— i’m trilingual (dutch, english and danish) and i’m from the netherlands

— i’m the singer and bassist in a band !!

— i love writing a lot and im co-editor of my uni’s paper :)

— my interests are criminal minds, car seat headrest, midwest emo bands, johnnie guilbert, jake webber, + more

— please feel free to dm me i want friends :D

[krispyweiss]

Grateful Dead Meetup at the Movies Returns from Pandemic Hiatus

- Denmark 4/17/72 finds band not blowing a big gig

Infamous for choking on the biggest stages, the Grateful Dead nevertheless stepped up for their first major television broadcast and Denmark’s inaugural televised concert.

It took place April 17, 1972, and the captured-on-video portions of the performance - 90 minutes; 13 songs - show the band in playful, yet serious, form.

The never-seen-in-America gig screened Nov. 1 in select cinemas as Grateful Dead Meetup at the Movies returned for the first time since 2019. In a pre-recorded greeting, band archivist David Lemieux said it should continue as an annual event for the foreseeable future.

On the playful side, the musicians don their famous Europe ’72 Bozo masks during “Big Railroad Blues,” though Jerry Garcia doffs his before digging into a searing solo. Bob Weir acknowledges the cameras with goofy faces. And bassist Phil Lesh leads the guitarists in a round of on-mic gibberish in complaining about balky monitors.

Then there’s the music; sweet, serious music.

Pigpen, on his final tour with the band, comes front and center armed with his harp for a lowdown “It Hurts Me Too,” with Garcia on slide, and “Next Time You See Me.” He remains seated behind his organ, with a Steal Your Face logo draped over the front, for the rollicking “Chinatown Shuffle;” taken together, these performances make the viewer wonder how the Dead’s long, strange trip might have unfolded if the man born Ron McKernan hadn’t died at 27.

Pigpen brought the blues. Weir took them to the country, offering Marty Robbins’ “El Paso,” highlighted by Garcia’s constant scribbling, and Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee” to the Danish fans.

In the band less than a year, pianist Keith Godchaux already sounds like he’d been there forever. His wife, background singer Donna Jean Godchaux - who’d just joined - doesn’t appear in the film.

The Dead used this TV appearance to play the first “He’s Gone” - it’s fast with no vocal coda - and early versions of never-recorded-in-studio tracks such as “Ramble on Rose” and “Jack Straw;” the latter sung entirely by Weir at this stage of its development.

Though they would overdub harmony vocals for the resultant Europe ’72 album, the Dead - specifically Garcia, Weir and Lesh - sing pretty well on this evening.

And when it’s time to rock ‘n’ roll, Weir brings that, too, with a purposeful version of “Truckin’” - replete with muffed vocals - and a screaming “One More Saturday Night,” which finds entourage member Rosie McGee dancing onstage as if no one was watching.

Of course, the young hippies of Denmark were turned on, tuned in and watching. And you can, too; the two-nights-only event returns to select theaters Nov. 5.

There’s nothing like a Grateful Dead Meetup at the Movies.

11/2/22

[burlveneer-music]

Lotus "Synthbuljong" - NOT the Philly/Denver jam band of the same name, the latest LP from El Paraiso Records is like the second coming of Last Exit! Same instrumentation and same aggressive free-jazz approach, but not an imitation as the players all have their own distinctive styles.

Lotus is led by the rhythmic prowess of percussionist Olaf Olsen (Fra Det Onde, Needlepoint). Olaf joins forces with electric bassist Chris Holm (Orions Belte, Sondre Lerches band) as well as Norwegian-based Danish alto saxophonist Signe Emmeluth. Finalising the line-up is electric guitarist Karl Bjorå, known for his unique sonic creations - such as making his guitar oscillate like a synthesizer! Pulling momentum from the individual members’ diverse backgrounds in psychedelic rock, pop, jazz and improvisational music, Lotus creates a sound that transcends genre boundaries. "Synthbuljong," their debut album, brilliantly captures the band's vibrant energy. Recorded partially during one of their electrifying concerts in Bergen, Lotus intentionally incorporated the live experience seamlessly into the album. From the raw Coltrane-meets-Sonic Youth energy of the opening track, to the serene and contemplative atmosphere of "Ballade", the album takes the listener on a trip. The collaborative synergy of the musicians blend seamlessly in the seventeen-minute opus, “Synthgitar," pushing the boundaries of sonic exploration. The group taps into a Scandinavian history of high-powered, multi-cultural free jazz, but goes off on their own contemporary tangent. This is the kind of music that demands surrender from the listener - just lean back and let the lush, organic sound of Lotus wash over you. Includes liner notes by Audun Vinger. File next to: Don Cherry, Sonny Sharrock, Chris Corsano, Chicago Underground Duo

[volbeatmerch]

Volbeat Merch

Volbeat Are A Danish Rock Band Formed In Copenhagen In 2001. They Play A Fusion Of Rock And Roll And Heavy Metal. Their Current Line-up Consists Of Vocalist And Rhythm Guitarist Michael Poulsen, Drummer Jon Larsen, And Bassist Kaspar Boye Larsen. Discover Why Volbeat Merch Is A Must-have For Any Fan Of The Danish Rock Band. Explore Popular Merchandise Options Like T-shirts, Hoodies, And Signed Vinyl Records. Buy Volbeat Merch Here! #volbeatmerch #volbeatmerchandise

Volbeat Merchandise Volbeat Merch Store Volbeat Merch Shop Volbeat Official Merchandise Volbeat Tour Merch Volbeat Merch Uk Volbeat Band Merch Official Volbeat Merch Store New Volbeat Merch Shop Volbeat Merch 2024 Volbeat Merch Long Sleeve Volbeat Merch Women's Tee Volbeat Merch Hoodie Volbeat Merch T Shirt Volbeat Merch Shirt

[mitamicah]

7, 17, and 38!!!!!

Eyyyy, hi Blu :D!!

7. what bands/artists have you seen in concert?

Quite a few tbh :'D but of bands people might know I've seen System of a Down, Green Day (4 or 5 times), All Time Low (4 times?), Prophets of Rage, Rob Zombie, Alter Bridge, Rammstein, Avenged Sevenfold, Nightwish, Kraftwerk, A Day to Remember, Ed Sheeran (2 or 3 times *ones where I got to take pictures with my bigass camera*), Of Monsters And Men, FIDLAR, Flogging Molly, ONE OK ROCK (twice), Lindsey Stirling, Lord of the Lost...

And yes, many more I cannot recall x'D

17. what song in your playlist sounds like this 💖❤️🥰🤩💘💕 but the lyrics are 🖤🩸⛓💣🗡🪨

This one again x'D (sorry for the reaction, it is just the third time I got this question x'D) luckily there's enough fluffy angst songs out there x'D

Who wants to hear a danish song for this :3?

Okay I am not sure if it fits the 'fluffy' aesthetic but it is quite vibey ^V^ It is called Evelyn by Julie Maria and it is about a girl who is walking down a dark and lonely road after having all of her dreams crushed - I swear I am sane x'D

38. did one of your favorite bands/artists do a cover???? tell me about it!!!

They did :3 All Time Low have made quite a few but I especially dig their Blinding Lights cover :D!!! It is pretty close to the original but with guitars and I approve of that decision x'D

Green Day too have also made a lot of covers :3 Two songs that are almost always found on their setlist, Shout and Knowledge, are covers x'D Shout is fun since it comes after this song about dressing in drag so often the entire band will be dressed in boas, bras and big hats x'D

Knowledge is an old punk song from the 80s that was popular at the local scene where Billie Joe and Mike (singer and bassist respectively) grew up - the band [Operation Ivy] sadly didn't live more than a couple of years but Green Day keeps the song alive and even asks the crowd if anybody knows it then getting a lucky person on stage to play the song and then they often are gifted the guitar they played on :'D (can you tell I've been very big fan of these guys and their antics for years x'D?) hahahah