marks.dk
Roskilde Recap
Seeing that I misread the itinerary for my trip to Berlin that will not happen today, but tomorrow, I find myself with time to do a recap of Roskilde Festival anno 2010.
It’s the seventh time I visited the land of Dusty Piss, and it was both a very familiar visit, and a completely new experience. Familiar because I visited with old friends I only see at Roskilde, and, let’s face it, nothing really changes at Roskilde.
On the other hand, something had changed. I don’t know if it’s me getting older, or Roskilde growing up, but it seems much more of a restrictive playground now, instead of being the anarchistic melting pot I remember it to be previously. Lots of people have moaned and groaned about the new prohibition against bringing your own beers to the festival site (not camping site, mind you).
Who the fuck ever brought beer to the festival site? You cut open a 1.5 litre bottle and filled it with two bottles of vodka and whatever juice you could find room for. I don’t mind Roskilde wants to make money (they donate the profit to charities anyway), but it seems that the youngsters who used to drink magic liquids had to stand in line with everybody else for beer. That is a problem.
Also, the food was better than ever. I had quite a few salmon sandwiches with fresh-baked bread, cabbage, dill and a lovely dressing. And what’s wrong with that? Everything’s wrong with that. You’re supposed to eat canned foods, lousy bread and season with leftover weed.
It’s getting nicer and nicer, and on one hand I love it, but it’s bringing Roskilde to a level where it shouldn’t be.
[Old man rant/appreciation over]
The music program this year didn’t impress me before the festival, and it didn’t impress me while I was there. But that’s not to say there weren’t great music to be heard:
Thursday:
Electrojuice – 5/6
The guys are 16 and 17 years old and they stirred up a party like few others could do it. Deeply impressed.
When Saints Go Machine – 4/6
It’s difficult to be an upcoming band and awaken all of Roskilde from Orange Stage, but they did a good job and people seemed to like it. On the other hand, it couldn’t be worse than Petter or Teitur who’ve been opening acts the last two years. (How Roskilde Festival can deem them “upcoming Danish acts” have always baffled me.)
LCD Soundsystem – 5/6
Hot, steamy, overcrowded. Biggest misplacement of the year (Cosmopol has room for 6000 – LCD needed Arena’s 17000!). But it was a great concert anyway, though I never even saw the band.
Gorillaz – 4/6
Everytime they got a rhythm going with a few upbeat songs in a row, they’d slow the concert down to a halt. It sounded amazing, and the band is incredibly tight live — it just doesn’t work when you break the flow continuously.
Friday:
Baron Criminel – 5/6
Biggest surprise of the year. Kristian Leth from The William Blakes has made a project that focus on Haitian voodoo and the rhythms associated with the religion. Combined with Troels Abrahamsen on “electronics” and Kresten Osgood on everything he could get his hands on, they succeeded in mesmerizing an otherwise sleepy Cosmopol stage on an early Friday afternoon. Incredibly hard task, but to me they succeeded, though I’ve heard many others didn’t like it. Comes down to taste, I guess.
Florence + The Machine – 2/6
They are the new Evanescence. Listening to Florence Welch sing for an hour is about 50 minutes too long. She’s incredibly talented, but combined with a sound volume way too low, it just became monotonous and annoying to listen to.
Delphic – 3/6
Incredibly talented guys, and I love their record. However, it just wasn’t their day, even though they tried with all their might and power to convince people to rock out.
Health – 1/6
I recognize the attraction of punk in a small, sweaty room with 50 people going nuts. However, a band that isn’t really focused on which kind of style they want to play (or project at least) just doesn’t cut it for me. Their drummer was incredibly talented, though.
Tech N9ne – 4/6
He was there. He rapped. He did well, but I don’t remember anything other than the lyrics to “I’m a player”.
Den Sorte Skole – 5/6
They had the difficult task of playing 40 years of music from artists that have performed at Roskilde in two hours. We heard everything from Neil Young to Bob Marley and Kraftwerk to Malk de Koijn and what we heard was good. Seeing a sea of lighters to the sounds of Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” was a moment to remember, but again they got the flow going and kept interrupting it — instead of just building up the tension throughout the concert with a few bursts in between. A shame, because that might have made it a legendary act, instead of just a great experience.
Saturday:
Kings of Convenience – 4/6
It doesn’t get more hipster than Erlend Øye, and they did a great job of delivering a sleepy, dreamy experience to the tired festival-goers. However, I ended up liking the stories and cover version of Leslie Gore’s “It’s my party” much more than their own music in the end.
FM Belfast – 5/6
They entered the stage dressed in suits and bow ties and ended up in their underwear and shirts in the end. A full-on party in the middle of the afternoon with good music, but fucking amazing energy. I haven’t seen a band in many, many years that openly enjoyed playing as much as FM Belfast. They smiled at each other, joked with the audience and generally spread a lot of joy. Even a cranky old bastard as myself ended up with a big fat smile on the face.
Brother Ali
Only heard a few songs, but it was great, and I hope to catch the freestylin’ albino another time. You should too.
Kashmir – 3/6
I used to be one of their biggest fans, but I really don’t like the new album. It’s boring and incredibly monotonous. They’ll do better in the end, I hope.
Turboweekend – 4/6
Great live-band that only gets better and better each time I see them. Silas Bjerregaard is one of the best lead singers in any Danish upcoming band, and it’s a joy to experience it live. How they go from a great concert to a magnificent one, I don’t know. They do everything they can, and it’s great, but still lacks whatever it is that takes it to the next level. I really hope their next album is a homerun — they need a few more songs as good as “Trouble Is” and “Something or Nothing”.
Robyn – 5/6
How she transformed herself into the new Madonna is beyond me. Instead of taking the crap pop-route, she now rules the intersection between house-y, electronic, dubstepping, dancehall’ing pop music. It’s not as extreme as M.I.A., but broader appealing. And that’s not a bad thing, mind you.
The Prodigy – 2/6
They get the two stars for “Firestarter” and “Smack My Bitch Up”.
Matias Aguayo – 4/6
Chilean/German house act signed to Kompakt featuring live vocals and lots of fun and gags. Great warmup for Moderat.
Moderat – 6/6
The only act that moved beyond great and into the realm of “fantastic”. It might have been because of the time slot at almost 3 in the morning, or the general exhaustion, but it was rough, hard and loud. Modeselektor in itself is really good, and Apparat is great, but it’s only when you combine the strong beats and the flickering sounds you reach beyond it. I can’t wait to hear more of their new stuff.
Sunday:
Local Natives – 4/6
Slight problems with hitting the high notes, but in general a great band with lovely songs. I hope I get to hear them again when they have even more to offer, and not at a festival.
The National – 5/6
I listened to “Boxer” about a year ago and didn’t like it. I don’t know why, but I recall finding it a bit boring. Then I saw a stop motion movie which used “Slow Show” as the background music and fell in love. “High Violet” taught me how to listen to The National, and now I find “Boxer” almost as good. I guess you just have to let it lie for a bit before being able to unlock it. If I didn’t like The National before I saw them live, I’m not sure I’d have liked them afterwards. Matt Berninger’s voice is low-pitched and melancholic until he suddenly runs amok and screams like a madman. It’s perfect in any way, but I’m not sure they get many fans out of their concerts. They do treat their fans, however, and it was quite the experience to see him jump the stage and run into the crowd.
Prince – 4/6
When Prince plays the guitar and sings the hits we all know and love, it’s perfect in every way. Seeing him live is like being able to say you saw James Brown or Michael Jackson before they passed away — and I’m happy I had the chance to do so. That just makes it even more sad that he feels the need to have his choir ladies sing gospels while he exits the stage for 15 minutes. It dragged on for way too long, and I felt that the time was better spent in the company of Prince than his backup musicians.
tl;dr
Not much anarchy, but great food. Music was decent, but it desperately lacked the special stuff that would take it from being just “great”, to an otherworldly experience.
Make it swing
Apple call the iPad magical and might be right. I’m quite sure, however, that Paul Lemere is absolutely spot on when he decribes The Swinger as magical:
“The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it swing. It does this be taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half. It has quite a magical effect. “
— via The Swinger « Music Machinery.
select a shirt | songshirts for marksdk
Last week, #musichackday was held in Amsterdam, and a lot of really interesting stuff came out of it. One of the absolutely best things is Songshirts.
Basically, it finds your top songs on last.fm, pairs them with a font that goes with the genre (or so I think – it certainly seems like it) and the site lets you buy it directly from Zazzle.
Here are mine:
/by and via Matthew Ogle with Floris Dekker and Tim Bormans.
New M.I.A. video, directed by Romain Gavras
Apparently the new music video by Romain Gavras for M.I.A.’s track “Born Free” is very controversial and grotesque (from what I gather on Twitter at least).
The premise seems to be a thought experiement: “What if American troops searched apartment buildings for redheads, gathered them up and drove them off to a camp?” The idea of turning the premise of freedom fighters vs. terrorists around is indeed interesting, but I don’t find this video particularly provocative.
But I might be cold-hearted, or whatever. See for yourself:
Compare it to his video for Justice’s “Stress”, which I find deeply disturbing:
(It really isn’t for the faint of hearted – I’ve warned you!)
/via the fantastic Fuck You Very Much.
Gorillaz live on Colbert Report
It’s actually quite nice to see Gorillaz lose the 3D-holographic masquerade they have been hiding behind. It was fun at first, but now we know who they are and they might as well take the credit they deserve:
In other words, I might be going to Roskilde this year anyway (I got tricked into saying ‘yes’), and they will play there, so hopefully I will get to see them perform live. Should be quite the experience.
New music video from Trentemøller
This is the music video to “Sycamore Feeling” (iTunes), taken from Trentemøller’s upcoming album, “Into The Great Wide Yonder” which will be out in May this year. Marie Fisker – who also performed at both TEDxCopenhagen and Copenhagen Twestival – is featured on vocals.
She wrote a bit about the video on Facebook:
The new video from Trentemøller is written and directed by the Danish video artist Jesper Just, and it shows a woman who moves through an abandoned house in an isolated and smoke-filled town. The video is shot in the ghost town Centralia, PA, which is known for the mine fire that has burned underneath the city since 1962 [Centralia on Wikipedia]
The female role is played by the actress Diana Wagner, as well as the well-known New York drag performer, Princess Diandra, and the fragmented construction makes it terrifyingly difficult to tell the two actors apart.
Given Trentemøller’s recent remixes of both Bruce Springsteen, Lars and The Hands of Light and Franz Ferdinand as well as his “Harbour Boat Trips” remix album (iTunes), it’s not that surprising he’s exploring the indie sound a bit more. It’s difficult to evaluate the whole album based on one song, but I truly hope he doesn’t deviate too much from the sound on “The Last Resort” (iTunes) – one of the best electronica albums ever made.
Also, I’m sorry for Soundvenue’s sorry excuse of a flash player, but it’s the best I could find for now.
Update, March 6: As Dennis rightfully point out in the comments, the video is now up on YouTube, so I’ve changed Soundvenue’s ridiculous player and replaced it with YouTube’s.
OK, here we Go again
OK Go have made a new music video that is perhaps then most creative I’ve ever seen. It’s bound to be just as famous as the other one, so be one of the cool kids and watch it while it’s not mainstream yet (uuuhh):
/via Oliver Reichenstein
“Who says you need to buy a guitar?”
Jack White is so fucking cool I don’t even know how to describe it.
Good thing a video of him making a guitar in 90 seconds sums it up pretty well then:
The clip is from “It Might Get Loud”, one of the best music documentaries I’ve ever seen. Jack White, The Edge and Jimmy Page tell their stories on how they started playing the guitar, and how their distinct styles evolved.
Jimmy Page is all about the solos, The Edge is all about the effects and pedals while Jack White likes it rough and dirty. Listen to him describe his favorite song, for instance:
If you think you’re half as badass as Jack White, you’re doing it wrong.
Stussy made a documentary on J Dilla
It’s been four years since J DIlla passed away. It was a major blow to the jazzy neosoul hip hop that I prefer to virtually any other kind of hip hop being produced today.
Way too often the hip hop is about money, girls and fame (three things I do like, however) and not about how to create a seamless, catchy beat for the sake of pushing the genre forwards. I don’t enjoy everything J Dilla made equally, but it’s always trying to make hip hop evolve, and that should is indeed something I appreciate.
Stussy has released the first two parts of their documentary on J Dilla and they’re really worth seeing; perhaps even only for the underlying beat trough out the videos:
For those blessed with a Spotify-account, I’ve made a playlist with:
- J Dilla – Ruff Draft (hands down one of the best hip hop albums ever made)
- Jaylib – Champion Sound (fantastic cooperation between J Dilla and Madlib)
- J Dilla – Donuts (the album came out only three days before his untimely death)
- Soul Position – 8 Million Stories (not related to Dilla in any other way than sound; amazing collaboration between RJD2 and Blueprint)
- Madlib – Madlib The Beat Konducta Vol. 1-2: Movie Scenes (there’s not that much music by Madlib on Spotify, but this album is a funny mix of beats of all kinds)
- Erykah Badu – The Healer (track) (Erykah Badu’s fantastic tribute to Dilla – the beat in itself is worth the listen)
/via Kitsune Noir. Read more on Wikipedia.
Update, Feb. 28:
Here’s the third episode:
Stussy – J Dilla Documentary Prt3 (of 3) from Stussy on Vimeo.