The energy of the essential - Cohen in Copenhagen

Most of the Indie Laundry-boys attends Roskilde Festival right now. Jealous? Absolutly, but I hope they enjoy it fully - the rock, the sun, and that terrible first morning beer that makes the rest of the day worth while. Instead I'll attend and hopefully enjoy a great concert with a master of folk rock. I'm of course refering to Mr. Leonard Cohen. 'Cause tonight his well-reviewed world tour will hit down town Copenhagen, after another superb performance at Glastonbury.

"Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in." Have beauty ever been served and told with such a simple, but tightful elegance? It might explain why Mr. Leonard Cohen's songs resonantes beyond time. But then again, that would be a horrific simplification of his art. Instead, go see him and get the feeling of why this man's work shouldn't be explained with humble words

Last minute guide to Roskilde

7 hours from now I'm gonna take my backpack and walk to the train. Then it´s my 13th Roskilde Festival in 15 years. And I'm lookin forward as it was my first time. I've said goodnight to my kids and are again looking through this years excellent program. Only a few times before the odds have been so good as this year. Perfect weather. Great program. Brilliant plan. The best camp. So if the whisky and warm beers doesn't get my all confused - heres my tips for a perfect festival:
Thursday:
1930 - MGMT - Odeon
2200 - Radiohead - Orange
Friday:
1600 - Band of Horses - Arena
1930 - Kings of Leon - Orange
2100 - Mogwai - Arena
2230 - Grinderman - Orange
0100 - Yeasayer - Pavilion
0200 - Spleen United - Arena
Saturday:
1830 - Joan as Police Woman - Odeon
2130 - Neil Young - Orange (notice he's got 3 hours!!)
0200 - Black Mountain - Arena
Sunday:
1800 - Cat Power - Odeon
2015 - Bonnie Prince Billy - Odeon

It can't go wrong!!
Have a great festival - and look forward to the Indielaundry festival-review!

Reys de Roskilde #2! Radiohead!

SMS from icelandic girlneighbours in camp: "Your camp is fine. We take good care of it, yes. No worries.". We are relieved.

Today I read a bunch of of reviews from Glastonbury on some of the bands visiting Roskilde. And on a Radiohead-gig in Manchester saturday.

Bands from Glastonbury coming to Roskilde:

Radiohead: 5 out of 6 (Manchester Evening News)
MGMT: 6 out of 10 (The Guardian)
Jay-Z: 9 out of 10 (The Guardian)
Hot Chip: 9 out of 10 (The Guardian)
The Ting Tings: 8 out of 10 (The Guardian)

Reyes de Roskilde #1! Yeasayer!

Indielaundry had some saturday night. Spend four hours queuing from 0200 to 0600 a.m moving about 400 meter just to enter the festival and put up our campsite. It sure put some preasure on our tired legs and bladders!

As always we are thrilled beyond words about this venue, but due to work we had to use diplomacy with our new neighbours (icelandic girls with Opal, guys with huge soundsystems and quiet swedish dudes) so that they would protect our camp. I think we managed.

We'll try to inform our readers with news from camp and festival. But as always we are pretty unstable at this festival, so bear with us!

A must see is Yeasayer, perfect timed to play 01 in a small tent. It'll be bliss!

Mesmerizing guitar rock from Maserati

Fuck vocals!

When listening to Maseratis new album Inventions For The New Season you'll pretty quick notice that words just are so passé. With no words but hell of a load of noise Maserati put a delirious jam mix of 70's psych-rock, kraut-rock, beatheavy soundscapes together leaving the inside of your head spinning as being in a beautiful haze. It builds and builds and the post-rock sound is pushed up in the red like nothing else.

Maserati features members of !!!, LCD Soundsystem, The Juan Maclean, and Turning Machine. The band are out of Athens, Georgia, which has been a hotbed for bands that are not what bands are most for more than a decade. This band continues this tradition.

Well, you just have to listen for yourself. Maserati - signed at Temporary Residence - is highly innovative in their way of adapting the sounds from the past. The mix is psychedelic rock, with a good healthy dose of Pink Floyd, Can and Neu and the drummer and dynamo Jerry Fuchs is just f****** brilliant. The tracks features a heavy load of cymbal build-ups, mixed with ethereal churning guitars layering the whole thing as a soundscape which is hard to leave. Maserati calls it "Pink Floyd for hipsters" and "stoner rock for the working man."

A Maserati might be one hell of a hip car and next time I meet one, I'll think of this sleek experimental band burning just as many horsepowers. It's awesome.

Maserati - The World Outside

Maserati - Towers were Wires

Maserati - MySpace

Bon Iver - Skinny Love

Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver just still work magic on me. He is incredible, or at least a little brother to Shiva. Amazing.

Drummer leaves BRMC - again!

I almost got the blues this morning - reading this strange farewell from the BRMC-drummer, who last time left the band because og drug-problems: "I just had dinner with Rob and Pete and, well, I'm not in the band anymore. They are going into rehearsals tomorrow with Leah, she just finished touring with The Raveonettes and is super nice and cool. They presented it to me like they need a break, I took it as I am fired again and to be honest with you I respect their decision. I don't make it easy for them, I hope to be able to play with them again in the future as a reunion as there is really no bad feeling other than we all wanna be happy and right now we are not. Maybe playing drums for BRMC all the time is not my calling and there is something else I'm supposed to do. We will see. I’m sorry to all the fans and know that the drums are in good hands with Leah."
Here's a great acoustic thing from Rollins show to salute BRMC - all three! You gave Indielaundry the best live-experience of 2007.

Festival envy

The day passes by, the sun shines in our eyes and suddenly it's the festival season. The single most not hyped festival (at least in my network) is Dour Festival in Belgium 17,18,19,20 of july. What an amazing line-up, what cheap prices and how many beautiful people gathered. Existing for 20 years the festival has started kicking the door in as one of the biggest festivals in Europe. Their site tells us they have more than 140.000 visitors a year and 32.000 sleeps in the camp site. (Where do the other sleep).

Well, it's a fantastic line-up this year as you'll explore throughout their site.

Bob Hund saves the festival

Sweden delievers wellpolished music, and most of it is really boring! Well, there are exceptions. One of the bigger is Bob Hund. He has just announced the arrival at Roskilde Festival. And what a surprise.

Bob Hund was one of the most popular indie rock bands in Sweden in the '90s and I've enjoyed them on and off for years. Most off, but their live-performances are always superb. The mix is melodic rock, sometimes synth, sometimes not with a colorful soundscape and thoughtful lyrics.

If stuff doesn't collide too much at this years festival, go see Bob Hund. Entertainment guaranteed

SKA DU HÄNGA MED


SCI-FI SKÅNE

With a buzz in our ear we'll play endlessly - Sigur Rós

Our friends in Sigur Rós will release 'Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust' the 24th of june. The title translates into 'with a buzz in our eyes we will play endlessly' and features 11 new songs. One of them is called Allright and Jonsí does that one in, yes, english. Interesting!

About the album it's said: "SR adopts a looser approach in the writing and creation of með suð. the material for the album was written, recorded and mixed entirely in 2008 and is being released just one month after its completion. the album glows with the perfect imperfection of live takes, the sounds of fingers playing guitar strings, cracked notes, and a stark, upfront presence not found in previous sigur rós recordings, moving away from reverb-soaked guitar sounds towards something altogether more affecting. the record also contains some of the most joyous music the band has ever recorded."

The artwork is done by visual artist Ryan mcginley. Mcginley first met the band when he photographed jónsi six years ago; the album cover was taken from a flyer for mcginley's most recent exhibit i know where the summer goes, which happened to find its way into jónsi's inbox just as the band was deciding on how to best visually represent their new collection of songs.

Someone on Stereogum said about first song Gobbledigook: "Like Animal Collective covering Dave Matthews Band's "Grey Street." In Icelandic. In a good way." I must agree. Very different. Very wild, playful, joyous and truely a new style. I'm looking forward to more!

First video of the album, song Gobbledigook

Gobbledigook - Sigur Ros

Bon Iver - Emma and a civilised habitat

Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver is a lonely lumberjack. But a loveable one.

The short version is that Vernon - Wisconsin - were getting tired of bandmates and set up a home in a remote log cabin. He lived a self-imposed primitive lifestyle, chopping firewood and hunting wildlife and that awesome man-stuff you do when you'd want to be completly authentic and in touch with your innerself. In three month he did that while writing and recording - often in ten- to twelve-hour blocks - ensued, the process only being able to continue at times thanks to Vernon's self-taught hunting skills: some of his prey could be exchanged for recording equipment or guitar repairs.

By early 2007 the album, For Emma, Forever Ago was pretty much complete, in demo form at least, and Vernon, now back in a civilised habitat, with a record really worth listening to. It's realllyy good.

Bon Iver - Blindsided

Bjørn Svin - Modular Noia

Sometimes noise is just what you need. I quite enjoyed exploring the sounds in this piece by danish electronic-engineer Bjørn Svin. I'm not sure it's good, but it's different. I need that sometimes.

And the prayers are finally heard... Tom Waits 'Glitter and Doom Tour'

Holy Halloweenhead. He is coming! Tom Waits has announced a US tour and a European ditto is in the works. Check out details at Pitchfork and watch his hilarious "press conference" where also reveals the hidden meaning of "PEDHTSCKJMBA". Enlightening stuff, indeed.

Radiohead & MTV campaign Against Human Trafficking

Our beloved Radiohead have joined forces with our not so beloved MTV in the struggle to put focus on slavery. Thom Yorke & co have made 'All I Need' - my favorite track of 'In Rainbows', well probably of the entire 2007 - available for a simple but chilling video made by Oscar-winning cinematographer John Seale and director Steve Rogers. As Yorke puts it: 'Quite powerful'!

New sounds from New York

For a long while I've been meaning to round up on some very exciting bands that have appeared for New York in the last half year or so. Great stuff ahead:

First up is Yeasayer (pic). An absolutely mind-blowing quartet from Brooklyn. Their debut album 'All hour cymbals' has quickly become a firm favorite of mine. It's bubbling with what they themselves describe as "Middle-Eastern-psych-snap-gospel". In any case, a lot of very different references comes to mind when listening. A few exs: Talking Heads, Black Sabbath, Crosby, Stills & Nash - but most importantly, Yeasayer sounds very original and unique - a quality that is very rare nowadays.

Yeasayer - '2080' (1st single)

Yeasayer - 'Final Path' (non-album track yet brilliant)

Now we turn to also Brooklyn based MGMT who already has a bit of a radio hit with their first single 'Time to Pretend' of the album 'Oracular Spectacular'. This is poppy disco-flavoured indie with just enough creativity and experimentation to make it interesting. They don't knock me off my feet quite like Yeasayer but is certanly an enjoyable experience.

MGMT - 'Time to Pretend'
MGMT - 'Electric Feel'

Finally, I present Vampire Weekend who - like Yeasayer - takes inspiration from the world music scene, at least in a way similar to Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon. I also detect a slice of the softer side of The Clash in there somehow. Mainly it's just top notch indie and their self-titled album is packed with catchy tunes and clever arrangements. I've seen them being criticized for being "too clever" - I guess I'm not clever enough to know how that could be a problem.

Vampire Weekend - 'The Kids don't Stand a Chance'

Vampire Weekend - 'A-Punk':