Harrys gym are four norwegians who once were a semi-popular indieband called Dharma. As Dharma, they played over 100 gigs, did one album and one EP. They needed to renew themselves, and decided to found a totally new band. One of the Dharma-members has left, new songs have been written, and they really sound refreshed! I especially like the unique and sharp pop-air that vocalist and songwriter Anne Lise Frøkedal manages to create around the guitar- and synth-driven songs. The new band has built their own studio (cleverly named Harry’s Gym Recording studio…), started to write an album and these days they are busy recording and playing live. Somewhere I read the description “Catchy postdisco merged with misantropic pop”, and this is a phrase that is well fit for Harry’s gym.

Here are three songs from Harrys gym’s demo:
Harrys gym - dance dance dance
Harrys gym - city rats
Harrys gym - end #1

Harrys gym at myspace | harrys gyms website

Hearts of Black Science are two swedes with an interesting background as a band. Both has been involved in several projects in the past, and has a background from both electronic projects, horror film production and rock/metal bands. One of them is into metal and hard rock, and the other is into synths and electronic music, and the blend of all this is what they call “Tambourine Grindcore“… In my ears this is closer to smart electronic pop acts like The Postal Service or Depeche Mode than Iron Maiden or other metal-stuff, but there is a roughness in the music that probably has some tiny pieces of metal in it. We found this music so interesting that we needed to know more about these guys. Tomas Almgren, the electronica-guy in the band, has answered our questions. First, have a listen to the song “Empty city lights” from their 10 track demo:

Hearts of Black Science - empty city lights

- You say you have recorded 10 songs; Are these songs that could work together as an album? What can you tell us about the “total sound” of what may become your album?

The ten songs were meant to work as an album. That’s how we wrote them at least. We recorded and mixed for three months non-stop and just felt that, after ten songs, it was time to slow down a bit with the writing and start promoting and pushing the tracks we had. Having said that though, we have many more songs that are in various stages of completion. It’s been a really fast and intense process. And a very funny one at that. We like dark music as well as a good pop hook so we knew it was going to be a mix of those two styles. We’re happy with the result. It blends together surprisingly well. The album as a whole will be a collection of melancholic songs somewhere in the electronic-pop-rock genre. We always thought of ourselves as a winter band as opposed to a summer band and the record will be good for those cold long winters.

- The two of you seem to have quite different tastes in music, - one likes rock/metal and the other likes electronic music. Are there many compromises between you, or do you fight a lot when you make music (”more guitars!”, “No, more synths!”). How do you think this “differentness” has influenced how your music has become?

Haha! No we don’t fight at all, actually. Obviously we have to be respectful of each other’s preferences when it comes to particular parts but we tend to surprice each and it’s what makes it so much fun working like this. The fact that we love different kinds of music has, if anything, just helped our sound evolve. Suddenly we’re doing parts or riffs that we normally wouldn’t have done had we been working on our own. It has also made us aware of a lot of new music although we like a lot of the same bands and always have.

It was always important that there was some sort of balance maintained within the band; so to keep that we decided not to be a “rock band with synths”, or the other way around. I mean, we are that to a degree, but it’s also a lot about blending styles of music and going for those influences that aren’t as obvious to us. Like, no “Metalica meets Depeche Mode”. We try and let the influences be just influences and just go with our instincts on what sounds good to us. If you stay in a very specific genre for too long it can be difficult to break out of it later and we like to try new things.

- What are the next steps in the career-plans of Hearts of black science?

We’re just about to press a stack of promos and start fishing for labels. We’re also looking for places to play at later this summer. We have a few gigs booked already, in both sweden and london, and we’ve had quite a few requests to come and play in other countries and hopefully we will be able to. It’s all about finances at this point. The official web page is coming up soon, www.heartsofblackscience.com, and we’ll have our EP up for sale there, among other things.

- …and the name H.O.B.S. … what does it mean to you?

Well… we had a whole list of band names that were no good and so we tried to approach it from an “as long as it fits the music” angle instead of trying to be clever. I (Tomas) was bouncing different words around my head that I thought made sense and suddenly it sort of clicked into place. The science part could perhaps represent the electronic side, the black part the dark metal/goth side.. and god knows what the Hearts are for? Maybe that we’re passionate boys? Oh and it seemed to roll off the tounge nicely.

There’s a sense of mystery to the name and that’s always good. It’s not obvious at first glance what we sound like and hopefully it will intrigue and attract people with different tastes in music and not just metal / electro-heads…

- Hearts of black science’s TOP 5
BANDS:
Daniel -
1. Iron Maiden
2. Tool
3. Isis
4. Sophie Zelmani
5. Depeche mode

Tomas -
1. Skinny Puppy
2. The Four Tops
3. Type O Negative
4. Front 242
5. Phil Collins

If you found this as interesting as we did, you should check out their myspace-pages for more music and videos.

Here’s one from a UK band, the Jakpot. They’re located in Manchester, but the members come from different corners of the North of England. It sounds really fresh and bouncy, with punked up jangle-guitars and rough, but nice, vocals. Their new single is a split a-side, with “fickle” and “too much time”.
Here’s two other songs,
the jakpot - turning point
the jakpot - films
(both from myspace)

Love ends disaster! is a carnival of words, squeeking guitars, cool rhythms and always moving basslines. The vocals have lots in common with Talking Heads’ David Byrne. Their new EP is called “faster, faster” and sounds like an interesting piece of music.
Here’s a track from their last EP, “stories for the dislocated”:
Love ends disaster! - Ginko Disco
- from myspace

Jets Overhead are a five piece band from Canada, and they are now out with their debut album “Bridges”, - a brilliant start of the band’s career as recording artists. Their music is highly melodic indierock with some fantastic choruses. Everything in their sound seem huge and airy, still very forward-driven and upbeat. Another nice thing about this release is that you may download their full album for free (via the band’s website) to check it out, and then pay for it if you feel that the albums deserves a place in your collection. A voluntary purchase of free downloads. This is the philosophy of their label, Microgroove records, who believes that new systems for distributing music should be driven by the public rather than by existing paradigms which no longer apply to the digital world. They emphasize that they do believe that music should be paid for, and that eventually the industry will adapt with flexibility rather than prosecution. For me and you, this is a very nice way to check out a new band, and as for me, I’m going to put some dollars into their paypal account for this one. 5 $ for the whole album.

Start by checking out these three songs from “Bridges”;
Jets overhead - seems so far (radio edit)
Jets overhead - this way
Jets overhead - killing time