Here is a new and nice animation video created by Akiko M for Ally Kerr‘s latest single “Amorino”:

[youtube S1RxfjvN8eU]

“Amorino” can also be found on Ally Kerr’s latest album “Off the radar”.

Since Ally Kerr is one of the few artists I would call myself a fan of, I can’t resist adding another video from him too…

Here’s “There’s a world”:

[youtube PaZgALF1r2s]

Skansros

Skansros is a new Swedish indie-pop band with several similarities to classic pop-bands like The Smiths and The Housemartins, except for one thing: They sing in Swedish. Maybe Jacob Hellman may be a better comparison? The band has just signed to Luxury Records, and will release their debut 3-track single “Drömmen om Skansros” on October 29.For those of you who are as impatient as I am, you can already now buy the download-version of the single from Klicktrack in high quality.

Skansros are 6 friends from the Göteborg area, who prior to this had a Smiths tribute band called West Ham Boys Club: They changed the language, continued with the long, interesting lyrics and the jangly guitars, and created Skansros. The band will soon enter the studio again to record their full length album.

Here is a song for you to listen to:

Skansros – Drömmen om Amerika (= “The Dream of America”)

One of the best resources for news about Scandinavian alternative music is in fact an American journal, It’s a Trap, led by Avi Roig. Avi gives his readers daily updates on what’s happening in all genres of the Scandinavian alternative music scene, and it’s impressing how he manages to keep himself so up to date on music from countries far away from where he lives himself. It’s a Trap is not only a music journal, but also a net label. IAT.MP3 release exclusive music with no limitations on genre, just on geography, and the releases are free.

Today is the release date for a new IAT.MP3 release, and the musicians involved were actually brought together by Avi for this project. Tobias Hellkvist, one of the artists, were completely unaware of his new collaboration-partners in Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, and vice versa. Avi’s original concept was to make a split release, but the artists started working together. The result is a 3-part 25 minute long composition of ambient drones that as all droning music requires your patience, but gives a lot of beauty back in reward. The parts glide into eachother, but they are all quite different, which for me makes this piece of music more interesting.

The first part starts silently and blasts off with sounds fading in and out, overlapping eachother, mesmerizing us, – a good feeling. The second part is more rhythm-based and melodic. It’s based on a beautiful, simple and repetitive melody played on strings, and different elements flows in and out on top of this, making the base-melody change without actually changing, if you know what I mean. The second part gives me a real feeling of light in the darkness.
The third part is more ambient and dark, – rough, dirty, distorted. Small clicks and hisses, – sounds that my mind translates into electrical flashes, the sound of lightning or seconds cut out from the sound of fire. Visual music, indeed.

The release is called “White/Grey/Black”, and if you see my descriptions of the parts above, I would say the titles are quite precise to how I experienced the parts. A very interesting piece of music, and something that you definitely should dive into.

Head over to It’s a Trap’s label-page and get an mp3 of this for free!

Another new thing here??? I often feel that I start columns, – keep them up for a few weeks, and then realize that I haven’t got the capacity to keep them updated, – so I just leave them. I hope I will manage to keep this column updated… This is made mainly because my time is limited and the days are too few to tell you about all the good things that my ears experience during one single week.

HERE are some good things that has passed my ears and eyes the last few weeks:

* First some things that excite me right now, and then some album recommendations:

The new single from The Kabeedies is amazing! 3 songs, but two of them are other bands remakes of the original. Really different versions from Bobby McGhee’s and Francis & Louis. Great track and great re-makes. It’s released on Cool for Cats records, and is available from emusic and iTunes + as a 7 ” from here. Highly recommended! You can listen to the song on their myspace.

I haven’t listened enough yet to recommend the album, but what I have heard makes me really excited. I’m talking about Dark Captain Light Captain‘s album “Miracle Kicker”. Some kind of nice mix between folk and electronica, but with more of the first than the last. Sounds really good! It’s not officially released yet, but iTunes has it already, so you can buy it there.

The fact that the feline loving, toy-playing duo PSAPP will release their third album “The Camel’s back” in just a few days makes me a bit excited. Their single The Monster Song is good enough to keep my hopes up. For those of you who don’t know this fine band, it’s them who have made the intro tune to the TV series Grey’s  Anatomy, and they have also made two great albums before this new one. Listen here to “The Monster Song”:
Psapp -the monster song

* RECOMMENDED ALBUMS THIS WEEK:


I’ve bought/received a lot of fabulous albums lately, and the following should be a part of every music lovers’ collection. Not all of these are fresh this week, but they are at least fairly new (and very good):

Colin Clary and the Magogs: Her Life of crime (Colin Clary of The Smittens/Let’s Whisper/My first days of junk ++ makes beautiful indie pop melodies, and this one is irresistable). Available on itunes/emusic).
Listen/download:
Colin Clary and the Magogs – The Shape of this town

Gregory and the hawk – Moenie and Kitchi (This project has recently been signed to FatCat records and their new album is completely wonderful! It’s mostly acoustic and folky, but sometimes it breaks out into more noisy sounds and there are always elements inside the songs that makes you listen extra closely. One of my absolute favourites at the moment! Buy from iTunes/emusic/label).

Anders Persson och Carl Smith – s/t (With lyrics in Swedish, this duo sounds like a Swedish version of Simon and Garfunkel, only a bit darker, maybe. Great songwriting and if you know the language, you’ll love the lyrics. Available from itunes + cdon.com).

Two new albums that we have already mentioned in our blog-posts:
Rockettothesky and My Little Pony. Wonderful albums, both of them.

Norwegian artist Marit Larsen, once a child pop star worldwide in M2M, has made another absolutely brilliant pop album, “The Chase”. This is quite commercial pop, and it sells a lot here in Norway, but at the same time it is so so so different from most of the music that usually tops the charts and plays on the radio. It’s very clever and intelligently composed, lots of details, the songs are stunningly beautiful and my impression of Marit is that she is quite unaffected of the whole popstar thing, and keeps on as the musician she is. My respect is deep for this woman.

The Foster Kids – At Home with the Foo Fighters, – such a brilliant title for their debut album, and such a nice album to debut with! The Foster Kids are one of those bands who are great because they are not perfect, and I adore their friendly attitude and their half-jangly melodies. This is music that makes me happy, makes me smile and makes me feel that good feeling inside. I’m constantly reminded of The Go-Betweens when I hear their songs, and the two have several similarities. The album has several really good songs and an atmosphere that makes me want to hug the people who have made it! Their myspace has links to several places where you can buy the album, and if you want it the easy way, itunes has it.

Susanna – Flowers of Evil (Susanna Wallumrød from Susanna and the magical orchestra has released a new solo album, – beautiful, quiet and dark songs. 12 of 14 are cover versions of well known songs, from Thin Lizzy to Abba, and especially her cover of Abba’s “Lay all your love on me” is tremendous.

Jeremy Warmsley – How we became (This is London-artist Jeremy Warmsley’s second full length, and it’s a good one! Mix great song- and lyricwriting, intellingent and untraditional arrangements, nice pop-feeling, some smoothness, some roughness, a tiny bit electronic sounds + lots of “real” instruments and a very likeable voice, and you’re somewhere near Jeremy Warmsley. Great album I’ve listened a lot to lately. Available in most digital shops + on most good webshops.

Robert Svensson – Young Punks are on the never-never
- This album was released in the beginning of October, and I’ve listened and loved it for almost a month now. This album is as close to perfect as you can get in my book, and Svensson has everything I need in his music. A pop album, definitely, but for me, this album goes deeper than most pop-albums do. It works on the happy pop-tunes and it works just as well on the more melancholic and vulnerable slower songs. When he sings, he seems to take out everything he has inside, and it feels real and honest. A wonderful album, out on Nomethod records. One of the best this year.

What are your favourites? Tell me in a comment!

Strawberry Fair is the stage name of 25 year old Jenny Franzén from Ekerö, Sweden. She has been making her 60s-inspired jangly popsongs for a long time, and have released some of her songs on self-financed cd-r singles and compilations. Earlier this year, she released her “proper” 4-track EP “Strawberry Fair sings ‘I Can’t Do Anything’” on the Swedish label “Alltid Hela Tiden” (=”Forever Always” or something like that).
All four songs are high quality indiepop, with a bit of motown-beats, 60s girl-group harmonies, oooh-aaah’s, handclaps and glockenspiel.

You can listen more on Strawberry Fair’s myspace | last fm or you can just go and order the EP on the label’s website!

Here’s a track from Strawberry Fair:

Strawberry Fair – Give Up