Posts Tagged ‘Efterklang’

Efterklang // One-Sided LP

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

The good folks over at Slowtrain just keep on surprising me with the random stuff they have in stock! It seems like every time I go into their shop, I wind up copping a handful of incredibly hard-to-find vinyls from some of my favorite artists. Case in point, this one-sided LP from my beloved Danish band Efterklang, released by Burnt Vinyl Records in late 2006. I remember seeing the record listed on their wikipedia discography a while back when I lived in Denmark, but I’ve never caught sight of a copy in either physical or digital format (even Hype Machine is of no help).

With only a trio of tracks on this single-sided vinyl (one of which coming in at just over a minute in length), there’s not much to this “LP”. However the album, released two years after Tripper and a year prior to the much heralded Parades, acts as an excellent career midpoint by highlighting the band’s growth in sound and simultaneously foreshadowing the great things to come. With a smörgåsbord of instruments (strings, keys, and percussion) — a calling card of sorts for the band — the album is musically intricate and dense, making me wish that my record player had an audio-out port so I could plug in some headphones and really soak in the sound.

Like I said before, I couldn’t get any mp3s of the tracks from this release. However, to give you a taste of the brilliance of this group of Danes, below are two of my favorite tracks of theirs. Also, if you’re in the Salt Lake City area, Efterklang is coming into town the 14th of September, so be sure to check them out!

Efterklang // Himmelbjerget

Efterklang // Modern Drift

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Efterklang // Remix Exchange

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

The Danish orchestral band Efterklang has been putting together a number of cool remix swaps with some fellow Copenhagen groups. So far, they’ve debuted two such exchanges on their website, with Efterklang tackling Oh No Ono’s “Icicles” and Turboweekend’s “Sweet Jezebel”, with their own “Modern Drift” and “Full Moon” getting the reverse treatment. You can check out my two favorite tracks below and hear the complete exchanges here.

Efterklang // Modern Drift (Oh No Ono Remix)

Turboweekend // Sweet Jezebel (Efterklang Remix)

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PT Music Mixxx // Groovvve Bloom

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

I don’t care what Punxsutawney Phil says, it’s freaking springtime in Portland RIGHT NOW! To celebrate the handful of sunny days we’ve had this past month (my standard for declaring a season change is pretty damn low), I put this mix together while boxing up my SAD lamp and dusting off my sunglasses. Ah spring: summer’s warm-up act.

You can download the hour-long mix here (92.5Mb). As for the tracklist, it’s mostly new(er) stuff with some sprinklings of old favorites here and there:

  • RxRy // Baulkn Slihts
  • Ducktails // Oh, Magnolia Tree
  • Sonny and The Sunsets // Too Young to Burn
  • King Tuff // Sun Medallion
  • Memoryhouse // Foreground (Grizzly Bear Cover)
  • Cibelle // Lightworks
  • Javelin // Mossy Woodland
  • El Rego et ses Commandose // E Nan Mian Nuku
  • Dominant Legs // Clawing Out at the Walls
  • Efterklang // Modern Drift
  • The Sandwitches // Grey Wizard
  • Julian Lynch // Banana Jam Pt. 1
  • Primary 1 // Foaming (Memory Tapes Remix)
  • El Guicho // Prez Lagarto
  • Tamaryn // Light Shadows

Also, if you like this mix, you might also enjoy some of the other ones I put together in the past.

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Posted in Mixxx, Musical Musings | 1 Comment »

Videos for the Veekend // 2|26 – 2|28

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Wow! This was a great week for music related videos. Some were so amazing, I couldn’t just wait around until the weekly round-up so I went ahead and posted a couple of my favorites already earlier this week. Not only that, but there were so many good vids that I decided to make this a sort-of mega-recap. So without further ado:

Seems like Göteborg, Sweden is continuing it’s quest for world dominance this past week. First came the amazing video for jj’s “Let Go”, then an equally impressive DIY-style video from Love Is All’s “Kungen” premiered on Stereogum a day later. Before long, we will all be eating pickled herring…

Although the latest LP from San Fran folk band Vetiver was a bit of a disappointment for me, this acoustic rendition of “Farther On”, captured by French zine WOW Magazine, reminds me why I originally liked this group so much:

The next video is another amazing acoustic performance, this time by the Danish ensemble Efterklang. Put together by the wonderful Austrian site They Shoot Music, this recording of “Me Me Me The Brick House” shows this seven-member incarnation of the group at it’s most stripped down. A really great listen! (Also check out The Shoot Music’s video for “Alike” here).

Keeping it in Denmark, The Raveonettes put out my favorite music video of this week with this awesome animation accompanying the track “Heart of Stone” (Note, if the video get taken down, you can watch it here — DAMN VEVO AND THEIR NO EMBED!):

Another crazy video snippet from the mysterious iamamiwhoami surfaced this past week, and I think it’s the best one yet. Who do I think it is? I don’t really care — as long as the music on the LP is just as amazing as these viral vids, they can stay an unknown!

Not really a video per say, but this recording of Beach House performing a new track entitled “The Arrangement” on Sirius XM Radio was too good to pass up:

My apologies to whoever originally posted about this video of Wounded Lion‘s track “Friendly?” (I didn’t write down the source). Anyways, behold the amazingness of this MS Powerpoint generated music video:

Finally, it was only a matter of time before the sparse arrangements of The xx got covered by their equally minimalistic Göteborg counterpart El Perro del Mar (see, I wasn’t lying about the Göteborg takeover!). Well Sarah Assbring and company brought their own twist to the beautiful “Shelter” this past week in Brooklyn:

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Videos for the Veekend // 1|29 – 1|31

Friday, January 29th, 2010

This past week was a good one for me, so let’s start off with something happy: little kids dancing to Best Coast’s “When I’m With You”.

Canadian singer/songwriter Basia Bulat‘s latest LP Heart of My Own has been creeping into my rotation more and more with each day. I don’t know, maybe I’m a sucker for interesting female vocalists (Marissa Nadler, Tiny Vipers, Joanna Newsom, etc…), but sometimes there is just nothing better. Filmed nearly two years ago by Yours Truly and kept secret until her latest album release, here is the track “The Shore”:

Another funny clip, this one is taken from an old episode of the British version of “The Office” with David Brent (aka Ricky Gervais) interrupting a team building exercise to play some music:

One of the saddest days of my life was when I learned that the British group Electrelane was going on indefinite hiatus. Here is a video of their song “In Berlin” that I think best captures the essence of the group:

The next video is from one of my favorite up and coming bands Local Natives, whom I have You Ain’t No Picasso to thank for exposing me to:


Airplanes

Local Natives | MySpace Music Videos

The last video is by the Danish group Efterklang for their track “Modern Drift” which made me very nostalgic as it is composed of footage of Dyrehaven (or “Deer Park”) from the 1970s. When I was studying in Copenhagen, I would often ride my bicycle through the picturesque park, eventually winding up on the even more picturesque coast. Paired with the song, this just might be my favorite video of the year [NSFW for 20 seconds at the 1 minute mark (naked girl in woods = artistic)]:

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Videos for the Veekend // 1|22 – 1|24

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Here is another weekly wrap-up of some of my favorite music related videos I stumbled across in the past seven days:

If you don’t have a good half hour of time, then I suggest you skip this first video. Temporary Copenhagen: An Experiment on a New Danish Scene is the work of videographer Vincent Moon. I’ll let him go ahead and describe it:

This is a 30min piece we created on the spot. 9 local bands, only 3 i knew, 2 hours to organise something before the audience arrives, and the objective to create a unique sound piece, a collaborative concert which would be moving in an intimate space. Only one take, no cuts, loads of tension, maybe an interesting talk between cinema and music where each one feeds the other one. And a certain idea of a document on a city and its creative life.

Some of the Danish groups participating in the project range from the widely popular Efterklang and Slaraffenland to up-and-comers Choir of Young Believers and Murder. Check it out below:

One of my favorite live videos from this past week was a Vivian Girls a cappella rendition of “He’s Gone”. Although the video isn’t particularly great, the audio is what makes it worth it:

I don’t know where the people at Delicious Scopitone find some of their stuff! Their latest post on Seams’ video for the track “Glytch” is sure to rile up the geek inside you:

The folks at Sup’ Magazine just recently posted a couple of videos from French music princess Charlotte Gainsbourg’s set in Brooklyn a couple of days back. Here’s one of her covering Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Women”.

Alex Bleeker & The Freaks‘s self-titled album on Underwater Peoples had to be one of my top five favorite debuts of 2009. Courtesy of the Pelly Twins‘ flip-cam, here is a video of them performing two new tracks (jump to about 30 seconds in):

Finally, my favorite video of the week belongs to the rooftop collab of El Perro del Mar and Lykke Li on del Mar’s song “Change of Heart”:

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Posted in Musical Musings, Youtube Finds | 3 Comments »

SXSW Preview #7 // Efterklang

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

If it wasn’t for those always working people up at Brooklyn Vegan, I would never had known that Efterklang, one of my favorite Danish bands, was going to make it down to Austin for a handful of dates at SXSW. Last time I checked everyone’s favorite folktronic matadors weren’t on the mega-bill for the festival, but I guess organizers are adding dozens of bands every minute – great news for everyone that’s going.

I caught Efterklang live once when they opened for The National at their second night in Copenhagen and was absolutely entranced by their live set. With a concert line-up that pushes ten members and instrumentation that include flute, horns, and yes, even saw, Efterklang certainly displayed their capacity to create beautifully textured music. The best part of the group’s stage performance however wasn’t the breadth of the odd-ball instruments but their choral arrangements that put front-in-center the beauty of the group’s harmonized whispery voices.

On tracks like “Collecting Shields” (off of their 2004 LP Tripper), the strange combination of electro-pulsed beats in the mid section and soft vocals from the male/female duet offer an interesting and original combination. Putting you more in a Buddhist meditative state than hyped-up energetic mood, tracks like “Frida Found a Friend” and “Mirador” off of their most recent LP Parades does everything that you would expect from a band which, in English, means both remembrance and reverberation.

Most songs are created in a similar vein that will definitely serve as an excellent counter to all those noise-punk bands being showcased at the festival. Calm, soothing, and peaceful would all be appropriate adjectives when describing Efterklang’s music – something that will certainly be unique at the always bustling and bombastic SXSW. So if you are in need of taking an hour to catch your breath, you can check them out on March 19th at 11:00pm at the Habana Bar. No other “official” performances are scheduled, but they will be around Austin for most of the festival so keep your eyes peeled!

Efterklang // Collecting Shields

Efterklang // Polygyne

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