The 8th Annual Ink-N-Iron Tattoo and Kustom Culture Festival hit Long Beach, California, this past weekend, using the legendary Queen Mary as the backdrop along with a flock of men with facial tattoos, cabaret dancers and pole aerialists. This unique festival not only showcases the work of tattoo artists from around the world, but also live music, art shows, burlesque girls, pin stripping, vintage cars and motorcycles and even a pin-up girl contest.
Little Dragon is an electronic music band, based in Gothenburg, Sweden. It consists of Swedish-Japanese singer Yukimi Nagano (vocals, percussion) and her close high-school friends Erik Bodin (drums), Fredrik Källgren Wallin (bass), and Håkan Wirenstrand (keyboards). They are currently touring the world at large but we caught up with them in Detroit at Movement.
There seems to be no end in sight to the amount of rising stars coming from Sweden’s music scene. While you’ve most certainly heard of bands like
Peter Bjorn and John, Shout Out Louds, The Sounds, The Hives, Mike Snow, Kent, Robyn, etc., the country is also home to phenomenal music projects which have managed to stay more under the radar, such as the dream pop trio, The Radio Dept.
The indie pop sensation consisting of Johan Duncanson, Martin Larsson, and Daniel Tjäder, has been making music under the current line up since 2001 while performing show around the world and collecting an ever-growing line up of underground fans. Prior to their recent set at Los Angeles’s Troubadour, the guys sat down with ChinaShop to discuss avoiding the limelight, the lengthy recording process on album “Clinging To a Scheme,” as well as Johan’s goofy hobby of snapping pictures of the television screen.
It’s really annoying when the fashion industry declares something to be having “a moment” – the implication being that the other 51 weeks out of the year, that “something” has not even entered their minds (like healthy runway models). So let’s not say that Scandinavia is having “a moment;” rather, it’s more like an avalanche of fashion, art, music, and design talent sure to become household names like stereotypical stalwarts H&M, Ikea, Bang & Olufsen, and Abba.
For most of us the awkward creations of our adolescence are safely tucked away in the back of a closet or in the deep reaches of the attic. We stumble upon these relics while packing or spring-cleaning, we laugh, cringe, reminisce and then tuck our creations back in the boxes where they live. Then there are the few among us who drag out old journals, letters, poems, lyrics, plays, home movies, and art and present them publicly. Welcome to the world of Mortified, a hybrid of stand up comedy, performance art and show and tell; a meeting of comedy and catharsis.
Comprised of 3 rather pillaging-prone looking Swedes and an even more badass tiny Japanese singer, Little Dragon has eschewed the death metal-friendly territory of their hometown of Gothenberg in favor of some truly strange sonic textures. There’s certainly a dated sound to a lot of these synth samples, which a lot of critics keep labeling as ‘icy’, I guess because they’re from Sweden — though if you’re going by geek 80s record references alone, you might even recall some of the exact same effects being used on a Kate Bush or early Hyaena-era Siouxsie and the Banshees record. And yet still others sound a lot like stuff you would of heard from some flavor-of-the-week synth band like Nu Shooz or Tiffany, only a bit more tinkered with as far as delay, pitch, reverb, etc…whatever it is, it works, and to surprising effect — though it’s curious to hear sounds and samples that were considered hack 25 years ago which have now been recycled with more panache and class by new groups being revered as the Next Big Thing. I guess Baja Men have about another decade and a half to go before they start hearing the influence “Who Let the Dogs Out” had on aspiring rock stars still in their musical infancy who later ascended to greatness. Rambling aside, these guys are weird, and in a more infectious, shake-yer-ass sort of way than the aforementioned. All the more reason to get to the parti now on Red Bull Music Academy Radio…
When the winter of 2010 descends upon us, and critics & connoisseurs alike start to narrow down lists for the “Best Dance Song of the Summer,” the supreme banger “One (Your Name)” by Swedish House Mafia will indubitably be frequently mentioned. SHM is made up of a sonically advanced trio of House DJs/producers (namely Axwell, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso), and simply put, these audio merchants do not fuck around. “One” is the penultimate dance cut; play it at a dive bar, club, barbecue, lounge or rave and the results should be exactly the same – people getting crunk and going completely ape-shit over this up-tempo electro gem with synth riffs so sharp they could slice right through Buju Banton’s dreadlocks. The remix featuring Pharrell Williams makes the track even hotter, and when you throw in the rapacious official video for the song, it’s a done deal.
With a collection of clever remixes, rhythms and Swedish Guerilla farts, Stockholm’s Dada Life stands poised to take the electronica world by storm. Their latest magnum opus, Happy Hands and Happy Feet, carries an unusual blend of influences– everything from underground trance, to punk, to the same bizarre artistic revolution that makes up their name. The DL have once again proved that if there’s a vital contender for the coveted electronica-DJ throne, Olle and Stefan are determined to get there, or die trying (to burn it down).
Words by Jeff Nau
