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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Swede Party



What's up with Sweden and awesome music? Lykke Li, Shout Out Louds, Jens Lekman, The Hives, and The Sounds. The only thing that might be better is Swedish softcore, but that's another topic for another time.

In the same Nordic, fish eating, flaxen haired and all around great tradition is Erik Hassle, a pop singer who makes some pretty great tunes.  Normally I'm not a big fan of the whole pop singer/songwriter deal but I really like Erik.  His voice has a different, unpolished quality to it but still comes out strong with emotion.  It also probably helps that he has insane geometric red hair a la Sideshow Bob and is so pale he almost translucent.  His album isn't out here yet, but the single for the song "Hurtful" is available on iTunes and the earliest video the song is below.  Following it are two more videos where he covers "Solsbury Hill" and "Nothing Else Matters" (my favorite) which I think show off his chops best. He has a lot of these really cool impromptu-esqe covers on youtube so check them out.

His songs also seem to get remixed in a fantastic way nearly everytime someone gives it a go (same thing with Friendly Fires). Its pretty hard to find a bad remix of one of his songs, or even decide what's the best, but you'll find three below that I enjoy the most.

I have no idea what a Penguin Prison is, but if they play this music there I'm booking a ticket down south to stomp on some of those happy-feet bastards until they throw me in. That's how good this is.


Via con dios amigos.

(Please note - I had to take down the links to the youtube videos because the blog cops didnt check the links and thought they were downloads, not youtube links.  So fuck it you had enough time anyways.)

Sunday, January 24, 2010

I'm going to Hollywood man, and this hair is gonna get me paid!



As the name of the blog suggests, this exists to get you excited about new music and upcoming events, anything that stimulates your membranes. In the meantime between those moments you will have this blog, The Refractory Period, to guide you through the downtime.

In the coming weeks I will be posting my first annual Coachella Primer with tracks and band summaries from everyone I think should be worth seeing over those three magical days where its not only your skin that gets fried under the sun.

I hope you enjoy my opinions and musical selections and I promise to keep them coming as I get more and more stuff to post.

Enjoy these three posts to start this off.

Awesome remix of an already good Ellie Golding track. Not sure who Jakwob is but I love the way he tweaks out the bass on it.

One of my favorite bands right now. Out of Portland, Ore they have an awesome new wave meets soul sound that is best exemplified on this track and "Song Away" as well. Pick up the album Mind Chaos and see them live you wont regret it.

Again Hockey but a great remix of the same song for y'all to boogie too.

Hope you enjoy and Ill be back soon with more nuggets for everyone to get down to.