Indie Battle: Scandinavia

Scandinavia seems to have been an important part of the Indie scene for a long time. Each country producing important music as they joyfully hold hands and skip through the meadow that is Indie culture. Now the time has finally come to drop the namby-pamby hand-holding and fight for coveted "Super Indie Heavy Weight of Scandinavia 2008" title. This is and award so indie that no one knows who even won last years title. Let's welcome the contenders:
Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and the Indie wild card Aland.

Round 1: Finland vs. Aland


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The Finnish have more then just angry suicidal metal heads, they also have a very lively indie pop scene; many are Indie Pop bands documented on One Chord To Another. Thats not all, in case you're one of the many Indie Rock Folk, free Finnish music is at your fingertips here.
As for Aland... well as you may have guessed they don't have much to offer in the way of an "Indie Scene" but with a population of just 20,000 it also doesn't have much of any scene. Which, when combined with the fact that no one knows it exists makes it pretty damn indie indeed. So due to Finlands overly popular indie scene it hands the victory to Aland.

Round 2: Norway vs. Iceland

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Both very strong contenders here. Both with a strong indie scene, both rejecting EU membership in favour of fishing and of course neither with much imagination as far as flag design is concerned. With these countries sharing so much in common there is only one way to settle this. A hypothetical fight between the country's respective Indie heavyweights. Sigur Ros vs Kings of Convenience. While it could be assumed that the 4 Icelandic guys would kick the 2 lanky Norwegians around the ring pretty easily, these of course are 4 very pretentious, highest order arty-farty Icelandic guys and it's unlikely they know what a fight looks like. Victory Norway, likely to be the first and only guys to land a punch.

Round 3. Sweden vs Denmark

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This battle would be a hard one to watch. Denmark brutishly beaten in almost every department of indie from the merciless indie pop of Billie the Vision to the soulful Female vocals of Anna Ternheim. Sweden still looking for blood as they throw in the electro-synth duo The Knife. Denmark aren't out yet, they unleash their long time Indie heavy weight Kashmir. Sadly there isn't much they can do to change the Danish fortunes. Sweden walks away with the victory.

Join me next time for the FINAL where:

Sweden will take on Norway and people will once again forget not only where Aland is, but that it ever existed.

Indie, Always The Chearper Music Choice.

While I've talked about a lot of great features to surrendering yourself to the indie cause, such as an eternal delusion of grandeur and being able to wear flares without people assuming your out of touch. Now comes yet another reason to love Indie music, a massive amount of indie music is FREE! yes that's right, no longer will you be forking out money for music the indie genre is packed full of wannabe socialists who would rather remain in obscurity and poverty than take any money for their music. lets jump ahead and take a look at an example!

Billie the Vision and the Dancers



This wonderful group of indie-pop Swedes have just released their 4th album I Used to Wander These Streets (pictured above) and just as with their 1st, 2nd and 3rd album it's available completely free to download right here on their site... it's also available to buy which i actually attempted but only to those folk lucky enough to live in the social experiment known as Sweden can do that. I've chosen a song from each album to help you get a taste for them

I Used to Wander These Streets:
You’re Not Giving Up On Me
Where the Ocean Meets My Hand:
A Beautiful Night in Oslo
The World According To Pablo:
A Man From Argentina
I Was So Unpopular In School:
Nobel Square

Enjoy!
(and tell me what you think)

Winter is Coming

After what i can only describe as a terrible summer, i've decided to boycott Autumn.
I want to be clear that this is not because i have something against Autumn. In fact, generally after summer i'm more than ready to embrace the opportunity to put back on the Indie coats and hats that have been too heavy to wear during the summer. But due to the sorry state of this summer, all of my most Indie T-Shirts have been hidden away under layers of retro hoodies or cord jackets.
So i'm going to keep being in summer until my Shirts have gotten enough wear.
this as it turns out, isn't as easy as it sounds and so i've done some research into summer music which will help me get into the summer spirit. i'm also on track towards covering my window with a poster of a beach and leaving a lamp behind it..
So here's the music that would make ANYONE happy:

I'm From Barcelona: 24 Swedes all singing about things like stamps and holidays.. very happy stuff.

Billie The Vision & The Dancers: Apart from having a great name AND great music, it appears you can download any of their songs for free here on last.fm

The Format: I'm not sure if what they're singing about is happy or not.. but i'm too distracted by the summery sounds of the instruments to care all that much. they also have a great site. you can also have a listen here.

Dogs Die In Hot Cars: I really love these guys, their name is funny, they're music is happy (but it makes you think), most importantly they're only going to get MORE indie by the day. this is of course because they only released one album 5 years ago and broke up. I still listen to their music a lot! here's a torrent (it's not stealing because you can't really get the album any more)

Mic Christopher: Irish singer song writer, tragically died before releasing his first album, which as it turns out is FANTASTIC!

hope somebody finds something they like within this.
enjoy the rest of the summer.. lets hope it lasts till around January