Music Recommendation Post #8

I recently went to a music festival in Oslo City called By:Larm, in which a bunch of bands goes on to perform short concerts mostly hitting just around 30 minutes with the rare exception of an hour or two. In this post I’ll write a little about all the concerts I went to and tell you about my experience, as I was pretty good at picking bands because I had a lot of fun!

I’ll be sorting them by the order they played and I’ll add one song I like from each of them to give you a taste of what each one is about. At the bottom of the post, I’ll quickly give my top 5 out of these.

 

DAY ONE

JUNO

Trondheim, Norway
Jazz

This group has a very distinct style within jazz with complex rhythms, some rap-like lyric lines that still has a very clear melodic pattern to them. On top of that, they’ve got some very catchy melodies with quite interesting harmony. Despite being all the way back in the locale and not being able to see their performance, I had a blast listening to them. Fantastic performers and amazing music that I highly recommend listening to! I will definitely be listening to them!

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/7Io78P22ks7K7hW96bfhIX?si=_OI5uhYvRumpZR1cg1zs0A

YouTube: https://youtu.be/bzMZ_oz-HhY

GHLOW

Half-Russian, half-Swedish
Semi-Electronic Rock

This was certainly a very interesting concert. This duo, with a quite distinct sound, performs everything completely live, nothing pre-recorded. That is quite risky as if anything’s out of time, it’ll mess everything up. The vocalist has a very unique and interesting sound to her using an old AKG microphone that she sadly didn’t know the model of. It definitely sounds awesome tho.

Personally, this wasn’t quite my style, but they seemed like cool people at least from the short conversation I had with them afterwards. I did pick a song I quite enjoyed tho, and this certainly was cool to listen to live. Do take a listen to them tho, they don’t have many plays.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6LaCch4Mm3cI2yUi9deW7B?si=pTJbSvyWS4WRd2HxlBEQMQ

YouTube: https://youtu.be/iA8mJ5ySn_Q

THE NEW DEATH CULT

Norway
‘Desert Rock’

This group was certainly awesome to look at live with cool glow-in-the-dark paint on their bodies and clothes and great lighting to boot. They have pretty grandiose melodic lines combined with a somewhat heavy rock style. Sadly, I kinda felt a bit tired listening to them quite quickly and ended up leaving and instead go to a different concert that I originally didn’t plan to go to

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/3Wpl994NQXAOXkp94JUoPK?si=s_bs3n6PTQaBnyrqbIPFFQ

YouTube: https://youtu.be/TRZUCgpdAFg

Klein

United Kindom
Experimental

Some things are best experienced live. Klein is certainly one of those with insane lighting and a very cool and unique performance I won’t forget. Experimental music can be awesome if you pair it with impressive lighting and performance. She held the crowd in her hands as she fiddled around with her gear and walked around on the stage using different instruments and sampling herself live.

I can sadly not say that her recorded music is as good tho, mostly because the whole thing was a stageplay. You can’t really take the stage part out of it. She truly claimed the stage with her black power. She’s one of those cases where you can hear the colour of her skin by the way she talks, and she’s a real power-woman.

The closest you’ll be getting to experience what I experienced live would be to watch the music video.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/3uSjp9rT55R0WjPSfnoyT8?si=HCuxfW2iQzCsMDCjZ1V-jg

YouTube: https://youtu.be/JL5R6CFBWsM

Giant Swan

United Kingdom
Experimental

This was a similar case to Klein, it’s a matter of best experienced live. With their impressive euroracks, synths, and other gadgets, they truly shook the room. Like, quite literally. The bass was rumbling quite hard.

Unlike Klein tho, I still kinda enjoy this recorded. But the fifteen minutes I had to listen to this before I went back to sleep was truly an experience. They built the music up slowly in a way that gave an ultimate climax at the end. Try the music video to get closer to what I experienced live

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6NtYC0fHK39eqCEliIK5Ye?si=t3kVZ0fJRqO1DLmMBOTo_w

YouTube: https://youtu.be/V49791v5rBI

 

DAY TWO

Rebecca Lou

Denmark
‘Moped Rock’

This punk-rock band was pretty raw live with an insane stage presence. Perhaps that was because I was so close to the singer that at one point she was a microphone distance away from my face, but regardless of that, they had an insane amount of energy. The drummer was shaking his head the whole time, and holy shit, I thought I had veiny arms, but he takes the cake …

If you like punk, you should definitely check out this group as it was definitely awesome! If I was more into punk I’d probably love it, but punk is a style I just like so it was just a little awesome.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/1uQ5cGQ6DCEz7Io98M5IbO?si=xhnFgVpDSGmGq0UchuOE1A

YouTube: https://youtu.be/YidymbLKDSA

Johan Airijoki

Sweden
Rock

This Swedish story-teller really grabbed me and just made me want more. And I should mention the amazing clarinet player that not just played the clarinet, but also played tambourine and rubbish. Yes, you read that correctly. He had contraption of a pot, a washing board, and a hermetic box. He really got people up close to film.

But aside from all that, this band simply just sounds amazing and probably have some fantastic lyrics. At least the description they got by By:Larm called them poetic, and it sounded like it, I’m just not very attentive to lyrics in general.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/2rUmoSMFVcnmnYT31BPjLY?si=1JecKzeYSrOaaFxy9Xzu6w

YouTube: https://youtu.be/2gAgxME-cwE

Jockstrap

United Kingdom
Experimental, digital bossa-nova-esque

This was a case of *the recorded music was better*. I did not have a fun time listening to them live. Perhaps that was because of the people talking loudly next to me as well as me being pushed all the way back into the locale, but I didn’t enjoy it. However, listening back to their recorded music, I definitely like this. I’d recommend giving this a listening, but I’m not so sure if I’d recommend hearing them live.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6QWz6ZtKAqp6Aqh0QIG6K6?si=QA22-xJzSbmGym732bThWw

YouTube: https://youtu.be/oOXho8yVaKk

PERILA

Russia
Experimental

This was a very odd case. There was no information about her online except for the description she had on the By:Larm app. I couldn’t find her music anywhere, not on Spotify, not on YouTube, not on SoundCloud. And when I showed up a bit early because the prior concert ended half an hour before, the doors were closed and I had a hard time figuring out where it was.

As we got very close to the time it was gonna start, a guard came out, but wouldn’t let us in until ten minutes past the time it was supposed to start.

Eventually, I got in, and it was pretty unique with lights around the room that reacted to the music, and interesting electronic music. However, I couldn’t stay there for long as I had another concert to get to. The vodka tasted good and was relatively cheap compared to the other places tho.

Well, while I said that she didn’t have anything out, apparently a SoundCloud has since been linked. And she apparently mostly has hour-long songs on there

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/perila

Black Country, New Road

United Kingdom
Jazzy Rock

This was certainly interesting. It was pretty cool when the singer sang that he didn’t have a British accent and how it’s kinda too late to do anything about that at that point (Athen’s, France). The band was certainly talented and sounded awesome. They don’t have that much music out on streaming services tho, only two. Their distinct sound is pretty awesome with some awesome rhythms and extended harmonies that definitely aren’t afraid of being dissonant. They’ve almost got this experimental feel to them

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/65UwL8cFTFyMA8uh1nr95p?si=V2647tyISVO70TS6n3yZoQ

YouTube: https://youtu.be/fPrLcM-uPwU

Pottery

Canada
Post-Punk, Psych, Rock ‘n Roll-ish

It was certainly awesome to see this group live as the guitarist/vocalist and the rest of the group had a fantastic stage presence. That guitarist/vocalist especially as he kept dancing in a very rock ‘n roll style which the music seems somewhat inspired by, despite how it very much strays from the conventions of Rock ‘n Roll and carves its own path and style. By:Larm says “this British-Canadian crew sometimes dip their toes in post-punk, psych, and other jagged sounds, there’s a giant slab of ’80s pop and ’60s vibes at the forefront most of the time. In other words: music for dancing.”

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/3hfYncOLEt0KGRYdDQ6sc6?si=cQiErMdnRyKE2DMh4d3Hpg

YouTube: https://youtu.be/p1e5qJK0q1g

Spurv

Oslo, Norway
Post-Rock

This band very much reminds me of Godspeed You, Black Emperor, while still being very much its own thing. With amazing stage-presence and awesome music, this was truly the best way to end my journey through 12 concerts in two days! They were going to play for 30 minutes but ended up playing for 45, and those 45 minutes were constant headbanging to terrific music that truly struck with me. I’m a huge fan of post-rock, so that was no surprise to me.

One of the best parts about their music and post-rock as a whole is how they tend to spend long spans of time leading up to an incredible climax of extraordinary proportions. That’s something you’ll never experience with pop music that jumps straight to the climax at the beginning of the song.

The title of this song means “From The Depts Under The Stone”
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/2zPaUPxvWXy3h59W2UIDhV?si=o4ZHUDNbRtCfWl0gAYR2EA

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ou3KgUZWT7A

 

TOP PICKS

As promised, here are my top picks based on enjoyment taking both their recorded music and their live-performance into account:

5. Pottery
4. Johan Airijoki
3. Black Country, New Road
2. Juno
1. Spurv