Lot of things have happen since last time... It's been 7 months already...
I have left New York for Gothenburg (for now). I have finished my academic career (for now... maybe). I have an internship coming up for next semester at a promotion agency in Gothenburg. In the meanwhile...
My good friend Marcus Kaasinen has been helping me out with All Systems Go! lately. We decided to join forces with Michel Onderbeke from I For Us Records, and relaunch the inactive label Parallel Music. The idea was to create an artist-focused music label that would work with artists we really believe in, artistivally... Anyways, our first signing is the atmospheric and progressive postcore act NO HAWAII. I would say something in the veins of Neurosis, Mastodon, The Mars Volta and Isis.
Parallel Music will release the band's debut album entitled "Snake My Charms" on June 9th. We have recieved overwhelming press lately and we are all very excited to get the record out. We have worked with Sound Pollution, Blackstar Foundation, Impure Muzik and heaps of friends and bands for promotion and shows. We also teamed up with Joni Huttunen. He directed the previous two NO HAWAII videos, and this time we created a 2010 psychadelic Beat Club video for the track "Tunnel". For more info about this stuff:
www.parallel-music.com
www.nohawaii.com
www.allsystemsgo.se
THE PROCESS played for the first time in like a year - we played the Frihetlig Första Maj Festivalen at Underjorden, Gothenburg. We had a blast, and we are starting to plan the rest of the year, including new releases and tours etc... Awesome things coming up... Converge, Kylesa, Amsterdam, NO HAWAII and hopefully some summer. Until next time - enjoy this trip.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Male Teen Age Angst
I paid a visit to the Oneonta Teen Center for some live music last week. I went with a friend who does voluntary work for the animal rights movement, and we sat up a table with flyers, info sheets and a movie that show how many animals are treated before they get slauthered, to later satify the demand for meat consumption. Really nasty video clips to be honest... The idea is not to enforce ideas on others but to raise awareness about the products that a majority of the people out there eats. The info we provided also put emphasis on more sustainable and healthy alternatives.
The info provided was from Peta and another organization (don't remember the name, sorry), which is interesting as me and my friend has a discussion on the way home about the animal rights movement and especially Peta. Many activists or animal rights supporters don't like Peta and they claim that Peta is objectifying women in their different campaigns. Peta has a tendency to make awareness efforts where they use naked women to symbolize meat in different contexts. Another campaign that got massive critique was the campaign they did with Suicide Girls...
Other say that Peta are only using the prevailing marketing strategies that reaches a wide audience and that some of their campaigns are a necessary evil to reach more people. The defenders of Peta also claim that Peta has to market themselves and their ideas in these contexts to be able to continue to spread the message, or else they would only be preaching to the choir...
You choose your own battles I guess... I leave this one for somebody else...
Anyways, on Thursday we say five emo/pop/hc bands give their best in front of an enthusiastic crowd. The headliner band was The Wonder Years and Energy, but Energy canceled last minute because of sickness. The Thurday show was good, not really my kind of music, but live music is always inspiring. The venue was pumped with male teen age angst and the bands got good response. All in all, it was a good show. The Wonder Years did an awesome show. However, I need a little more screaming, speed and darkness to fully enjoy it.
The show on Friday night was really good. We got there late and missed the first two bands... We saw the last threee and it was a blast. First band we saw was from Albany and they played some kind of NY Hardcore, with many breakdowns and moshfriendly parts. The second band was even better. They are calles After the Fall, and they added more speed and punk influences to their set, very much appreciated from my part. The singer/ guitarist was really talented and used really awesome harmonies and chord progressions.
The night ended with Defeater, an awesome Bidge9 band from Boston. They played a really dynamic and energetic set and all of us seemed to really enjoyed it, I sure did. They are out on the road at the moment promoting their new EP entitled "Lost Ground" and will be out November 17th on Bridge 9 Records. Check them out!
I support live music the way I feel is appropriate, which usually means paying to get in and buying merch directly from the bands. The merch was only 10USD this weekend, compared to CONVERGE's rip off price of 25USD... All of us have to eat I guess... or something... bands should appreciate their audiences and treat them well because without them, there would be no bands pretty much - Kill the head and the body will Die. Go to shows and support your bands, promoters and friends...
Don't belive anything IFPI or RIAA say as they serve a certain and very specific agenda (the agendas and interests of the major Record Labels), blaming P2P and file sharing for killing the music industry without taking any responsability for the transition that has been going on for many years now... Remember - the record industry is NOT the music industry. Greed and power intoxicates, and now the Major Labels have to pay for it by losing their monopoly position and instead face a more consumer and band empowered industry. (This is a win win situation for most of the counter culture/ politics forces, where the hc/punk scene is one of them.)
I call this progress KARMA.
The info provided was from Peta and another organization (don't remember the name, sorry), which is interesting as me and my friend has a discussion on the way home about the animal rights movement and especially Peta. Many activists or animal rights supporters don't like Peta and they claim that Peta is objectifying women in their different campaigns. Peta has a tendency to make awareness efforts where they use naked women to symbolize meat in different contexts. Another campaign that got massive critique was the campaign they did with Suicide Girls...
Other say that Peta are only using the prevailing marketing strategies that reaches a wide audience and that some of their campaigns are a necessary evil to reach more people. The defenders of Peta also claim that Peta has to market themselves and their ideas in these contexts to be able to continue to spread the message, or else they would only be preaching to the choir...
You choose your own battles I guess... I leave this one for somebody else...
Anyways, on Thursday we say five emo/pop/hc bands give their best in front of an enthusiastic crowd. The headliner band was The Wonder Years and Energy, but Energy canceled last minute because of sickness. The Thurday show was good, not really my kind of music, but live music is always inspiring. The venue was pumped with male teen age angst and the bands got good response. All in all, it was a good show. The Wonder Years did an awesome show. However, I need a little more screaming, speed and darkness to fully enjoy it.
The show on Friday night was really good. We got there late and missed the first two bands... We saw the last threee and it was a blast. First band we saw was from Albany and they played some kind of NY Hardcore, with many breakdowns and moshfriendly parts. The second band was even better. They are calles After the Fall, and they added more speed and punk influences to their set, very much appreciated from my part. The singer/ guitarist was really talented and used really awesome harmonies and chord progressions.
The night ended with Defeater, an awesome Bidge9 band from Boston. They played a really dynamic and energetic set and all of us seemed to really enjoyed it, I sure did. They are out on the road at the moment promoting their new EP entitled "Lost Ground" and will be out November 17th on Bridge 9 Records. Check them out!
I support live music the way I feel is appropriate, which usually means paying to get in and buying merch directly from the bands. The merch was only 10USD this weekend, compared to CONVERGE's rip off price of 25USD... All of us have to eat I guess... or something... bands should appreciate their audiences and treat them well because without them, there would be no bands pretty much - Kill the head and the body will Die. Go to shows and support your bands, promoters and friends...
Don't belive anything IFPI or RIAA say as they serve a certain and very specific agenda (the agendas and interests of the major Record Labels), blaming P2P and file sharing for killing the music industry without taking any responsability for the transition that has been going on for many years now... Remember - the record industry is NOT the music industry. Greed and power intoxicates, and now the Major Labels have to pay for it by losing their monopoly position and instead face a more consumer and band empowered industry. (This is a win win situation for most of the counter culture/ politics forces, where the hc/punk scene is one of them.)
I call this progress KARMA.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
CONVERGE in NYC
I finally left Oneonta and campus for a show. I saw CONVERGE in NYC at the Hammerstein Ballroom together with High on Fire, Mastodon and Deathklok. I spent three days in the city, just hanging out in my hotel room located in Upper West Side, and did alot of work with ALL SYSTEMS GO! - budgets, planning and other fun stuff...
CONVERGE is really one of the best acts out there in my opinion, bringing new
dimensions to the hardcore and metal scene. The venue has a capacity of around 4000 people and the venues was really epic. It was interesting to see the band under a different light, as I usually have seenn them in smaller venues in Europe. The environment was different, bu only because of the size of the venue, but also because of the crowd. Most of the audience was there for the pure metal acts and I missed the usually hc/punk and DIY inspired crowd. The show was simply awesome, at least for me... The intro was epic, with just guitarist Kurt Ballou starting everything off with the song Plagues... EPIC!
Here are some of the songs I remember they played:
Plagues
Last light
Hellbound
Eagles Become Vultures
Dark Horse
Concubine
Axe To Fall
The Broken Vow
No Heroes
The other bands dont really appeal to me but it was nice to be at a big show, or
just a show. The last show was MONO and Maserati, but that was a couple of weeks ago now... Thats a really long time for me to be without good live music... Mastodon played a good set, the crowd was really enjoying it and the visual art on the big screen was pretty sweet aswell. Deathklok is to much metal for my personal taste, but it was fun to see videos from Metalocalypse during the whole show was funny...
The CONVERGE merch was expensive. I hope it was because of the context in which they where touring. I understand that they charged more because the metal audience usually pay more for their merch, but at the same time, for the same reason, I find it unacceptable... I hope this is the last time. This guy came up to me during the Mastodon show, like 5 times, wanting to shake my hand, bowing and giving me the thumbs up etc... But he never said a word to me... My only conclusion is that he had me mistaken for Nate Newton, the CONVERGE bass player... Or he was just... I don't really know to be honest...
I have been written about stuff that I have been doing lately and not about different political issues... I don't really know what you people think, but I find
that the more personal the blog gets, the less interesting it gets... I will try to
balance things out so that everybody doesn't get bored... I have been researching a little bit about the Afghanistan elections, President Obamas position and comments related to that, and also the CIA and their payments to a drug lord that happens to be the Afghan leader's brother... I will post that stuff this week end... I also went to a show tonight and I will go to another on Friday, so more on that asap aswell...
Enjoy the pics from the CONVERGE show for now.
be safe.
CONVERGE is really one of the best acts out there in my opinion, bringing new
dimensions to the hardcore and metal scene. The venue has a capacity of around 4000 people and the venues was really epic. It was interesting to see the band under a different light, as I usually have seenn them in smaller venues in Europe. The environment was different, bu only because of the size of the venue, but also because of the crowd. Most of the audience was there for the pure metal acts and I missed the usually hc/punk and DIY inspired crowd. The show was simply awesome, at least for me... The intro was epic, with just guitarist Kurt Ballou starting everything off with the song Plagues... EPIC!
Here are some of the songs I remember they played:
Plagues
Last light
Hellbound
Eagles Become Vultures
Dark Horse
Concubine
Axe To Fall
The Broken Vow
No Heroes
The other bands dont really appeal to me but it was nice to be at a big show, or
just a show. The last show was MONO and Maserati, but that was a couple of weeks ago now... Thats a really long time for me to be without good live music... Mastodon played a good set, the crowd was really enjoying it and the visual art on the big screen was pretty sweet aswell. Deathklok is to much metal for my personal taste, but it was fun to see videos from Metalocalypse during the whole show was funny...
The CONVERGE merch was expensive. I hope it was because of the context in which they where touring. I understand that they charged more because the metal audience usually pay more for their merch, but at the same time, for the same reason, I find it unacceptable... I hope this is the last time. This guy came up to me during the Mastodon show, like 5 times, wanting to shake my hand, bowing and giving me the thumbs up etc... But he never said a word to me... My only conclusion is that he had me mistaken for Nate Newton, the CONVERGE bass player... Or he was just... I don't really know to be honest...
I have been written about stuff that I have been doing lately and not about different political issues... I don't really know what you people think, but I find
that the more personal the blog gets, the less interesting it gets... I will try to
balance things out so that everybody doesn't get bored... I have been researching a little bit about the Afghanistan elections, President Obamas position and comments related to that, and also the CIA and their payments to a drug lord that happens to be the Afghan leader's brother... I will post that stuff this week end... I also went to a show tonight and I will go to another on Friday, so more on that asap aswell...
Enjoy the pics from the CONVERGE show for now.
be safe.
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