Mikkel's blog about Play/Rec... and stuff

Back in Blog

2008-04-09 11:40:32

My long absence from this blog kind of answered the question I posed in the first entry in this blog 6 months ago... NO, I will not have time for this. Since my last entry I moved to a new flat, got a great job, quit the job because it wasn´t that great at all, released an album, did a couple of tours, worked on some other play/rec releases, watched my son grow... In other words plenty of exciting things have happened which I could have shared with you. But anyway, I´ll give the blog another try. Just saw that even Daniel is keeping his blog alive. The man formerly known as "King of Slack" is more active than me on the blog! This is embarassing so I have to pick myself together :-)
Things are fantastic these days, by the way. New Barra Head shows are in the making and I can´t wait to get back on the road. Yesterday my friend Greg MacPherson sent me some new songs - he even put some up on his myspace. You should check it out, as always it is absolutely beautiful! www.myspace.com/macphersonband.
Talk to you later!
Mikkel

Mess

2007-12-11 11:01:00

So many things floating around on my desk these days. I´m constantly talking to Björn from Barra Head´s new booking agency USTM. He´s a great guy and he´s working day and night it seems. The first 14 day tour this spring is almost booked. I´ll get back to you later with news on that one. The second 14 day tour is also in the planning... looks pretty solid, eh?

I´m also planning Barra Head´s release parties. Yup, that´s right, we´ll throw more than one of those. I won´t reveal too much now, but expect great times and hopefully good music.

I´m also working on a publishing deal for Play/Rec. This area is new to us, so we´re still just trying to figure out how to go about it. Luckily we hope to make a deal with some good friends of ours so I´m sure they won´t trick us into something we won´t like.

There´s also a lot of planning going on these days. Play/Rec has so many ambitions for the future and yet each of us feel we don´t have enough time to work on it...I think we´re all feeling a little stressed these days. It´s hard making ends meet...

Barra Head news

2007-11-22 01:48:00

I have some news from the Barra Head camp. Just posted this on our Myspace site, but thought it might be of interest in here as well.

You might think that things are quiet at the Barra Head HQ. And you´re right, we´re not rehearsing, playing live or writing new songs. But while we´re laying low taking care of babies, studies and what some call "real jobs", a lot of people are very busy on our behalf.

First of all we now have a new booking agency for Europe. Under The Stars, Me! is the name and Björn is the man. Check them out here: www.underthestars.de. UST,M is based in Berlin and Björn is a really experienced guy with a lot of shows and tours on his resumé. Boy, he´s hardworking! He already has a lot of dates lined up for us, we will tell you more later. To get in touch with Björn for shows just drop him a line: bjoern@underthestars.de. I´m sure he´ll get back to you in a second. What a great guy!

The people at Play/Rec (excluding Arvid and I) are really busy preparing for our album to be released. Both cd and vinyl are at the printers right now. It feels fantastic to leave the responsability for this album in Daniel´s and Soren´s hands. They have a better perspective than we have when it comes to the administrative work regarding this album and they are far better than we are getting things done at this point in the process. I guess we´ve discovered the upsides of sharing responsability and we´re better off preparing to give our best when we´re gonna tour all over Europe this spring. We can´t thank Daniel and Soren enough!

Other than that there´s a few surprises up our sleaves. We´ll keep you posted.

Let´s get the hell out of here

2007-11-14 09:31:00

What a depressing morning. Elections are over and we can prepare ourselves for four more years of the same crap. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, the ones who dare to be any different than the majority are getting bashed... And what´s up with those election "parties"?! Do they think it´s a soccer game?! Waving their little blue flags and cheering like teenage girls at a boyband show. My first thought this morning was to get the hell out of this fucked up country. I can´t wait to go on tour again.

Spam shit

2007-11-08 09:13:00

Women wrestling? Mature Women? Nike Air Jordan shoes? Big boobs?

SOunds alright, but man, how I hate spam! It looks like our blogs here at Play/Rec are under serious attacks. It takes hours to remove the posts manually. I hope Arvid can work his magic... I started removing the spam posts and in the proces I accidentally deleted some serious comments. To those of you who posted - sorry!

And it´s not like I don´t have enough to do these days. There has been a lot to decide on regarding the cover art work for Barra Head. Our good friend Anders has worked hard to make Sarah´s design ready for print. I have spent a couple of days working on a promo single for radio. It contains three songs from the album. Covers are hand folded, so it takes some time. Oh, how it reminds me of the good old days when we handfolded the cover for Songs And Depatures. We spent a couple of weeks in a glue daze. I´m sure that the process had been just a tad longer, we would have a serious drug problem today, ha!

There´s also a lot of talking going on in Play/Rec about how we best prepare for the coming releases. I don´t always agree with the others, and then it´s frustrating to not be able to work as much as I want to on the Play/Rec issues.

I can´t complain though... Elections take up a lot of time here at home, but I´m having a good time with my son. He´s enjoying his dad´s music. Luckily his dad´s enjoying it too.

An old dude´s music

2007-10-30 10:56:32

I know all you kids talk about Radiohead´s new album these days. Well, I´m an old dude and I go for vinyl, so I´m gonna have to wait awhile. Never been a huge Radiohead fan though, and I don´t have a lot of money to spend on records anymore, so I´m gonna have to wait and see if there are other great records coming out when it´s released. I have been spending a little these past days, though. Here´s some short reviews:

Bruce Springsteen - "Magic".

As I said, I´m an old dude, and old dudes love Springsteen. Great to hear him with the E-Street band again. There´s some of his best songs in years on this album. His songs commenting on the Wars on terror are actually pretty great, nice to hear him pissed off again. Not too fond of the production, though. Brendan O´Brien did a better job on "The Rising" in my opinion.

31 Knots - "The Days And Nights of Everything Everywhere"

I was really dissappointed with this album. 31 Knots is an amazing three piece band, but they started experimenting with electronics on this one. I think it´s a mess! Still some good songs on it, but it´s frustrating listening to it, when it sounds like this. Too arty farty, guys...

Fin Fang Foom - "Texture, Structure And The COndition Of Moods"

Pretty good album. I prefer to listen to this mathy stuff very loud and with a new born in the house the possibility to listen to really loud music does not come often, so I haven´t listened that many times to it yet. It´s promising, though... Mathy but catchy.

Haymarket Riot - "Bloodshot Eyes"

Again an album that suffers a bit from poor production. The songs are pretty good, but somehow it´s not really sticking to my mind. Sitting here now I can´t remember a single song from it. I need to listen to this some more, I guess.

Jose Gonzalez - "In Our Nature"

A great album! Jose´s lyrics have never been strong and they even seem somewhat naive on this album, but his guitar playing and his singing is amazing. And somehow it seems a bit more aggressive on this album which suits him well.

Sun Kill Moon - "Tiny Cities"

This has really grown on me. I´ve never been a big modest mouse fan, so it took some time for me to get this. His ac/dc cover songs were instant hits for me, but probably because I have always loved the old ac/dc stuff. "Tiny Cities" is really great too, though. Mark Kozelek is brilliant on his guitar and his singing is great as always.

Hmmm, there´s more new records here, but I´m gonna leave you with these for now. Now I´m gonna cranck up some of Lack´s new songs. It sounds pretty amazing!

The bad guys are winning...

2007-10-26 09:50:00

It´s election time in Denmark. Some of you might know about my wife´s engagement in politics, and because of this I will have my hands full on my own at home changing diapers and playing with my son the next couple of weeks... So don´t expect too many blog posts from me. Here´s just one thought about elections; I´m terrified how important spin doctors are becoming in danish politics. Most of what the politicians from both sides of the parlament are saying is obviously sentences taken right out of some spin doctors mouth... Everybody seem more interested in controlling the public discourse than making a change for the better in our society. Do they think it´s a fucking chess game?! It´s people´s life´s they´re dealing with... Unfortunately the right wing´s spin doctors seem to be well prepared. They get their photo opportunities and they succeed in placing stories in the media however speculative they may seem. The bad guys are winning...

Old friends

2007-10-26 01:08:00

I have added a couple of links to some of my very old friends that have started blogging too.
I have known Thomas for something like 20 years. He has recently moved to Copenhagen, great to have you around again, mate! I missed you.
Søren L I have known for maybe 15 years. We´re not talking that much anymore, but for some reason I like keeping in touch with his whereabouts.

Album art work

2007-10-22 10:10:00

Art work for music albums is a tricky genre. What makes a good cover is hard to define. On the one hand it should somehow refer to the band, the music, the lyrics and the themes they refer to. On the other it should somehow be memorable, simple and easy to recognize.

In Barra Head we have always had a really hard time picking out the art work to go with our albums. Not that we have completely different tastes in art and visual design. But we have never quite succeeded in getting something that is both memorable AND somehow related to our music. We have wanted to display so many things visually that maybe it all ended up a bit too neutral... Nice but not very cutting edge, so to speak.

On Songs And Departures we wanted something clever, something about how the three of us thought of music, our way of working together and where we were going with this music. We ended up with three upside down pictures of skid marks on concrete! I guess it could have been cool. Our good friend Thomas had these great photos lying around and we thought it somehow was saying something about us. But we didn´t quite think it through and seeing it now it doesn´t really work the way we wanted it to.

On We Are Your Numbers we got a blueprint from the coaster ship Barra Head, the ship we got our name from. We thought this was the coolest thing and definitely wanted this on our cover. The result is very nice, our friend Anders put this together in an excellent manner, but no one but the three of us seem really that interested in that goddamn ship!

So in this perspective I don´t feel we have really succeeded in getting a cover for our albums that could both say a little about us, our music and get people´s attention. Now it´s time again to decide on a cover for our new album. This time we decided to give someone else the possibility to work on this without us interfering every two seconds. Sarah Bodil Hansen is an incredibly talented artist working with many different elements in her art. She was given carte blanche to do both cover, poster and videos for Barra Head. Her first suggestion scared us shitless. It is something completely different from what we have had before. It took some time and a lot of words to convince us, but now at least I am convinced. Sarah´s work is excellent! She has managed to make a cover for us that both suggest what the songs deal with, it somehow displays the shift in direction that we as a band has definitely taken. Other than that it is without doubt memorable and speaks very directly to it´s viewer. I´m really excited about this and can´t wait to reveal it! We´ll have to wait a little, though...

Picking out the songs

2007-10-18 07:16:00

I thought it would be easy picking out the songs for Barra Heads coming album. We recorded eleven songs back in june and july. For the sake of optimal sound on the vinyl we decided to only include ten songs on the album. So we needed to leave out one. There was no doubt in my mind. To me one song was standing out as the by far weakest production of the bunch. Unfortunately Arvid and Jakob didn´t agree! We spent the past months discussing back and forth what song to leave out. Since we´re three stubborn lads, we have always discussed a lot in this band, so this was nothing new. But this discussion dragged out a little too far. We were getting closer to the deadline. Alan Douches, who´s mastering the album, needed the final decision for the sequence of songs. So finally the other day we came to a decision. Søren and Daniel lend us an ear, our good friend Nagel lend us an ear, and since these people probably know us and our music better than anyone we value their advice a great deal. And I´m extremenly happy with the decision we made. It might seem stupid to be this obsessed with a certain list of songs, but when you´ve put you heart, soul, time and effort in making an album I guess it´s only natural you want it to be the very best it can be... This is the final list of songs on the forthcoming album:

1. Some Wars
2. Common Ground
3. From Hope Comes Doubt
4. Undermine
5. Somebody´s Floor

6. Gradiska
7. Legitimate
8. Iron To Skin
9. Idiot On Treadmill
10. Accept The Risk

Cand. Scient. Anth.

2007-10-17 01:47:00

Now I´m officially grown up. Today I finally defended my final thesis in anthropology. To those of you who haven´t tried that before it´s an hour long session with a couple of anthropologists asking critical questions to my fieldwork and my thesis. It was pretty rough but I did quite ok, I must say. And I´m pretty proud to have come this far, thinking of all the things I have done in my years of studying... things that have nothing to do with anthropology, that is... Post grad in anthropology, jeeez that´s grown up!

My thesis is about illegal immigration in Sicily and how sicilians deal with this issue. It´s also a critique of traditonal anthropological theories and methods of approaching a difficult situation like this. In many ways I feel that my music and my lyrics are a better way for me to adress these issues. My thesis will probably end up in a library and if it´s read by 20 people I´m pretty lucky. But what the heck... It´s done and somehow I wouldn´t have been without this process. It has definitely given my an awareness and a knowledge I wouldn´t be without.

Pfeeew, will I have time to do this?

2007-10-14 11:18:00

My life is crazy these days... Crazy in a good way, but still, really crazy. Arvid had this idea to do a blog here on Play/Rec´s website and I think it´s a great idea. It should give you all an idea about how you run a small independent record company, it should give you an idea about how we are as people and maybe it could even give you an idea about why on earth we continue this hopeless project of releasing records in a time where record sales are dropping from day to day. But I wonder if I will have time to write... Lots of things are happening for me these days...

A little about myself, I´m Mikkel - one of the four owners of Play/Rec. I´m married to Pernille and a month ago we had a son. A beautiful little boy who has turned my world upside down... Like I said - crazy in a good way!

A month ago I also finished my master in anthropology. I have been "working" on this for years and it´s great to finally get it out of the way... And just in time for my son to be born.

When I say "working" in regards to my university studies, it´s really an overstatement. My "work" for the past 10 years has primarily been as a composer, writer, musician, booker, manager etc for Barra Head. Barra Head has become one the most important things in my life. I have played with Arvid and Jakob in this band half my life and not a single day go by where I´m not in one way or another "working" on this endless project. This past year we have been working on our 3rd album, which we finally recorded in June. I´m extremely happy with the result. To me it sounds like Barra Head has always sounded in my head. It has never been captured better than this...

The album is recorded but lots of work is still to be done. Artwork, mastering, organising booking agencies, promo agencies etc etc... With a newborn in the house I certainly have my hands full.

My life is busy these days, but I will do my best to let you all in on what´s going on from time to time...