The record Kent wish they could make.

Last Friday we at The Garden released a special album.

For you non-Norwegians (which I guess most of you are), bands like Seigmen and Zeromancer doesn't mean much. I hadn't heard of them before I moved here either. Seigmen is one of the bigger Norwegian bands of the last 20 years or so. They split up in 1999 and has since done a few reunion gigs.

Kim Ljung played bass and did backing vocals in Seigmen, he's also responsible for a lot of the writing. When Seigmen split up he and two other members from the band formed Zeromancer. Kim has also had he's own side project Ljungblut. He has just released his fourth album under this moniker.

This album is entitled "Over Skyene Skinner Alltid Solen". It is released by The Garden together with Pleasuredisc. It has been released on both CD and vinyl. The CD version is a digipack limited to 1 000 copies which are all numbered and signed by Kim Ljung himself. The vinyl is limited to 300 copies and are also numbered and signed by Kim.

Like the title says "The record Kent wish they could make." I hear a lot of Kent on this album and I understand Kim is a fan of the band as well so it isn't too far fetched. Especially the last couple of Kent albums where they have taken a more electronic/synth approach to it- only Kim Ljung perfects the sound. This is the first album since Seigmen's "Metropolis" (released in 1995) that Kim sings in Norwegian and he explained it as he wanted to be closer to the fans, which was also why he wanted to put his signature on every record. This album really has a "naked" sound to as well. A beautiful album, to put it short!

Here's a Spotify link to the album.

Iron Maiden

One year ago I bought the last Iron Maiden album "The Final Frontier". I wrote a blog post in which I mentioned my very small Maiden collection and that it needed to grow.

A year has passed and here's the latest release that I picked up from the store yesterday:

This is a compilation of the band's last 20 years and it's also a follow up to the 2008 compilation "Somewhere Back In Time" which compiled the first ten years.

So, a year ago my Maiden collection consisted of only three vinyls. "Killers", "Piece Of Mind" and "The Final Frontier". Since then the collection has grew considerably and at the moment I've got 31 LPs, 12" singles and 7" singles. I've got at least one copy of every full length album the band has released except for the two albums they recorded with Blaze Bayley in the mid 90s and also Bruce Dickinson's comeback album "Brave New World". These are all quite expensive at around £50 or more, so we'll se when I'll get my hands on those. Iron Maiden is such a fun band to collect since there are so much to collect and luckily some stuff are relatively cheap. So far I'm trying to limit myself to just collecting UK and Japanese versions of the full-lengths. Let's see how long that lasts... The singles I want all copies though;)

Bon Iver

Yesterday I bought this record from our store:

So that's quite random you ask to buy the first Bon Iver album, just like that? Well the reason is simply this:

A few weeks ago I bought the new selftitled Bon Iver album and I've been listeningen to it almost non-stop eversince. What a great album! I have a very special relationship to these types of bands, the very low key singer/songwriter types of bands. A lot of people have been hailing the new Iron & Wine album that came i February for example, but I've yet to find out the brilliance of that album. It's the same thing with the new Fleet Foxes that came earlier this year. There's just something missing for me. I guess you would call this type of music indie pop/rock? It's quite a broad description and these bands that I've mentioned are all a lot different, but I would still put them in the same genre.

So to get back to Bon Iver... When there actually is a band within this genre I like, it's pure magic! This album does not only feature the best song of the year (opening track "Perth"), it's a beautiful journey from start to, almost, finish. The last song "Beth/Rest" sounds like it could have been on the Top Gun soundtrack or something. I don't know if Vernon is serious with this song or if he's being funny, I hope for the latter because in that case- it's hilarious!

So far I've listened to "For Emma..." two times and it's really promising. It's more "a-man-and-his-guitar" kind of music, which I'm not that big a fan of as you're supposed to be I guess. But like I said, when that kidn of music hits me, it hits me hard!

A live version of "Perth" in decent quality: