We Forgot That We Loved Each Other

I'm sorry for delaying the Popaganda post and pictures, but that will surface tomorrow. As a token of my regret, I shall here give you a collection of goodtimes you can't hardly resist. I dedicate this to Hannah for spawning the idea. Press each letter from left to right.

T H E N I N E T I E S

Props to Youtube and the people who uploaded these videos for existing!

I Paint The Things I Wanna See

Popaganda has taken off, and despite the horrid weather I hope it should be a good crowd out there already. It would suck bum if they went into red because of bad weather. But I'll be there later tonight to watch some goodies at least. I might even buy something to support the cause. Powah to tha peeps!

Mew should be interesting, and so will Henrik Berggren. Apparently he's doing an acoustic show, and I suppose the weather is perfect for the mood that will set anyway. Some pictures and reviews shall follow tomorrow, as well as all the weekend hopefully. See you there.

For The Rest Of My Life

Today I got my wuvely, wuvely CSN money of the month. The last of them, sadly, but I intend to put it to good use - starting tomorrow. Today I went for a quick visit to Sound Pollution, mainly because they had some sort of sale (garbage sale, prolly) and I picked up some stuff there before heading for SF Bookstore and picked up some nicer stuff.

My loot:

CD
Franz Ferdinand - Walk Away CD-S
Marit Bergman - Adios Amigos CD-S
Marit Bergman - This Is The Year CD-S
Timo Räisänen - Don't Let The Devil Ruin It All CD-S
Very Ape - Kosher Boogie

DVD
Kikujiro

Books
Stephen King's Nightmares & Dreamscapes
Stephen King's On Writing

Harmless As A Dove

Since I really don't have anything to do with my life, I felt like I could use this spare time (not really spare time, I'm just a lazy fuck who tends to focus on insignificant shit such as what follows) to write a translation of Kent's brand new song "Nålens Öga" ("The Needle's Eye"). So here you go, kids, and remember this will contain some mistakes, but you'll have to live with it:

Kent - The Needle's Eye

Someone is standing in the hallway
breathing smoke
The shadow across the yard
reaches into our kitchen
Here comes the fear, old friend
When all the butterflies in your stomach wakes up
whispering Welcome home

I'm counting; three, four, five
(Lie to me, yeah lie to me)
It's not the punches that hurts
(Lie again)
There's an invisible line
(Lie to me, yeah lie to me)
through the eye of the needle

Someone is standing in the doorway
while listening silently
The shadow across the threshold
reaches into my room
Here comes the fear, again
When all the butterflies gets needled down
to a pattern on my bed

I'm counting; three, four, five
(Lie to me, yeah lie to me)
It's not the punches that hurts
(Lie again)
There's an invisible line
(Lie to me, yeah lie to me)
through the eye of the needle

And a big freaking CONGRATULATIONS to Lordi who won the 51st Eurovision Song Contest this saturday. My campaigning might not have played much of a role in this, but I like to think my ~20 votes mattered a little at least. See you in Hell-sinki!

Then He'll Settle Down

10,000 Days is growing on me, slowly but surely it is. Especially when people bring these kinds of things to my attention. That's typically Tool though, isn't it? I love the amount of work that goes into their albums, and even though 10,000 Days isn't my favorite son just yet, I can't deny the sheer love and blood/sweat/tears that has evidently gone into every part of its production.

This is a short entry today, so I'll just leave you with one quick note. Which is as follows:

Blue Öyster Cult is the shit.

Like I Woke Up In Wonderland

Time for a piece of sad news on my behalf. Spel2 is now officially on, what seems to be a permanent, hiatus. The entire site is gone, replaced with a short letter exclaiming the reasons we decided to put it to sleep: Time and motivation, and the lack of both. Emil Lindgren, who we all know as Gadden, was a great supervisor for us. Dedicated and friendly - mostly - he would make us work our hardest, he would listen to our ideas and he was the engine for the site. He's now becoming a dad which of course has taken up all the free-time he had, and when he gave this news we all pretty much understood where things were going.
It's a hard thing to tackle, since I loved Spel2. I loved it a little bit more in theory, maybe, but it was still a competent site for games that could have been fantastic if we'd had more time on our hands, and if we could have made an income through it. It's sad to say, but money was what in the end forced us to stop.
Our majestic plans was never fulfilled to 100%, but we still made a mark, I'd like to think. I hope so, at least. Right now, it's time for us to move on and take a good look at our own personal futures in the business. I haven't applied my CV to another site just yet - don't want to just try at the first site I can think of - but I probably will soon. Henrik and Olle - who pretty much were the two brightest shining stars of the lot - seems to already have plans for the future and I wish them and the rest of the cast the best of luck. I hope that someday, when Gadden's kids are old enough to wipe themselves, I've finally managed to grow facial hair, and we all feel a bit more balanced in life, that we can make the site we dreamt of when we started this project.

For more sentimental posts about the death of Spel2 I recommend you read through these blog posts, made by Johan and Henrik:

Johan writes "Ashes to ashes, Dust to dust: In Retrospective"
Henrik writes "Sp3l.se? eject2.se? Nej, inte den här gången."

All The Butterflies In Your Stomach

Dagens Nyheter reports that Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins will announce the reunion of the original Genesis tomorrow at a joint press conference. Until tomorrow there's no telling if this has any truth to it, but imagine just how fucking sweet that would be. They mave have lost their awesome prog-rock hair and recorded one or two or seventeen cheesy love ballads, but I still believe they could pull out an amazing show from their sleeves if the motivation (=money) existed. I'm trying to keep myself calm until tomorrow, but with news like this that's proving to be harder than it seems.

Patrik Isaksson released his fourth album last week. It's a self-titled one, which usually means it's a "back to roots"-deal and this album does little to change that prejudice. What we have is a lovely little disc with some great summery music somewhere right inbetween Lasse Lindh, Coldplay and Kent. It's definetly Patrik's best effort to date and I recommend it now that the summer seems to really take off nicely. Opener "Innan Klockar Slår" ("Before The Clock Ticks") has also been chosen as the song used in the new Pripps Blå-commercial which usually means plentyful of cash and musical immortality (Who is ever ever ever going to forget Tommy Nilsson? No matter how hard we try..).

This just killed me. Almost as good as Tetris: The Movie. Someone really have to make these.

Pain Has A Bad Reaction

You who have not been following the latest news about Kent may have missed that they have recorded a brand new song (well, it has borrowed a little from an old Jones & Giftet-song, but it's more new than old anyway) called "Nålens Öga" ("The Needle's Eye"). It's written for swedish organisation - probably international too, but I don't know the international name - Rädda Barnen. All benefits from the song will go directly to them, which is nice. The song itself is actually really good. Rather than sounding look anything from The Hjärta & Smärta EP or Du & Jag Döden it sounds more like something recorded around 1997. It's very Isola, and very melancholic. What I love about it is that for the first time in forever Jocke uses his very nasal, high voice that almost blends in to the guitars, an effect that hasn't really been used much in their music since around the time of Isola and Hagnesta Hill.
Overall the song is great, and even though I hate to pay for downloads I suggest you go to CDON.com and buy it. The you should toss that wma-file to hell and download a mp3-version instead. That way you support the cause and can still play the goddamn thing in any program you wish without having to slow the whole computer down.

Jarno wanted me to do some sort of summer music-post, and I will do that but not today. Today hasn't been all that summery, but I'm having hopes for the weekend so keep checking in then.

Oh! Almost forgot to bragg that Timo Räisänen has posted my review of his album I'm Indian over at his MySpace. I'm not usually a cocky person but I thought that was pretty neat.

Drowned In The Ocean

Today is a hard day for me and my family, the typical day where a close relative - my uncle - passed away very suddenly from a heartattack. In his spirit today will be dedicated to his favorite artists The Beatles and my own beloved Gerry Rafferty.
I was going to start typing up a review on Hyde's latest album but that will have to wait. If you have any good songs about death then please comment - I know not a lot of people read this, but the few that do; it wouldn't kill you (mortality-humor, fu fu).

Before I go of on a walk in the sunshine I will tell you this about the new single from Muse - Supermassive Black Hole - sounds like Martin Gore remixing Black Eyed Peas. YOU FAIL, MUSE!

Two Feet Meet The Cold Floor

Just to make sure, you are following the online video blog made at the shooting of Hot Fuzz, right? If not, then do so immediatly. It'll probably be on the DVD, but it's a nice little way of kicking up the hype for what could be a really great movie. Quite possibly the best cop-comedy since... Ever? I'm just trying to not expect anything in the league of Shaun of the Dead (if anybody has missed this; Hot Fuzz is made by the same director, writers and main cast as Shaun) but team Wright/Pegg/Frost seems to be able to pull almost anything off so I have full confidence in them.

There has been all too few reviews at this place lately. I'm going to change that, but I'm also going to change the format of the reviews a lot. I'm thinking shorter, more precise and with a brand new, exciting grading scale. Stay tuned.