Hello EC!

I have good news!

Today I sent off the European tape release of our friend Little Fyodor's new EP to be duplicated onto cassettes!

If you're in Europe I'll gladly sell you one when it's ready! I'm having a bit of trouble with finding out how to disable the download function on Bandcamp, because I really want digital download costumers to buy it from Fyodor, and not from me. But within the next few weeks there will be a Stilletid tape of Pithy Romantic Ballads. The alternative art for this release was drawn by my friend and collaborator Kiyah Shines, out of Arizona. She's a very talented lady I think, and her artwork serves to distinguish the American tape release, which Fyodor is planning to do, from the European one. She's also looking for experience in the album art field, so if you need her help, I'd recommend her! She's a youngin and just out of high school, but I think she will become a really amazing artist!

In other news!
https://stilletid.bandcamp.com/album/g-r-goth
I got a new mini 3” CD out!
Ditlev Buster Går Goth!

Though the title is stolen from Jiblit Dupree's album ”Jiblit Goes Goth” It's not really goth in any way. It's just an excuse to put Jillian Cavities on the cover. She took an amazing photo of herself smoking a cigarette right next to a no smoking sign, that reminded me of when I was a rebellious and angry young man. It's sort of funny in hindsight, the stupid shit I did to be different. Now I don't try any more, I just am. The music on this 3” mini CD is not goth, but it is somehow mostly electronic. Done mostly with squarewave cheapo keys, drum machine and Monotron synths. And of course the automatic keys style made famous by Wesley Willis!

https://stilletid.bandcamp.com/album/i-stodderkongens-hof

As of today July 12 2019, the new Stilletid LP finally is available on Bandcamp as a digital download of vinyl record!

https://stilletid.bandcamp.com/album/tinghus-blues

Though I had sworn that Tinghus blues would be my last vinyl release, but alas, i was tempted because my new backing group really wanted to make one with me, and I couldn't say no to those cute redheaded cherubs. Kenni of Kenni & Lasse is probably the best bass-bassplayer i know. By that i mean he plays the bass, not necessarily the bass guitar. Bass guitarists can be a really cool thing too (Like John Entwistle of the who) but to me a bass bass-player is more in the vain of John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, or a lot of upright bass players. Kenni is most definitely among the latter. He NEVER overplays anything and he knows how to serve the song instead of stroking his own ego. I am in no way a lead guitarist or an amazing singer, and i never will be, i think of myself more than a writer or a rhythm guitarist first. Singer and lead player is way down on page four of the things i am, but still i am very happy with the way i sang and challenged myself to play a few hummable solos on this new LP!

While i might know how to write a tune or a lyric, i am pretty much a hack musically, but that for sure can't be said for Daniel, our drummer. Some people discuss wether drummers are musicians, but i can answer that with a resounding yes! I have played with drummers who wanted 13 cymbals, three kickdrums and 15 toms (I am very tired of these types by the way) , but the way Daniel plays a tiny kit to its limits is simply beautiful. If you watch Jerry Lee Lewis's drummer in the early days he had two drums and a cymbal.That's the kind of minimalism Daniel can do to perfection. Like when Thelonious Monk plays one note, it implies he could play a thousand notes if he wanted. That's how i look at Daniel's drumming. Simple and beautiful. And better than Lars Ulrich .

The record is, of course, in my own language, since that is the only language i can really speak. Sure, i can speak english and hold a conversation, but i can't write in english. And that is to me what knowing a language means. Being able to write in it.
To those who don't know danish ,which of course is most everyone of you i wrote a quick resume of what topics each of the songs explore

A1 : Granberg
The old saying goes ”It won't work, Granberg” because a Swedish Balloonskipper named Granberg once accidentally flew into the danish parliament towers and punctured his balloon. This song follows a character nicknamed Granberg because nothing ever worked out for him in life.

A2 : Røgalarm
Smoke alarm! Hell i don't know what this one is about, i just found the imagery tasty. Like Kurt must have felt about all the Nirvana songs

A3 : Når den ridder
A song about a shitty relationship, but done in the style of a medieval folk song, and with some Hawkwind- style synths on it because why not?

A4 : Min stue
An exaggerated version of a Robert Gordon-type song. All based on the chord progression known as the vamp, a very 60's thing, but with a nonsensical chorus that does'nt mean anything...not even in Danish, it's just doo wacka loo to me

A5: Rend mig i røven
A song about realizing your courtship didn't go as planned, and your partner thinks you're a dick, and so do you, so the main character thinks well if i am a dick, i might as well be a bigger dick than my partner.

A6:
Stribede slips og høje hatte
This one is about the young Mr. Hyde-like characters i meet in the taverns of Græsted a lot. Partying and being popular, but squandering their life away doing so. When they get older they will realise they're not very interesting

A7 Nu ikke så Kræsen
This one is about a grandmother and her vegetarian grandson. Of cause her reaction to vegetarianism is ”Don't be so fuzzy, eat it!”

A8 Kold våd nat
About the time i met my first love again many years after, and she was working at a kiosk and gas station. I decided to buy a condom from her just to prove i got over her, but afterwards i realized i had nothing to use the condom for

A9 Den døde by
Post Apocalyptic Bo Diddley beat! The lyrics are about sitting alone on a bench in a town after everybody else in town have died. Kenni told me it reminded him of a video game. I can see what he means

B1 Psyko fra Chicago
This is a cowboy-nicklebook-story
About a psycho from Chicago and a Wacko from waco (Yeah it is straight out of the Billy Joe Shaver song) and they shoot at the same time and puncture each others lungs

B2 Ingen Røg
Song about that i like smoking tobacco, and how everyone tells me to smoke weed instead. But i like tobacco, leave me alone

B3 Lykkemønten
A song about how my Uncle Georg from Georgia gave me the first silver dollar he earned in America as a gift when i was baptised. Then i gave that coin to a bartender for one last drink and he named his tavern ”The bottom dollar”. In the song i go back home and feel like shit because i live with my grandmother and am alone forever, so i decide it was never Uncle Georgs's bottom dollar

B4 Mit sidste Fristed
This one is my take on John Lee Hooker's Boogie Chillen or ZZ Top's La Grange. About going to the bathroom for hours just to avoid people

B5 Den Beelze Bop
Everybody did the Beelze Bop!

Hey EC !

Boy, have I been busy lately! I'm in the process of releasing the next Stilletid LP by Ditlev & Det Rødhårede Spektakel, and it has been a long recording process. We started in December of last year, and finished recording a few months ago. Kenni (of Kenni & Lasse) played bass, as well as mastered the record; and Daniel Bitsch played drums, yet his time he can dedicate to the band is very limited, so rehearsals are pretty rare. Still he is most likely the best drummer I ever played with. He can play the hell out of a tiny kit, and to my experience that takes a talented drummer. Maybe even more so than the guy with the billion toms trying to be Lars Ulrich. Anyways I got the test pressings for the new LP and they sound amazing. Now I'm just waiting for the pressing plant to send me the final 100 records.

But anyway!

Here's a new track I made for the good people of EC today. It is only available on here and I plan on keeping it that way. It's made using only my voice and my tiny Acer laptop, but I had a lot of fun messing around with Audacity for the first time in years!

So my dear old friend Kenni and I recorded a bunch of acoustic music as a duo back when I was known as Lasse Jensen, and he insisted on calling himself Kenni Cocksucker which made a lot of radiostations in the US not able to play us. We did release a 7” record in 2016, the “Livet Er Trist EP” (life is sad EP).

Recently I found six unreleased tracks on my computer. 

We did make a few music videos for these songs on my Sony Hi-8 handicam then, but they were never officially released until now. Six songs make up the Daisy EP, five of which we wrote, one “I en Sal På hospitalet” (in a room at the hospital) we discovered in an old songbook I found thrifting. It’s a real tear jerker and pretty much a corny kind of country song in the vain of “Teddybear” or “Roses for Mamma” but it had a certain magic to it when I recorded it with Kenni in my tiny old apartment, which made it fun, if not funny. We used to joke “if everything else fails, let’s just play nursing home gigs”.

The other five tracks range from joyful songs about girls and drinking, to sad songs about regret and broken families, but they all have in common that they're performed by Danish weirdos on two guitars and not much else.

The Daisy EP is available as download or 3” mini CD!

​Enjoy!

Remember when I told you guys about Lydkollektivet Adolf & The Juice? I think our most prestigious gig was with these two bands. It was a weird evening for sure.

Kenni decided he didn't want to compete with the Die Rötzz drummer, so he didn't, and attended the gig as an audience member, but the rest of us tried our damnedest. Needless to say, we didn't have a drummer, so we used whatever was at hand to create the percussion. I played broken records, which I had glued back together at random, but at some point the sound technician cut my signal because it otherwise would've destroyed the PA, and at that point I started singing instead. The song we played was ”Jahu Jaha” which is a nonsense word in any language and all languages, and most of the time I took care of the vocals, as Felix's guitar fed back and Martin played the same keyboard riff over and over. Our audience was four people on a couch who left halfway through the gig, but DD Owen of Sick Thoughts stood in the back and told us afterwards that he had considered joining the jam, if he had known we would be cool with it. But of course we'd be cool with it and I still wish he had done that!

It was a fun evening at Elværket all in all and now it's on YouTube at the very least. 

​I just made this video for two new tracks I made with a really cheap drum machine by a brand called “millenium” normally they make guitar stands I think, and a children’s toy keyboard made by “Mr Platinum”. I never heard of anything else made by that company; it might just be an alias among many that are made at the same Chinese factory.

The video side for the first song “Sut mig af for bitcoin” is just a random piece of something I found on my computer. I think originally it was about a nerdy Nintendo fanboy who killed himself when he didn’t like his new videogame. The video part for the other song, “Ditlev Buster Slår Dig Ihjelleren”, I don’t remember why I even filmed. I think it was going to be a mock documentary on the history of toilet paper, but I never finished that one either, so now it is in this video! The songs are both in Danish but “Sut mig af for bitcoin” in English would be:

It’s about 1000 kroner (Danish currency)
Hook it up to a computer
And it will suck you off

Cybersexuality uh-huh
Smart phoneality uh-huh
Cryptocurrency
Gets you sucked off

We live in a world
We are living in an era
Where we fuck even more
But love less
So suck me off

For bitcoin

“Sut mig af for bitcoin” is a reminder to remember connecting with people offline too in this digital world!

The other song is tricky to translate since most of the words are either actual slang or slang that I made up and was made to sound stupid and uncool. It is a rap song in a way? Maybe even a freestyle rap, since I didn’t write anything down

Enjoy!

​This was based on a bassline that Martin came up with, and then the rest of us did whatever we felt like on top of it. To me that meant saying the Danish words for "yes", "no" and "oh well" over and over again as the vocals; and Felix, the young guitarist and keyboard player did these weird floaty things around the melody on whatever instrument he played. When I played guitar too, I usually just laid down the riff, so he could be playful with his guitar, but most of the time I just sang. Kenni, who I played with in many bands now, functioned as a drummer, but mostly as a bully to the rest of us, playing wrong beats on purpose. So we often had a Yamaha Portasound keyboard with built-in drums playing too, set to "Rock", and most of the time in the same tempo too.
It's a strange thing that anybody actually liked us, but most people did find us to be funny, even the ones who didn't appreciate the music for what it was agreed that it was pretty funny. There were even live concerts.

My favorite concert we did, did not get filmed to my knowledge, but we had half the audience on stage saying "yes", "no", and "oh well". A Local Death metal band got on stage and sang growling vocals they made up on the spot, and Kenni and myself gave our instruments to random punks, then left during the gig to get some beers, then came back. Probably the most chaotic gig I ever did too, but everyone was happy at the festival, no angry people, just drunk stupid Danes late at night rocking out to the lame last band on the bill.

I traveled with my old friend MC Ildebrand to the island community of Langeland lately, since he told me he needed inspiration for recording again. Langeland has many visual artists going there. Since there is water on all sides, and the light falls a specific way, that they find inspiring. I figured this would inspire him too. On the way down there we listened to the Mortiis Album ”Født til at herske” on the car stereo over and over again to get him in the mood of creating epic music. The old house he recorded in was inherited by my father from my grandfather. Neither my father, nor grandfather went there much, just a few times every year to repair damages and cut the grass, and the locals say it is haunted.

MC Ildebrand set up his 8-track Tascam recorder under the stairs of the house, and I left him there until he told me he was finished. This is what came from that. The 90 minute tape ”Midekongens Ø-rige” which means the maggot king's island kingdom wasn't prepared in any way. No ideas were written down beforehand, and all music was made up as it was recorded. The goal was for him to create some ”Epic music” inspired by dungeon synth but it was allowed to do whatever he felt like doing. I lent him my PO-12 drum machine but he mainly used a Yamaha Piaggero digital piano for the creation of this tape. Recorded as it is supposed to be listened to: in complete darkness, just a few candles lit and with a bottle of wine and a locked door to keep the outside world away.