At SXSW this year, I had the privilege of meeting Mono Stereo’s manager, Danny who hooked me up with a bunch of cool Mono Stereo 7 inches and a copy of the forthcoming album (due out this Fall). Needless to say, I was blown away. The song, “Me And My Machine” is the best single I’ve heard this year.
Since Austin is such a great town for fans of psyche/garage/pop, I wanted to share this post that our TVD UK buddies posted today. I can only hope that they make it to next year’s SXSW or to Austin’s Psychefest!
Sweden has long since been a fertile breeding ground for great psych/garage/pop. The 80s saw the The Nomads, Pushtwangers, Watermelon Men and others make great underground rock records, and in more recent times The Soundtrack Of Our Lives and The Hives have each impressed, with visceral live shows and a string of fine albums and singles to their names.
The latest band in this tradition, but with their own sound and a distinctly NOW feel, are Mono Stereo. Debuting with a limited fan-only release, the ‘Space Out’ EP was released at the tail end of 2009; last year saw the band release a U.S. Only 45, ‘On And On’ / ‘A Matter Of Confusion’, followed by the ‘Me And My Machine’ single. An album is on the not-too-distant horizon, and this week we caught up with the band to discuss their attitude and output:
1. Sweden seems to be in a particularly fertile period for music, with The Sounds, The Knife, Jose Gonzalez and Mando Diao all breaking through to varying levels of international acclaim. Do you feel part of any scene there? Not really, no. We are not trying to fit in to some bigger picture or current movement. We have of course many influences, but they tend to come from other countries, (and often other times in history as well). That doesn’t mean we necessarily dislike the acts you mentioned, but we do not particularly feel part of any Swedish movement as such. There are some great bands in Sweden we can relate to though, like Dinah Wants Religion from Uppsala, and Bolywool from Gothenburg.
2. You rarely seem to play in your homeland. Is this a deliberate strategy? Guess we have been better at going abroad. We live close to the border, so it’s usually easy enough. And it seems like we always get our biggest crowds far away, like America for example. We haven’t gone there yet though, but its being planned.
3. Describe your music in three words. Wall of sound.
4. Name 5 great 60s bands and 5 great 90s bands.
The Kinks
The Left Banke
13th Floor Elevators
The Byrds
Love
Ride
The Stone Roses
Spiritualized
The Brian Jonestown Massacre
The Verve
5. What are Mono Stereo’s plans for the future? We will release a single in May, and the album is coming out in the fall. We’ll be playing a lot more shows around that time. We’re also currently working on new material, which is really exciting.
6. I hear you worked with the legendary producer Kramer. Tell us about that. We recorded with him in February last year in a summer house on the Danish coast. There was snow everywhere. Kramer brought some microphones and we brought the rest and then we we just started recording. We only had one week to record everything though and that was too short to really have time to work on ideas together so he just basically recorded the ideas we already had.
7. Vinyl, CD, Download. Your thoughts please. Of course you cannot beat vinyl. It’s still the best way for putting out music. Don’t really see the point with CD’s anymore when you can access everything on the internet. Downloads are good for music that is hard to find and for people who don’t have record players.
8. Who writes the songs in your band? One of us usually brings an idea, could just be a riff or something like that, and then we all work on that together and develop it into a song. It’s a collective effort. Sometimes we even start recording songs before we have even finished them and then just add more and more stuff. That’s a way of working that we find works pretty well for us.
9. Do the band have a natural leader? No, we are very democratic.
10. Tell us about your album. It will have nine songs on it. We didn’t want to make it too long because we think that a lot of bands tend release albums that you get tired of listening to after awhile. It’s better to keep it short enough and great all the way through. Three songs are from the sessions we did with Kramer, and the rest we have recorded ourselves or with the help from our friend Stoffe. A few of them are actually the original demo versions we made of songs because we found they couldn’t get any better than they already were.
DISCOGRAPHY:
August 2009 – LIVE EP (Fan only release via) – 4 live tracks recorded at Babel in Malmo June 18th 2009. Bright Side (later called Solig), A Matter Of Confusion, Backwards And Forwards & Tambourine Dream. Also available as free digital download when joining the band’s mailing list.
November 2009 – SPACE OUT EP. CD (360 Degree Music) and digital. Features Orange Is Green, The Day Before Science Fiction, You Better and Time Will Never Let You Slip Away. CD also contains video for Orange Is Green.
July 2010 – ON AND ON / A MATTER OF CONFUSION. US 7” Vinyl limited release (MPLS Ltd) and digital.
November 2010 – ME AND MY MACHINE / YOU GOTTA TAKE ME HOME. UK 7” vinyl limited release (Minty Highway) and digital.
Download ‘Me And My Machine’ HERE
