Kendrick Lamar

Denmark’s ten must-see concerts in December

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment

Original article written for The Local Denmark, available here

Christmas dominates the proceedings in December, but the month still features several promising shows, particularly within the drum ‘n’ bass and heavy metal genres

If stadium-sized gigs are your thing, December is definitely not the month for you. More intimate, less commercial gigs are a bit of a given in a month in which shopping and julefrokoster eat up our time,  and amongst these, several hold great potential as events to be remembered.

The Local has gone digging amongst the scraps and found the best of the lot.

Children of Bodom
Amager Bio, December 1st at 8pm
What was originally supposed to be a double bill with Lamb of God at Vega has been downsized after the American band cancelled its tour in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. Finland’s Children of Bodom are soldiering on and will bring their seemingly gruesome and even barbaric thunderous approach to metal to rip whatever rafters bind Amager Bio’s roof to its hinges. ‘I Worship Chaos’ is the title of their ninth studio album, which was released earlier this year, adding to a catalogue of chaos-causing music over the years.

 

Doe Parro
Ideal Bar, December 2nd at 8pm
If you hear Doe Parro’s name mentioned in the same breath as Bon Iver or The Tallest Man on Earth, you may quite rightly wonder why. LA-based Parro is not a rock musician by any stretch of the imagination but her producers have had great success with the previously mentioned artists – a testament to her eclecticism, which spans the genres of R&B, soul and even the odd touch of dubstep.

 

Kadavar
Rust, December 2nd at 8pm
Kadavar are a watered-down take on Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, featuring similar trippy, heavily laden rock influences. Armed with a new album,  ‘Berlin’, expect burly, broad-shouldered show from these German heavyweights.

 

Clutch
Store Vega, December 4th at 7pm
Clutch epitomise all that is good and great about the American hard-rock tradition. Touring in support of their 2015 album ‘Psychic Warfare’, the Maryland-based band has been a mainstay for well over 20 years. With the band seasoned veterans in what Consequence of Sound dubbed “belligerent boogie rock”, Clutch will be the soundtrack for a Friday night party not to be missed.

 

Flavour, Dj Graded & Luc Rocc
Rust, December 5th at 11pm
Rust’s new nightclub fixture ‘Flavour’ kicks off its December programme with a visit from two of hip-hop’s veritable local representatives. Dj Grdaded, a four-time Danish DMC champion and two-time Nordic champ, is a permanent establishment within Copenhagen’s hip-hop scene. Luc Rocc is slightly less well-known but holds an impressive portfolio as one of the city’s foremost disc jockeys.

 

Area 55
Store Vega, December 5th at 11:30 pm
Area 55 is a trance collective that has hosted some of the city’s most renowned underground trance events, many of which have taken place in venues such as KPH Volume and Halvandet. The setting this time round is a well-known music venue, cementing the rise of electronic music into the commercial narrative locally.

 

Thundercat
Store Vega, December 7th at 8pm
Although the name sounds like it belongs to a heavy metal band, Thundercat is one of the standouts in the R&B world. Los-Angeles based Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner has worked with the likes of Erykah Badu, Kendrick Lamar, Suicidal Tendencies and his co-producer and partner in crime, Flying Lotus. This is a man whose rhythmic qualities are peerless, so prepare for some great entertainment.

OHOI! Presents Christmas Bass
Stengade, December 12th at 10pm
Bass legends, The OHOI! drum ‘n’ bass collective are back with a mammoth lineup for their annual Christmas ball. Particularly impressive on a list of names that showcases some of the best underground talent in the city is Rasmus Kjærbo, an experienced producer who lives and breathes music. Prepare for a bass invasion.

 

Dubioza Kolektiv
Loppen, December 18th at 9pm
What better way to prepare for the festive season than with a dose of Bosnian Balkan Beat? High-octane, adrenaline-pumping action is on the menu for the evening, held at Christiania’s Loppen, a befitting location for the occasion.

 

Ulige Numre, Extra Concert
Store Vega, December 28th at 8pm
The voice of the new generation of Danish rock, Ulige Numre (Odd Numbers) will be performing at a sold-out show at Vega at the start of December. For those unable to catch a piece of the action, the band will be back at Vega on the cusp on the new year to perform a show that should be rich in memories and merry-making.

The Local’s top ten Roskilde concerts

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment

Original article published in The Local Denmark

Roskilde Festival 2015
Whether it was at the expansive Orange stage or one of the festival’s more intimate settings, there were no shortage of good concerts. Photo: Sophia Juliane Lydolph/Scanpix

The Local’s top ten Roskilde concerts

The Local sent two writers with distinctively different musical tastes to cover this year’s Roskilde Festival and tasked them both with selecting their five favourite concerts.

Roskilde Festival has once again come and gone, leaving a trail of smiles, laughs and memorable experiences in its wake. This year’s lineup was more commercial than previous years, with less rock and metal on the billing, but there was still more than plenty to satisfy all musical tastes.

A testament to the Roskilde Festival’s diversity can be found here in our picks for best concert. Our two writers, Justin Cremer and Allan Mutuku-Kortbæk, have quite different tastes and there isn’t a single repeat among their respective choices for the year’s five best performances.

Justin Cremer’s top five 2015 Roskilde Festival concerts:

5. Africa Express
Arena, July 4

I caught parts of 28 different concerts at this year’s Roskilde Festival, so getting it down to five picks is no easy task. Several others could have just as easily taken this spot – Dolomite Minor, Father John Misty, The Gaslamp Killer Experience or Mastodon, to name a few – but Africa Express gets the nod as it is where I closed out the 2015 Roskilde Festival, surrounded by good friends and treated to an impressive international jam session that had been going strong for nearly three hours when I packed it in.

4. St Vincent
Arena, July 2

I knew basically nothing about St Vincent before strolling in to the Arena stage on Thursday afternoon and when I left I wasn’t quite sure how to describe what I’d just seen. I think my feeble attempt to explain it to a friend later was something along the lines of “robot pop-rock” and perhaps that’s as good as anything. This was a tightly-performed – even occasionally choreographed – and very high-energy performance, highlighted by a final song played on the shoulders of a security guard with St Vincent sporting an ear-to-ear grin that revealed that she had just had as much fun as the audience.

3. Chelsea Wolfe
Gloria, July 4

The intimate Gloria stage was the perfect setting for an absolutely hypnotic performance by Chelsea Wolfe. Her particular mix of dark folk mixed with occasional blasts of rage may have on the surface been a strange pick for a hot and sunny day at Roskilde, but the enchanting Wolfe delivered one of my best musical experiences of the four days.

2. The War on Drugs
Arena, July 1

This was the show I was looking most forward to heading in to the festival and Adam Granduciel and company certainly did not disappoint. The setlist was very heavy on last year’s stellar album ‘Lost in the Dream’ with the performance putting just enough new nuances into the songs to really bring them alive. This was a powerhouse rock ‘n’ roll performance.

1. Goat
Friday, July 3

It is perhaps fitting that I don’t have a particularly good photo to go along with my top choice. The late night performance from these costume-draped Swedes who mix experimental psychedelic rock with African beats didn’t seem to be on the radar of too many, but those of us who were there were treated to what felt like a blissful mix between occult ritual and raging dance party. In a Roskilde Festival full of unexpected musical surprises, this one was the best.

Allan Mutuku-Kortbæk’s top five 2015 Roskilde Festival concerts:

5. Timbuktu
Arena, July 1

Consistent, calm, confident. Those are the words that underline the show of veteran Swedish rapper Timbuktu. It’s never easy for Swedes to perform at Roskilde and earn critical acclaim, but Timbuktu put on a solid show good enough to scrape into our top ten anyway.

4. Kendrick Lamar
Orange, July 3

Kendrick Lamar epitomized the booking policy at Roskilde this year: bombastic, commercial and appealing to the youth. Orange stage host Per Vers introduced him as the man he thought is the best rapper at the moment before his show and whilst some of us may disagree with such a grandiose claim, Kendrick did put on a top-notch performance before a packed Orange stage.

3. Mew
Orange, July 3

Danish rock band Mew played at Roskilde’s Orange stage missing one of their frontmen, guitarist Bo Madsen, who left the group just last week after 20 years. On their sixth appearance at the festival, this time as a trio, Mew were brilliant and endearing, backed by the solid Danish following that they’ve built over the years.

2. Die Antwoord
Orange, July 2

South African duo Die Antwoord brought the Orange crowd to its knees with an emblematic, raucous performance that few expected would be as good as it turned out to be. Given that they are not well-known locally, their psycho blend of Afrikaans rap and trashy shrill vocals proved to be an even bigger hit. Frankly, Roskilde has rarely seen something of this nature.

1. Florence and The Machine
Orange, July 2

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful – not only is that the title of indie band Florence and The Machine’s remarkable new album, it’s also a good descriptor of their show at Roskilde’s Orange stage. The voice of Florence Welsh, the singer at the forefront of the band, is a force to be reckoned with – she found herself at home at a packed Orange stage, with the big, blue beautiful sky above a sea of smiling fans.