So after my "Smashed my face in Berlin" release, something around 700 people have downloaded the songs. Not the global fame I was hoping for but I still appreciate the few that did download it!

As my next move in World Music Domination, I've uploaded an unfinished version of my next song that I've been playing around with together with Finn Arild (http://www.finnarild.com/)

So here it is, check out the rough version of "I got a reason": http://journal.boblycat.org/music/igotareason

Who knew you can actually make a CD in one month? Actually it doens't sound that impressive when you hear these stories about Beatles and Black Sabbath only using like 15 minutes in the studio for recording their multi-platinum records - but thats until you try for yourself.

As some of you might have notices I enlisted for this RPM challenge (Record Producing Month) where the task is to produce a record in, yes, one month. In this case: February. So in short I did. Now you can listen to the complete CD here. But since I'm such a nice you I'll also list out each song for you in direct .mp3 links:

• 01 Classical
• 02 Sounds from Berlin: Ticketmachine
• 03 The Cousin
• 04 The Second Andromeda Strain
• 05 Better man
• 06 Sounds from Berlin: Torstrasse Traffic
• 07 Bass First
• 08 Bad man sleeping
• 09 The long night
• 10 Sounds from Berlin: S-Bahn at Alexanderplatz

I'll provide a .bin/.cue image once I've gotten some more sleep so people can burn they're own CD if they feel like it.

So I decided I would enroll in the"RPM 2007 challenge". RPM basically stands for Record Production Month, and the idea is that one will make 10 songs, or 35 minutes of music using only the 28 days of February. Anyone whos tried their hands on composing will know this is VERY HARD! Nonetheless I'm gonna try it.

RPM 2007 Challenge

This is the second time this has been held, and this time there are around 2200 bands who has signed up for the challenge. Last year around 190 bands actually managed to finish a CD in one month! I'm sure a lot of it sucks, but practice makes perfect and thats the whole point here.

So, here is my second song for the RPM challenge called "The Cousin". It's not really about the my cousin (it's about me). But since I met him around the time I wrote the lyrics I called the song that anyways. Enjoy:

Listen to the song!

I have also finished two other songs, you might as well listen to them as well!:

"The Second Andromeda Strain"

"Bass First" 

I first discovered Thomas Dybdahl through a friend of mine (Tore) as he put it on when we were drinking cognac in the late hours talking about this and that. At some point during the conversation I noticed the music and had to ask what it was. The next day I went to the music store and bought all of his released work, and loved it! Even now several years later I can hear them all from start to finish and never press skip. So, it shouldn't really suprise anyone that I was looking forward to his concert in Berlin as I had never managed to see him live before.

Lido is a small cinema-rebuilt-to-concerthall and has a very rustic and nice atmosphere, and so it was perfect for the melancholic tunes from Thomas Dybdahl and his band. The band was around 5-6 people, including the sweet Silje Salomonsen (of Mongoland fame) on backing vocals and harmonica.

We were a bit afraid there wouldn't be that many coming, but as the concert started it was a good croud that had gathered to hear the concert. Thomas gets very into his music as he is playing it and it's intriguing to see him play. The concert was fantatstic and the audience really got into it. On several of the songs the audience was signing along. Here are some highlights from it:

 

• http://journal.boblycat.org/music/adelaide
• http://journal.boblycat.org/music/solitude
• http://journal.boblycat.org/music/newyork
• http://journal.boblycat.org/music/bodyaches

The concert was too short though. According to Thomas the band hadn't rehearsed more songs, so he did the last number on his own. You can hear that in the intro of "Solitude". Also notice on "Adelaide" where he and Silje Salomonsen starts laughing and the audience has to sing the song for them, so sweet :D (appologies for my sour singing)

Great evening, great concert and I also made some new friends. Hi Hilde, Kim and Pia :D

Now, if you want to buy his music then get it here or on itunes.

Now we've got this audio ability installed on the cat, so I thought I'd just test it out. You can both play mp3 directly from the page - or you can download the track. However I didn't manage to find an easy way of getting the flashplayer embedded in a blog page. So here is an old fashioned direct link for now:

 

• http://journal.boblycat.org/audio/download/1776/sublevel3_betterman.mp3

As some of you might know, probably a very small part of the world population I'll admit - but some, I have moved to Berlin. We'll get back to that in some other blog entry, now I want to share with you some samples from a concert I went to last weekend.

I got myself a solid-state MP3/WAV recorder some weeks ago, so I thought this would be an excellent test of the device.
It's an Edirol R-09 btw. It is bascially as small as an Ipod, but a little bit thicker (like 1.5 Ipod I would say) so it goes in your pocket and you can take it anywhere - and people think you're just playing with your cellphone so it's excellent!

Anyways, me and Eike a collegue of mine want over to b-flat at around 9-10 ish and sat down in the bar to wait for the band starting. It was a Hungarian band called Djabe and I'd never heard of them before, and was only praying that they wouldn't be super experimental. You know the kind where they basically disregard all common norms when it comes to rythm, harmonies and yeah, music all together :D Luckily Djabe proved to be an excellent band.

Basically they were a drummer, a bass-player, a guitarist, a fiddler/trumpetist, a percussionist and a guy on the piano. And they all rocked! (or I guess that would be jazzed?) Anyways, they played two sets with a pause in the middle and the audience really responded to them.

I would really like to point out the drummer, this guy could really go apeshit. But in a good way. Here is a short sample of him taken from a much longer solo and here is a much longer with him, the bassist and the percussionst all doing solos.

Also, the band had a great sense of humour, so for example in a really long intro (a six minutes bass intro) the bassist and piano player really fooled around, mixing in other silly songs. I really like the mellow part at around 04:00 minutes btw.

And as a great finale they had the coolest ending I've experienced live. Took all of us by surprise. I don't know the name of the instruments, but I called it "japanese shakers". It's some form of shakers that together produce airy harmonies. I got some real nice samples to use in my own music from this. Here is their ending.

I was really impressed by the concert and also the place. It cost 15€ to get in, but it was all worth it. And they also served Radeberger, so I guess even with a shitty concert I would've been happy :D