KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM - "Sweet Bills", release 11.04.2008
KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM - "Sweet Bills"
VÖ: 11.04.2008
Label/Vertrieb: Weekender Records/INDIGO
Presse Promo
KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM AUF TOUR
17.04.2008 MS Stubnitz - Rostock, D
18.04.2008 Prinzenbar - Hamburg, D
19.04.2008 Magnet Club -Berlin, D
20.04.2008 Free Show @ Beatpol - Dresden, D
Zusätzlich wird Kristoffer vom 20.-22.02. für Interviewtermine in Berlin sein
Während etablierte Bands aus Schweden verzweifelt versuchen Aufmerksamkeit in der Presse zu erhaschen hat deren Landsmann Kristoffer Ragnstam unterhalb des Radars gearbeitet und Musik geschrieben, die nicht in das Skandinavien-Klischee passt.
Einen ersten Eindruck in sein Album "Sweet Bills", das am 11.04.2008 erscheint, bekommt man mit seiner Single „Man Over Board“, die am 25.01.2008 auf Weekender Records veröffentlicht wird.
Eine feine Pop-Komposition zum mittanzen, ein Refrain den man einfach mitsummen muss und eine gewisse Melancholie träumen. Eben alles, was einen guten Song ausmacht.
While high-profile pop bands from Sweden were busily grabbing press attention, their countryman Kristoffer Ragnstam was working under the radar screen, making music that refused to fit the Scandinavian stereotype
On his debut, Sweet Bills, Kristoffer bundles the results into one of the most idiosyncratic packages heard since the advent of Beck. Each track veers unpredictably to the next: The wall-of-sound pop of Lonely Lane, broadcast by roaring guitars and thundering drums, gives way to the simmering funk of Doctor, Give the World a Smile. Mellow horns and backward guitar samples on Sweet Bills explode into a complex groove that nudges surreal lyrics My girl wants to be an astronaut/My boss wants to be a talent scout through Born as a Lion. You can also sense a chronology to Sweet Bills. Echoes of sixties garage rock permeate Never Get Used to You, an eighties electronic dance hook slices through Man Overboard, and on Kayla the music is timeless and the message playfully twisted: Ive been waiting for you to call the last seven years, Kristoffer intones. You see, honey, weve got a problem.
As Kristoffer sees it, this overlay of irony and multiple musical influences captures who he is, personally as well as artistically. Im honest with my music, he explains. No one pushed me. I got to where I am on my own.
Kristoffer could barely play when he and a few friends put their first band together. They couldnt play either, which is why the name they chose for themselves, Blind, might not have been as suitable as, lets say, Deaf. Just imagine five guys who never even held instruments, trying to do our own songs, he remembers. We had no success at all. But it was good for my self-confidence. And its also important that we never played covers. In fact, all Ive done from the beginning, on my own projects, was to play my own music.
Kristoffer and his band performed some of this material during their first trip to the States, in late 2005. Their sets at the Knitting Factory, the Living Room, and other venues stirred interest in New York, from audiences as well as label people. One of the latter brought him onboard at bluhammock music, without even having to trot anyone from Abba out as incentive.
Sweet Bills is, Kristoffer insists, a project he can introduce without hesitation into the unsuspecting American market. Its very intimate naked, even. Im not trying to be smart or anything. Im just doing what comes naturally. Sweet Bills is one hundred percent me.
