A flunkplayer!
Now, here’s a preview of your Personal Stereo Flunkplayer – listen to the new album as many times as you possibly want to. Note – the iTunes link to the album won’t work for a week or two.
Author: Ulf
Nancy Drew movie
A version of our Blue Monday cover will appear in the forthcoming Nancy Drew movie.
In the US the movie will premiere on June 15. The movie is directed by Andrew Fleming, and Emma Roberts is doing the Nancy Drew part.
Personal Stereo track by track
I tend to think that music shouldn’t be explained, just felt. But I reckon we’re among friends here, so here are some notes on the tracks on our Personal Stereo album:
PERSONAL STEREO
This opens with a obviously shameless robbery from R.E.M. – but the words are not exactly registered trademarks, and we hope Mr. Stipe will forgive this little homage. The One I Love was R.E.M.’s first big hit, and most people reckoned it was a love song. Stipe is not one to analyze his lyrics in the media, but he’s quite clear on this one.
Personal Stereo is a love song, though, going out to the one I love!
You can, by the way, read all the lyrics at the Flunk site (on the same page you can download the sleeve including the lyrics, as a PDF file, as well)
HEAVENLY
This was always the working title on this one, and it’s been through lots of changes before the final version. We actually sent the track to Mike Scott of The Waterboys at one stage, but I guess he a) didn’t fancy it, or b) didn’t find the time to do a vocal on it. He was very busy finishing the new Waterboys album (out these days), I guess.
Not quite sure what Anja is singing about, but I presume (or guess) that it could be something she wrote during a six month ‘exile’ in Belfast a couple of years ago – missing boyfriend, friends and family on the other side of the North Sea. But we never talk about these things, really…
IF WE KISS
Almost on every track, Anja will improvise the words after hearing a bar or two of the music, and sometimes the words will stay just the way she sang them when the track is finished. This is one of those. The vocal on this track is from the very first take! What it’s about? I really don’t know! But we really, really love this track. We wanted it to be the first single, but we had to agree with our label people that there would hardly be a radio station in the world actually playing it. Still, we think it’s a great sonic treat!
HALDI
This track is many people’s favourite on the album. We use a sample from cult hero Daniel Johnston‘s recorded poem ‘Dream’ (we’ve been using it live on the intro to ‘Morning Star’). It sort of belonged on Haldi. The word ‘Haldi’ is also a ‘working title’ which has stuck through the recording – it’s the Hindi word for the spice Turmeric…
SIT DOWN
The lyrics on this one you have to figure out yourself. It might be about being in bloody trenches during the World War battles, it might be about the 1914 Christmas Truce during World War 1, when German and French soldiers celebrated christmas together in No Man’s land in Ypres Salient.
But then again, it could be about something totally different. I was reading a biography on Jean Paul Sartre at the time…
Sit Down is the first single off the album. Available on iTunes now!
SEE YOU
This is a new version, not the KEXP live recording from May 2006. It’s a cover of a Depeche Mode song, from their second album ‘A Broken Frame’. See You is the nicest of nice, naive pop songs, written by Martin Gore. This was the first Depeche single after Vince Clarke left the band. One of the defining moments leading to the break-up was when Clarke presented the other boys with the song Only You, and they decided (while Clarke was on the toilet) they hated it in every way. Clarke went on to form Yazoo, and had a massive hit with the same song…
TWO ICICLES
Again, feel free to find out what this one is about. I personally like the words a lot, more or less about a case of totally damned love. Two icicles falling in love, waiting for spring which will make them both disappear. But you can put whatever you want into it. I find the line You belong to me, like icicles belong to the sea quite disturbingly nice.
Actually, the Danish fairy tale writer, H.C. Andersen, wrote a similar story. I wasn’t aware of it until I watched children’s TV with my daughter, after the song was finished. It’s called The Snow Man, about a love sick snow man falling hopelessly in love with a stove. He did find it, just in time for spring.
Two Icicles has a drum’n’bass-like part, loved by some, not by everyone – we just decided we like it. We’re not a band riding the ‘hip’ banner very high…
CHANGE MY WAYS
I love Neil Young. So does my daughter, Molly, just turned four. She listens to him every day, absolutely every day, having named him ‘The odd man’. She dowsn’t know English (well, she understands ‘yes’), but she can sing the words on most of the songs on Neil Young’s Harvest and Prairie Wind albums.
Change My Ways is a pretty straight forward track, based on Neil Young’s Out On The Weekend. The tune and the words our totally ours, though. Although the words are quite similar to the simple language of Mr. Young. I must say his music makes the world a better place, and I’m happy to ‘live in his age’. He’s probably the world’s most consistent provider of simple songs of love and longing!
There’s a live album out now, by the way, Neil Young Live At Massey Hall, recorded back in 1971. You should own it!
KEEP ON
This one stands out in the Flunk catalogue, I guess. The ‘in your face’ awkward beat, at least. Great sound, don’t know what it could be about, though. Reminds me slightly of Massive Attacks Unfinished Sympathy, which I’d say is a pro!
‘DIET OF WATER AND LOVE’ BY THE VALIUM POETS
This is an odd one, I guess. I know it’s Anja’s favourite, and possibly Jo’s, as well. It very Flunk, and in every way a tiny ‘sour’. Which we love. It’s about being in love, being with the one you love, and – well – just loving it. And maybe it’s a Friday night and you’ve ran out of beer or wine, but you’re still loving it…
Sit Down – new single out now!
The first single, Sit Down, from our new album Personal Stereo is out now. It’s a digital only track.
Picasso soundtrack
Flunk fans turn up in the most unusual places. At a recent executive opening of a Picasso exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, they soundtrack to the champagne was Flunk’s Morning Star – the whole album…
Personal Stereo tracklist
Above is an inlay in the cover for our coming album – you’ll find the credits and the lyrics…
Album is out on April 23. There will be a single out a few weeks in advance.
Album tracklist for Personal Stereo:
01 Personal Stereo
02 Heavenly
03 If We Kiss
04 Haldi
05 Sit Down
06 See You
07 Two Icicles
08 Change My Ways
09 Mama
10 Diet Of Water and Love
Three of the tracks are out on the Flunk MySpace site.
Album finished
Just a quick message before the weekend – we have finished the album. Titled Personal Stereo it will be out on April 23. It’s already on it’s way to the printing factory.
Will get back with more later. The front of the sleeve will be as seen above.
Bedroom recordings
Snapshots from recording sessions. Above Anja in my home studio, during a vocal session. Below Jo in his home studio, just down the street (shot with his brand new Leica camera)!
The album will be finished the first week in February! And the release date is still April 23.
Inspirational noddings… And yes, the album is almost finished!
Happy new year!
We were supposed to be finished with the new album by christmas, but it’s still not finished. Things take time, which is OK – it takes time to make good music, and we want it to be absolutely right. Most of the tracks are more or less written and recorded. Anja got the flu in mid-December, which meant we had to wait anyway. Track names are not totally decided upon, but here are some:
Personal Stereo, Anja singing – it’s a serious nod to R.E.M.‘s The One I Love, and, well both personal and in stereo.
Two Icicles, again Anja singing, is a song about – well, two icicles doomed by the certain coming of the spring.
Common Sense, a kind of ‘rocker’, me singing, written in Seattle last spring.
Sit Down, a duet, and everybody’s favourite, I guess. Written during the last Lebanon-Israel conflict, at the same time inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre, a timeless anti-war thing, I guess. Don’t ask – listen when it’s out…
Change My Ways is another track nodding ecstatically to one of our favourites – Neil Young‘s Out On The Weekend (from Harvest).
I listen to Harvest daily, because it’s probably one of the best albums ever made, but also because my daughter (she’s four in March) loves it. She calls him ‘The strange man’, and can sing most of the ‘Harvest’ tracks and the songs on his Prairie Wind album – she doesn’t understand English, of course, though! I guess she’s basically into good tunes really, like when she heard Nirvana‘s version of Leadbelly‘s Where Did You Sleep Last Night the other week: I’m going to marry the guy who sings this song, she cried out! That’s a heartbreaker!
Talking about the good music, the moments which sort of set some music apart and beyond most other music – I have a few of those moments. Like when the drums get in halfway through Simon & Garfunkel‘s Sound Of Silence, or Eminem‘s last words in Stan – ‘…it was you…’. Or when that chiming guitar comes around early in Joy Division‘s New Dawn Fades.
Having some days off, I’ve been out there looking for new music during christmas, and most of the time hunting for classic dub (e.g. Scientist, check out his Scientist Meets the Space Invaders from 1981). But by far the most interesting new thing I’ve heard this year are some tracks released by a indie label called Hyperdub – absolutely sensational sound, dubstep it’s been named. Check out Burial and Kode 9, I love it!!
Spring To Kingdom Come
Yes, the climate change up here is robbing us of a white christmas, but it’s still not quite spring.
But here is a sweet, homemade clip to our track Spring To Kingdom Come – posted by a Flunk fan out there!
Watch it here.