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!!

Regular readers, please excuse us for a week or two of nothingness. The blog was down due to a change of server (blablabla…).
Some Flunk news to tell you about, if you haven’t already checked out our ‘official Flunk site’: We’re playing the Chill Out Festival 2006 in Istanbul, Turkey on Sunday September 10. Really, really looking forward to it, don’t know much about the festival itself, but playing in such an exotic city appeals to us in any case!

We’re also finally doing a show in Oslo again. It will happen on Saturday September 30, the venue is a great, little café called Pavilion.

It might not be up there with The Rolling Stones, but we do feel we’ve been ‘touring’ a lot this year. Our man Vidar at our record label, Beatservice, did recently utter a remark about us being slightly lazy, ‘what other reason could there be for us not touring more frequently’… Well, perhaps we should do more gigs, and maybe we are a little bit lazy, but we insist on taking it a bit cool. We like to concentrate on making records, that’s our standing on the touring issue. Touring eats a lot of time and energy, which we generally prefer to spend on creating new stuff.
That said; we’re always overwhelmed by the reception we get on tour. You’re all amazing, and make us feel like a decent band!

The Guardian ran a story on the down sides of touring last Friday, talking to various bands, present and past, who told more or less amusing stories from life on the road. I guess, of all people, Francis Rossi of (really) old metall band Status Quo said one of the funniest things:
“We do 125 gigs a year and one of the reasons we work so much is because we know if we don’t play for two weeks we’ve got to bloody rehearse – and we’ve always hated rehearsals. If you do that many gigs the machine keeps nicely oiled, whereas the longer you stop the more it feels like putting a whole new bloody engine in.”

But Andy Partridge (the genius of the truly great UK band XTC) was speaking from a point of view, and experience, I can relate to:
“I was sick of the same orange hotel rooms and looking at the same piece of corporate art for 30 days. I’d also started to drift off during gigs. Unwittingly, from the age of 13 I’d been addicted to valium because that’s what they did in those days if you were unhappy. One night my ex-wife flushed the tablets down the toilet. It’s the only time I’ve ever smashed up a hotel room. For a while I lost my memory. I’d get nervous before gigs, throwing up. It came to a head in Paris. I threw the guitar down and ran off. I never toured again. It felt like I’d woken up. Because we didn’t tour we made better records. Giving up touring was probably a good career move.”
Well, I can relate to the last sentence, in any case!

OK, so we’re making an album again.
I love it, because Flunk is honestly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been involved in (except my girlfriend and our daughter and the the first ray of sunshine through the kitchen window when winter has kept it out for four or five months). And this album will be like the heavens and the earth collide. Will put some tracks out soon, promise!

Meanwhile – this is what I think:
I would love to make a song like the new Massive Attack single – with Terry Callier singing like he would never breathe again (the strings suck you in, don’t they?) or Katie Melua singing «Nine Million Bicycles» (OK, it’s kind of fluffy, but…) like there are no words or distances or light years or any aspect or understanding out there to describe real feelings – when they’re overwhelming (if you like Melua, please, please, please check out Swedish pop/jazz artist Lisa Ekdahl’s «Vem Vet» (you’ll find it on the Audio/Video page on her web site) – it’s just like «Nine Million Bicycles» – only slightly more charming and well produced).
In any case: I hope and believe we can touch these things with the new album.

I’ve read a lot since the last album. Not like I’ve been through shelves of books of philosophy and Nobel Prize thoughts – I tend to read magazines and papers (love The Guardian), and there are some quotes I’d like to pass on – because they mean something in the making of this coming album:

1) Leo Sayer is not very hip, but suddenly he was no 1 in the UK charts (with a remix). He said this in an interview with The Guardian: «I’m like a painter, who tries to amass a large amount of material, so when the retrospective is held, there’s a lot of work there to be judged.»

2) Bruce Springsteen said this to Mojo (I was kind of «off» Bruce until I read this piece – he is a very wise man! – sorry, Broooce!): «…I’m always going to trust the art and be suspicious of the artist because he’s generally untrustworthy flimflam, a stumbling clown like everybody else».
Thank you, please remember this – it is true!

3) Ray Davies of The Kinks said (also to Mojo): «…But with new bands I always listen to the third album; that’s the real key to know what’s going to happen. A lot of them don’t know how to approach the third album or even get a chance to think about the third album».

OK, Ray, we’ll show you, we do whatever we want to do and we know just how to approach it – we’ll just make it the way we’d love it to be!

Will be back soon with some roughs – we’re all feeling good about this!

Right now we are (well, I am) listening to:
Joy Division «Atmosphere», «Twenty-Four Hours» (…so this is permanent…) etc
Gang Of Four Please get Return the Gift, and you will hear where the likes of Nirvana and Franz Ferdinand have nicked both words and/or riffs
Arctic Monkeys
New Order Power, Corruption and Lies
Cat Power The Greatest
Massive (that «Live With Me» single)
and also Death Cab For Cutie and Dntel (his Life Is Full Of Possibilities is going to have a deep impact on this album!!)