Under the Autumn Trees

Time for me to pre­sent: Gorky Park.

Gorky Park became world famous during the time of Pere­s­troika, and was one of the very few Soviet/Russian rock bands who made it through the Cold War wall and was able to become famous in the west. Whether their exten­sive use of com­mu­nist flags, balalaika-like gui­tars and other Rus­sian arte­facts in their videos is to play with ste­reo­ty­pes or because of natio­nal pride is up to debate. For those who have heard of the famous Moscow Music Peace Fes­ti­val, they were featu­red there along­side bands like Bon Jovi and Skid Row.

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I am quite fond of epic-sounding music (or as my dearest calls it: pompous music ). You know, the kind of music that gives you (or at least me) goo­se­bumps and maybe even tears in your eyes if you lis­ten to it on a rat­her loud volume.

One of these, per­haps one of the best ones, is Requiem for a Dram or Requiem for a Tower. The first one, which is the ori­gi­nal one if I am not mis­ta­ken, was made for the movie with the same name. The lat­ter was a recom­po­sed ver­sion to the Lord of the Rings. The Tow­ers movie. Or the trai­ler of that movie, to be more exact. To be honest, I am not sure which ver­sion is played in this video, but it does say Requiem for a Dream. Read the rest of this entry »

Not too long ago I dis­covered the won­der that is Radio­head. From then on, I have lis­te­ned to two of their records over and over again wit­hout ever get­ting tired of it. OK Com­pu­ter in particular.

I would the­re­fore like to pre­sent my two abso­lute favo­rite Radio­head songs. There are of course plenty of great songs, but Let Down and Karma Police are the ones I find the most beaut­i­ful and atmosphe­ric of them all. I know some people might find Radio­head to be monotonous, boring and/or depres­sing, and I can under­stand why they would say that even though I don’t agree. To me, they makes me dream, floa­ting away with their haun­ting music.

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Hiya. Long time no post. Oh, well, I’m back now anyhow.

The last two weeks was our holi­day and I got to read quite a few books. Nick Hornby and Erlend Loe are two of my favou­rite aut­hors, so I read High Fide­lity, Fever Pitch and Slam by Nick Hornby, and Fakta om Fin­land (Facts about Fin­land) by Erlend Loe.

I have to say, I find these two aut­hors stri­kingly simi­lar. Well, per­haps not stri­kingly, but I do see some resem­blances. They are both men around the same age, and they write about every day cha­rac­ters, mostly men (alt­hough they have both writ­ten, to my know­ledge, one book each where the main cha­rac­ter is a woman) who goes through some per­so­nal issues in regards to coping with life.

The books can seem tri­vial because of their eve­ryday aspects, the mun­dane details and the slightly nai­vi­s­tic (Loe more so) style of wri­ting, but they are both in the text itself and inbetween the lines dea­ling with topics that most people can rec­og­nize in them­sel­ves. Eve­rything from insecurity and low self esteem to love and death is delt with in Hornby’s and Loe’s books.

I have now read all Hornby’s novels (and one non-fiction, his auto­bio­graphy) and four of Loe’s novels so far, and I have really enjoyed them all. So far my favou­rite Hornby book is How to be Good and my favou­rite Loe book is L. (Inter­e­s­tingly enough, both those books were the first one I read of the respec­tive authors).

If you are look­ing for a book that can deal with both tri­vial and pro­found topics in one and the same book, invol­ving both humor and a easy-to-read lan­guage, I would advice read­ing Hornby or Loe. They are both bril­li­ant. (For Eng­lish speak­ers: From Erlend Loe, only Naive. Super is trans­lated into English.)

I love music. Or, to be more exact, I love cer­tain songs. I want to share some of my absolute favourites here on this blog.

First one up is «The Loner», by Gary Moore. Sit or lay down com­for­tably, turn of the lights and close your eyes. My brot­her had this album and I used to lie down in one of our comfy chairs and just lis­ten. This song takes me far, far away, and it almost always lea­ves me in tears.

I can no tell how won­der­ful it was for me to find this one on YouT­ube. (I didn’t even know there existed an official video to it).