We havent featured many new alternative Finnish bands recently at Nordic Music Review, so we're delighted to have stumbled across 'Sonic Visions', a new wave Indie band which have a really promising sound to them. Their new debut single is called 'Find A Way', it was released at the beginning of the month but we've waited for the video to come out, and its almost 6 minutes in all its glory. Its a big confident debut, a great guitar sound, and theyre clearly influenced by some of the sounds that we've loved listening to over the years. Here it is anyway: Anyway Sonic Visions are supporting Big Wave Riders at the SemiFinal in Helsinki tomorrow (29th August), theyre on stage at 9.30, and with

There are certain things in life which strike me with an irrational fear – multi storey car parks, wasps and broccoli being amongst them (and don’t even get me started on rhubarb…). And from a purely music review perspective, not far behind them are albums of entirely instrumental music, with tracks at least 9 minutes long complete with epic guitar solos. So I cant deny that I approached the new album from instrumental band Vestbo Trio with slight trepidation, and concerns that whilst this might all be very clever musically, that it could sail way over my head and be lost on me completely. But we only write about things we like at Nordic Music Review, so the fact that I’m writing about it sh

At the end of May we wrote a Nordic Music Review feature about Sakia, a Finnish band who'd been together some 10 years, but had only recently released their official debut single. The link is at the bottom of this short item if you want to remind yourself. Anyway the good news is that theyre back with a brand new song and its called 'Bright Matter'. Having spent the week having my ears battered by the brilliance of Agent Fresco, this beautifully written melodic and melancholy indie rock track is the perfect distraction. I really feel that these guys have a really natural songwriting ability, and a sound which they are at complete ease with. Here is the new song 'Bright Matter' anyway, take

​ We don’t proactively request advance copies of New Releases at Nordic Music Review, and actually I prefer it that way. Yes it sometimes makes us 2 or 3 weeks behind other Websites and Blogs when we finally get to post something, but being able to listen to a new release on the day everyone else gets to hear it is, seems to make it all a bit more special, and after all, we’re just music fans the same as everyone else. I love the sense of anticipation on the release day of a really good album, and the new release by Agent Fresco, ‘Destrier’, 2 weeks ago, is a great example. The excellent reviews it had received around its release date simply added to the expectancy and excitement. Even then

We try to cover some really diverse projects at Nordic Music Review, partly because we love exploring the huge variety of musical genres out there, but also to demonstrate the broad range of Nordic talent too. Code Elektro is a really interesting example. Formed by Danish Commercials composer and sound designer Martin Ahm, the bands music (described as 'Cyberpunk') utilises analog and digital synths to create 80s Science Fiction inspired sounds, and their debut album 'Superstrings' was recorded over a number of years, in between his daily commercial compositions. This undoubtedly will have a fairly niche appeal, but in the first instance I think that’s pretty much what Martin Ahm intended,

We're delighted to be able to write a few words about 2 up and coming UK dates by the brilliant Swedish songwriter David Myhr, formally of the band 'The Merrymakers' and with an extensive catalogue of great power bliss pop style songs both with his band and as a solo artist. He's teaming up with artist and songwriter colleague Linus of Hollywood for a tour whcih theyre calling the 'Melody and Madness tour 2015'. They're promising an acoustic night of melodic pop, playing songs from their respective solo catalogues and former bands. Even better theyre playing at my favourite small London venue, the Green Note, and its next Monday 31st August, a great way to spend the Bank Holiday. Here's a l

We have a list of bands and artists we’re going to cover in the next few days at Nordic Music Review that most UK readers in particular wont have come across. Some have been around for years, but CeaseTone are relatively new, at least in terms of formal releases that we could find. Theyre from Iceland and they’ve had a few tracks and video clips circulating online in the last year or two, but it all looks like building towards a planned album release in the Autumn, which I believe might be called ‘Two Strangers’. Predictably enough for the type of band we like here, CeaseTone are a wonderful fusion of different sounds, rock, funk, folk, and I am completely intrigued as to what we might get

I guess this is not so much of an album review, but more of an introduction to the world of Billy Momo, a Swedish band which have established themselves as an immediate favourite at the Nordic Music Review, mainly because their music style is so eclectic and unusual, that we’re not quite sure how to describe them. And in our book, that’s always a good thing. Billy Momo were originally formed by musicians Tomas Juto and Oskar Hovell, but are now a 7 piece ensemble which includes a guitar, harmonica, banjo, percussionist, and with strings and wind instruments thrown in on their album ‘Drunktalk’, the overall effect is a complex landscape of musical arrangements. But its also music with its fou

The 2nd EP we’ve written about today is from one of our favourite new bands from the last year Fufanu. The Icelandic outfit, formally electronic based and called Captain Fufanu, have followed up their debut 'Circus Life' (we wrote about that at the end of last year) with a 4 track EP called 'Adjust to the Light' which is dark, atmospheric and pretty fantastic too - although it certainly has a different edge to it than their debut single. The band have gained a fair reputation in the last 6 months as a result of that debut, and some impressive live performances supporting Damon Albarn, the Vaccines and headlining in their own right too. The EP is worth 15 minutes of anyones time, it is disti

We’re featuring a couple of Eps from Iceland today which actually came out a couple of months back, and we’ve had them happily sitting on our playlists for a while as we familarised ourselves with them. The first is a new artist to Nordic Music Review, Axel Flóvent, who’s EP ‘Forest Fires’ is quite possibly the softest and most delicate release we’ve come across this year. An Indie Folk musician hailing from the Northern Icelandic fishing village of Húsavík, Axels music is captivating and has a real warmth to it too. Its based around fairly simple acoustic ideas, and it is a perfect escape from the stresses and strains of a manic and slightly confused world. So ‘Forest Fires’ (this is not Ax

A couple of weeks back we wrote a review of a good debut album by Finish band, 'Wends', called 'When We Sleep'. We didnt have a video at the time to post, but we have one now of 'Across the Oceans', as it was released just today. Check it out, and theres some links to follow below if you like it... https://www.facebook.com/wendsmusic http://www.wends.fi/

A couple of months back we had the pleasure of introducing Norwegian band ‘Hide’ to Nordic Music Review readers, and the band from Narvik have now released their album ‘Light up the Sky’ for our listening pleasure. The band, influenced by some of our personal favourites such as Mogwai and Sigur Ros, play Post Rock with a distinct Norwegian folk bias, and we loved their opening singles ‘Northern Skyline’ and ‘An Ocean in Between’. This is certainly an album which needs time to get to know and like, its complex and packed full of big sounds, drum beats, and with post and progressive rock influences at the forefront, each song does feel like a 3 course meal in its own right. But stick with it