The Past Meets the Future: The Asteroids Galaxy Tour

“We didn’t want to bore people with our private diaries. We wanted to make music with a truly filmic quality—songs that feature characters that aren’t necessarily us. Songs with bad guys, heroes, and lovers.”

Lars Iversen

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour: (right-left) the singer Mette Lindberg
and the producer and songwriter  Lars Iversen

Born in Copenhagen, The Asteroids Galaxy Tour may be one of the bands of the decade with a more proper name. In this new post of Shout we explain why.

Mette Lindberg, a true character from the 80s, and Lars Iversen constitute this Danish band that mixes alternative pop with psychedelic and indie pop, in contrast to the majority Scandinavian bands, that seems to be adverse to pop music.

Although Lindberg and Iversen constitute de core of this band, they are the firsts to admit that The Asteroids Galaxy Tour are not, nor have ever been a duo, but a collective entity of friends, differing slightly from the traditional concept of “band”. So, to the two already named, is important to add Miloud Carl Sabri (trumpet), Sven Meinild (sax), Mads Brinch Nielsen (guitar) and Rasmus Valldorf (drums), accompanying the group in their lives shows.

Why is The Asteroids Galaxy Tour such an appropriated name for this pop band? The truth is that this band, strongly influenced by the psychedelic pop, as we already referred, is able to combine pure pop music from the 80s with a more futuristic element. In fact, the songs and the videos remember the vision of the future in the 80s, where cars flied and people lived in Mars. Even the quality of their videos shows that idea. The result is really happy and catchy songs, for which the unique voice of Mette Lindberg helps.

Lindberg and Iversen have been working together for about ten years, however only in 2007 they founded The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, releasing their debut album, “Fruit”, in 2009. For sure you already know some of their songs, who doesn’t remember the Heineken commercial? (watch the following video).

Their second album, “Out of Frequency”, is already in the stores since January 2012 and does not disappoint the fans, keeping the same alternative genre of its predecessor.

Cover of their new album
release in January 2012

To conclude we leave you with the first single, Heart Attack of their newest album, “Out of Frequency”.

After some short holidays we return, in this way, with another Shout band.

Greetings,

Shout

The other side of Dr. House

Hugh Laurie, the Jack of all trades (but in a good way)

Actor, comedian, writer, musician, director, Gregory House, Hugh Laurie in the real world, is all this with the genius that only he can reach.

Born in Oxford in 1959, James Hugh Calum Laurie found the music with only six years old, when he learnt how to play piano. He also plays guitar, drums, harmonica and saxophone.

It’s not new, to all fans of the award-winning show House, Laurie’s musical vein. In fact, in several episodes that side was explored, as in many other shows like A Bit of Fry and Laurie (check out the following video, a sketch from this show, starring Laurie and his good friend Stephen Fry), Jeeves and Woster and when he hosted the famous show of the north American Saturday night, Saturday Night Live, in October 2006. Besides, Laurie is the main singer of the charity band Band from TV and he also participated in the album “Hang Cool Teddy Bear” by Meat Loaf.

Finally in May 2011, Hugh Laurie release his debut album “Let Them Talk”, which counts with the collaboration of big names in the music industry such as Tom Jones, Irma Thomas or Dr. John.

“Let Them Talk” is a true tribute to New Orleans, with strong influences of blues, but with a touch of pop-rock.

Cover of the album
"Let Them Talk"

As the Britain newspaper The Independent said is almost always an error when an actor decided to become a singer (30 Seconds to Mars is a good example), as it is an error when a pop stars decided to be a movie star (Madonna), however, Laurie is the exception to the rule. Charm is without a doubt the best word to characterize this new project of Laurie that shows to be a great blues’ album.

We let you prove this thesis by presenting a track of the album, Guess I’m a Fool.

Greetings,

Shout