/ Bird Calls, Minimalism, Naïvism, Electronica, Denmark (Posted in Danish, 2011 December 1st)
EDIT: This article features Danish videos, which will be explaned / translated in this article, English videos will be shown further below. They are different songs than the Danish ones, watch 'em all, they are great :-)
There will always be a new and strange thing you haven't yet seen or heard, by which you can be thrilled and fascinated ... that's the cool thing about being curious. As today when I discovered the Danish band Dans & Lær (Dance & Learn)...
Tranlate video 1: Greenfinch. "Flies around having unnaturally stiff wings" they sing. These scientists discusses theories on why that is: 1. The wings are frozen? 2. It suffers from body odour? 3. It plays ball? 4. The greenfinch suffers from high blood pressure? 5. It is a robot? 6. It is in love? Yes, that was the answer. Other info about greenfinches are heard, tells a bit about the song etc.
Dans & Lær is five nerds (in the positive sense) who loves birds and modern music ... Bjarke Søballe Andersen, who as a child had one of the educational tapes with bird calls and narration, gathered the band. The tape was Havens Fugle (Birds of the Garden) published by The Danish Ornithological Society in 1968, which featured bird calls and informative speaks of Ole Geertz-Hansen.
Their live performance is, as you can see above: energetic and intense. Their rewrite of Daft Punk's superhit Get Lucky with the refrain "She's up all night to get Gulspurv (Yellowhammer)" is just very funny. Check it in the video above from 3:30 where the audience learns that the yellowhammer count one-to-three-four-five-six-seveeeeen as the "bird translation" part of the song (and especially from 4:40), is a must see. ..! Singing "en, en to tre, tre fire fem, fem seks syv" = one, one two three, three four five, five six seven, is the band and crowd celebrating the Yellowhammer-call :-D
The band sampled the tape with the birds calls, and chopped them into hits with a twist of electronica and acoustic instruments - they are such a treat :)
Here's the song Skade (Magpie) from the debut CD Havens Fugle ... They sing "Stemmen høres året rundt" = the voice is heard all year round... and "De hørte allike, nu kommer skade" = you heard Jackdaw, here is Magpie.
Dance and Learn is cult - and nerdy - and interesting. They play on many things, including bread and pill glasses :-)
And now they have made an equally mysterious Advent calendar, a new one each year: Owl Calendar (in Danish Owl Calendar = uglekalender, which rhymes with julekalender = Advent calendar) - follow every day and see what happens - if you are easy to marvel ... (link further down ).
Above was the Greenfinch-song live
The band do it all by themselves: production, recording, cover designs, booking and more. They have made some great albums in Danish - the first ones called Havens Fugle and Flere Fugle (More Birds) and an EP with remixes of Skade (Magpie: - Choice of genres on EP demonstrates consistency and humor, if you understand the danish names and their ambiguity whitch fits the genres chosen in the mixes).
Above another cool live-video, in witch they show some electronica, enthusiasm and the worlds first owl solo, I believe (at 1:35 an forth)
Their newest album is in English, called New Zealand and is based on birds from the other end of the world. When they were about to make a new album, they were aware that (as they write in their press material) they had to exchange the sampled, Danish tape. After several days of searching in old records and some confusion whether to use heart beats, guitar courses or other mysterious things they found the LP A Treasury of New Zealand Birdsong, from 1971. They had to negotiate a little with the surprised rightholders to get permission to sample, but they were allowed and the excellent album New Zealand was a reality.
Dans & Lær sell their music via their website and can also be heard on Spotify.
They write February 14th 2015 on Facebook that they have started making a new album. I can't wait.
Edit: Below is videos from their new album New Zealand, first: Kaka
Next bird is Grey Warbler
Final bird is Skylark
M U S I C Click:
Dance & Learn's Owl Calendar (for listening to content of links, you can turn of the calendar song, by clicking bottom right pause button on the calendar):
http://www.uglekalender.dk/
