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Miike Snow
And I know that you pronounce their name as “Mike Snow” because I heard them say it themselves in this brief interview clip here.
Go figure. They’re cool Swedish guys. Well, two thirds of them, at least. There is a cool American singer/songwriter involved, as well. And when you’re cool, you drop cool names like Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike (the controversial director of Ichi the Killer), or at least you borrow cool romaji versions of Japanese names who you then say influenced your moniker.
Their eponymous album Miike Snow was released by Downtown Records in October of last year. If you’re curious, you can get a free CD sampler from the label that features Miike Snow and other artists playing at this year’s Fuji Rock fest (Scissor Sister, Rusko) by going to this part of the Downtown Records website and doing what your told.
This is songwriting and singing over produced loops and percussion that doesn’t go all James Murphy, but keeps its composure. The two producers and one singer actually perform like a fairly straight forward and understated electropop band. The two Swedish producers are Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, and they have some pretty disco cred. Previously working as “Bloodshy & Avant” they had having worked top three dance floor divas Madonna, Kylie Minogue, and Britney Spears (they co-wrote and produced Spears’ “Toxic”, one of the biggest selling singles of 2004, earning them #best Dance recording” at the 2005 Grammy Awards). The mirror ball and self-adulation is kept hidden, though, on Miike Snow.
This “Toxic” just because I would never be posting this anywhere else:
The singing and songwritingin Miike Snow is handled by Andrew Wyatt, an American who happened to meet the Swedes in Stockholm a few years ago. What the trio has come up with isn’t groundbreaking, but they’ve managed let some much better words and lyrics take more of a central role to the production duo-styled songs than many of their contemporaries would. Where some production joints would just lavish beats and loops and cuts upon more of the same, Karlsson and Winnberg create decent melodies and music and keep the DJ theatrics at bay.
I hear old Phil Collins trying to tranq an engineer at the controls of a Eurovision demo, but maybe that’s just me
“Animal” via You Tube
