Holiday for Strings is the name of an old show tune from the 1930′s that was composed by David Rose. It’s probably one of the most upbeat songs ever written. When the band Holiday for Strings named themselves after the tune, they had never actually heard it.

The band is made up of five Swedish guys, of which three are former professional chefs. The other two are John from Peter, Bjorn and John, and Pony, from the group Thieves Like Us.

The group’s music is a subtle mixture- post rock, kraut rock, pop, disco, and dub music all turn up in their experimental recipes. The band has existed on and off for about five years, slowly perfecting its unique musical blend.

Their first full-length release was titled CD and came out in 2006 on Stilll recordings. It’s a post rocking, groove based album that earned them an opening slot on the 2007 European tour with Peter, Bjorn and John. The album was described by the music magazine Wire as “an unholy alliance between The Monochrome Set and the B52′s.”

In 2008 they recorded a 3 song EP, Two of You, released as a double 7″ on Kanine Records NYC (Chairlift, Holy Hail, the Whip, etc). The title track was remixed by The Toxic Avenger, and Holiday for Strings toured the UK.

Their new album, Favorite Flavor, due out in Europe in March 2010, is released by Sea You records (Paper bird, Thieves Like Us, Japanther, etc), and was recorded at the imperial Murlyn studios, just outside of Stockholm, a wooden mansion built in the 1600′s which was originally the king’s summertime and love get-away.

The band will be touring the major cities of Europe in April and May, 2010, so prepare yourself for their unique performance, involving strawberries, chocolate fondues, and various wild animals.

In late 2010, The DimeRock Records studio production team Calzo Houdini will be co-producing their next EP. Keep an eye out for that!

Where can we hear more?

http://www.holidayforstrings.com

http://www.myspace.com/holidayforstrings

To celebrate our upcoming sessions with the amazing talent that is Lykke Li, we’d like to give you a free track courtesy of everyone at lykkeli.com and of course Lykke herself. Here’s her amazing take of ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’. Look out for more news coming up soon.

You can also buy her perfect debut album Youth Novels from iTunes or from lykkeli.com

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE TRACK

The long awaited new single and EP from Professor Green is now out! Titled ‘I Need You Tonight’, you can buy the EP for only £1.99 on iTunes. BUY IT HERE!

For more on Professor Green follow him on twitter or visit his official website.

You can also watch the behind the scenes of his video shoot for the soon to be hit single!

Photographed, filmed and edited by Tom Chambers and Andy Chambers

For more info and UK Tour Dates:

http://trythisforexample.com
http://facebook.com/leadingbyexample
http://tinyurl.com/tcphotography

You can watch the entire video on our main page or alternatively check it our on Pro’s official YouTube Channel. Also follow Professor Green on Twitter.

Professor Green, or Stephen Paul Manderson as he’s known to the government, is a name you are about to hear a lot. Having recently signed to Virgin Records, the East London MC is likely to have a very big year in front of him. And Rivmixx is counting on this talented lyricist to bring some substance back into the recently popularised urban mainstream.

Pro Green has been a well known name in the underground hip hop scene for a number of years.

‘Lecture #1′ was his first mixtape release, back in 2006. But, following some serious battling success, The Streets front man, Mike Skinner, quickly picked him up and signed him to his label, The Beats.

Career

His career, however, began primarily as a battle MC. Professor Green won the initial 2008 Jumpoff Myspace battle rap tournament, beating off Stig of the Dump, and winning a grand prize of £50,000; and quickly gained a reputation as the hottest battle rapper in the UK. He’s won in excess of one hundred battles; claimed the crown of second best MC in the world – second only to Jin – at the Power Summit 50k battle; and is the only rapper ever to have won Jump Off seven weeks in a row – which he did, twice.

Turbulance & Stabbing

Last year (2009) was pretty turbulent for the charismatic MC, though. Having left Skinner’s label – because the funding dried up – Pro Green began to forge his own way as an artist. But the release of his single ‘Hard Night Out’ got set back after he was stabbed in the neck, right through the centre of his ‘Lucky’ tattoo, after a performance in May at Cargo, London. According to his surgeon he “is alive by only a millimetre”.

The latter part of 2009 definitely looked brighter for our favourite horticulturist, however. November saw him signed to Virgin Records and tour with Lily Allen. Now, with a mixtape and an album scheduled for release this year (2010), plus the next single ‘I Need You Tonight’ due for release any day now, not to mention his support slot alongside Miss Allen on the Australian leg of her tour, Rivmixx is truly excited to see where Professor Green will go next.

The Interview

Rivmixx: What made you fall in love with hip-hop?

Professor Green: “I was nine or ten. My dad had played me ‘Pain’, the b-side to ‘Regulate’ fromTupac’s film Juice. Then I heard Biggie and I was hooked.”

R: How difficult was it to make the transition from a battle MC into making structured songs?

P.G: “I didn’t find it that hard, there’s still elements of battling in my music but there’s a whole lot more substance.”
R: You’ve just signed to Virgin Records, what difference will this make to your career?

P.G: “Well, it means I’ve got one, which is a start!”

R: Are we going to see a change in direction with your sound, like we have with Example?

P.G: “No, I won’t be making dance music. You will however hear a development.”

R: So many urban artists have been signed towards the end of last year, 2010 could be even more massive for urban music, what will make you stand out?

P.G: “The fact that I’m white. Kidding. I don’t think anyone else is coming from the angle I am… At least I hope they aren’t!”

R: Who are you rating artistically right now?

P.G: “Drake. I can’t wait to hear his album. It’s good because he doesn’t have the stigma attached to him that most rappers do, he escapes it but still gets respect ’cause he’s so fuckin’ good at what he does.”
R: As a big underground name, what is your view on UK urban music going pop?

P.G: “It’s a good thing, but I don’t think it needs to be so watered down to be there. I think next year is going to see the other side of our [UK urban] music come through and we’ll start seeing some substance.”

R: How has your transition from underground hip-hop MC to major label recording artist been taken by your peers?

P.G: “No idea. Probably a lot of dislike but in the words of the great Catherine Tate, Bothered.”

R: Who will we see you working with next year?

P.G: “Naughty Boy, Fink, Cores, I’d like to do something original with Lily. Hopefully another track with Mike Skinner (the track we did ‘Crying Game‘ is one of my favourite cuts from the album), and there’s a few people I’d really like to work with that I may get to but I’m not about to count my chickens before they’ve hatched!”

R: As Pro Green Twitter followers we have to ask you about Industry Hater. As a battle MC do you rate his parrs?
P.G: “Can’t believe you’re acknowledging him. Are you the Industry Hater?” [Rivmixx is, most definitely not!]

R: You’ve just finished touring with Lily Allen, from your Tweets it sounds like you’ve really enjoyed yourself. Any crazy tour moments you can divulge?

P.G: “I lost my boxer shorts in Berlin, and a bunch of loonies, whose names I won’t put out there sniffed hand sanitizer – the kind made mostly out of alcohol.”

R: How did touring with such a massive name come about?

P.G: “Facebook. We were just chatting when I mentioned clearing the use of ‘Dub Be Good To Me‘. I sent my version over and Lily suggested her doing the hook and us performing it live at Bestival. I was taken aback; I half didn’t think she was being serious! A week later we were in the studio where Lily suggested I tour with her. She’s been amazing. All that aside she’s a lovely girl, and very undeserving of the bad press she gets at times!”

R: UK urban music often receives a bad rep and is always connected to youth violence etc. Do you think that will ever change?

P.G: “Nope. The art form is very young and very belonging to the youngers. The problem’s not in our music it’s in our society, which our music happens to reflect.”

R: What is next for Pro Green and what can we expect from you in the future?
P.G: “The second instalment of my Lecture mixtapes, a couple of singles then the album, then more singles…an awful lot. I won’t be happy till I’m in Bizarre falling out of a club with one of The Saturday’s though.”

Peter Bjorn and John —Morén, Yttling, and Eriksson, respectively— are a trio from Stockholm best known for their worldwide hit single “Young Folks.” With their members having worked with acts like The Concretes, Taken By Trees, Lykke Li, and the Shout Out Louds, PB&J are lynchpins of the Swedish pop scene. John Eriksson answered questions on the release of their fifth LP, Living Thing.

“We should be given a Nobel prize for interview answers.”

From the beginning of the band, what’s been the PB&J MO?

“From day one, we’ve just wanted to create classic pop-songs that we hope can live forever. Our style has changed, though, and that’s a good thing. We listen to a lot of music, and we don’t want to be frightened to discover new things. That makes you can the way you want things to sound. That’s the good thing about albums. It’s like when you start a new job, or meet a new person, you can start fresh, almost be someone else. I think it’s nice to change from album to album: the way you work, the way you’re sounding, you’re thinking, feeling.”

Did you feel a weight of expectation after the success of Writer’s Block?
“Yeah, it was a big step. Writer’s Block was the first time people really cared about us at all. Before that, we’d only ever played in Sweden and Norway; after that, we toured all over the world, didn’t stop for one-and-a-half years. We wanted to do something totally different after that, so we did an instrumental album, Seaside Rock. That was really necessary, really important step.”

Really? Lots of people don’t regard Seaside Rock as a ‘real’ PB&J album.
“Absolutely it is. Maybe it’s the most important for us in the band. Because it brought us more together than ever. With that album, we worked as close as humanly possible, like we slammed our heads together and fused our brains. But, record companies didn’t care about it, and it was only released on vinyl, and we didn’t do many interviews about it, so, I know that that makes it an ‘in-between’ record. But not for us.”

Why make an instrumental album?
“Maybe we were tired of singing. We’d talked about it for many years, but were waiting for the right time to do it. We thought of it as going back to our roots; it’s like Swedish folk-music meets some kind of f**ked-up Beach Boys music. It’s sort of a tribute to our old hometowns, where we grew up, and the way we played music in grade-school. You know, when you started learning recorder, or clarinet, or saxophone, and you sounded like a pig getting killed. We wanted to explore that period of our lives.”

Did you always want to be a musician?
“Absolutely. Me and Bjorn did the same things as kid: making our own songs on home cassette recorders. It was like it was only possible that we’d end up making music for a living. But, it took us a while to get to the point where we made any money at all. That only happened with Writer’s Block.”

Did you grow tired of playing those same Writer’s Block songs over and over?
“No, actually not. Maybe that time will come. It’s interesting: when you play a song 200 times, it goes in waves. Suddenly, it can be a nauseating thing to play a song, or just a total bore. But, then, 20 gigs later, suddenly it’s this exciting thing; you get so lost in the song that you’re not even thinking when you’re playing it. We looked at it like this: plenty of other bands never get the opportunity to play this many gigs, so how can we complain about it?”

Was it ever frustrating being treated as a one-hit wonder?
“No, because if people hadn’t heard that song, we wouldn’t be known by them at all. We thought of it as our business card. Or like a lucky star in a computer game: it gave us an extra life, and it was up to us to do something with it. We never started to resent “Young Folks,” because we love that song. It’s a great business card to have.”

How do you feel about Living Thing?
“I think we’ve managed to create a spooky, strange atmosphere. I think maybe we drank something strange, or ate some old cheese, but something happened along the way. I think we surprised ourselves with how dark it sounds.”

How did you think it would sound?
“We definitely wanted it be minimalistic. We burnt a reference CD of songs that could fill us with possibilities, and most of it was kind of sparse. The CD goes: Nina Simone, “Sea Lion Woman.” That’s like hi-hat, handclaps, flute, vocals. Alexander Robotnick, “Dark Side of the Spoon.” That’s one chord progression for an entire song. Young Marble Giants, we love them, their sense of minimalism. Suicide, “Dream Baby Dream,” that’s just one repeating motif, this mix of electronic and acoustic sound that just makes the music vibrate. There was also some old-school hip-hop, African folk-music, tropicalia, house music. Anything where there’s a sense of simplicity. It’s good to recreate this idea of what a song can be. You can make a song out of just one beat, a bassline, and some lyrics. We tried really hard to have the songs contain less information.”

Did you have a similar kind of ‘framework’ in place when you were starting, things you wanted to use as models?
“No, when we were beginning we were far too scared to ever use anybody else’s music as a reference. We wanted to go into the studio and find our own identity, our own sound, discover what happens when the three of us get together. We didn’t think about other bands, just about us guys.”

Frida Hyvönen has an amazing song called “Scandinavian Blonde,” about how the rest of the world, especially Americans, can reduce you to a Swedish cliché. Did you experience any of that?
“We got asked about Sweden in every single interview, but there was none of that Ikea and ABBA stuff. It was more like we were treated as ambassadors of the Swedish music scene, talking about all these bands coming out of Sweden. I can see why people are curious: we have so much amazing pop-music coming out of such a small country. I think, in interviews, you can talk about whatever you want. If you have a bad interview, you only have yourself to blame. You have to try and surprise yourself, try to find a better answer for each question each time it’s asked. We did so many interviews, we had to work really hard at that. We should be given a Nobel prize for interview answers.”

Win the Chariot of the Sun – Empire of the Sun’s incredible customised Holden Sandman! Buy a copy of the new Empire Special Edition of Walking On A Dream and visit http://www.sunchariot.com.au to win the Chariot of the Sun!

The good thing about Empire of the Sun is that they keep releasing singles from their debut album Working on a Dream. What’s even better is the fact that they sound nothing like the album tracks!! Here’s the 5th single to be released and reworked into a new tune! Fantastic.