aaamusic | On 10, Jun 2011

Thulebasen premieres video for “Monster” on Altered Zones
Link to Altered Zones premiere: http://alteredzones.com/posts/1451/thulebasen-monster/

Thulebasen started as an experimental, sketchbook-like solo project for vocalist and lead guitarist Nis Bysted in 2001. Seven years in the making, the eclectic 2008 debut album ‘Guitar Wand’ appeared, on the Copenhagen-based independent label Escho, to rave reviews from critics and listeners alike. Among many others, leading underground musical
website Undertoner called the album “a mindfuck of a masterpiece” and gave is 6 out of 6 possible stars.

Joined by Felia Gram-Hanssen and Niels Kristian Eriksen that same year, Thulebasen took form as a trio. The three of them drew from a deep well of musical experience: Bysted, most recently a part of the Mit Nye Band supergroup, has played in legendary Danish underground bands such as Düreforsög, KLoAK and The Bleeder Group (with punk legend Peter Peter, from The Sods); drummer Gram-Hanssen also plays in bands including Selvhenter, Valby Vokal Gruppe, Skammens Vogn and Paradisets Born; and guitarist and sample-master Eriksen has composed music for a number of movie soundtracks as well as working as a producer for Kim Las and Lamburg Tony and playing in the band Nikolas.

When they started out as a band they only played together in the form of free improvisation. They recorded most of this spontaneous material so they could keep track of their favorite pieces along the way, refine the work live and continue to improvise—concert after concert, rehearsal after rehearsal—while the music gelled. What started as an unstructured experiment slowly and steadily became actual tracks. The band likes to call them ‘future rock songs.’

Nine of these songs can be heard on Thulebasen’s new album, Gate 5, which came out February 7, 2011 on Escho (vinyl) and Tambourhinoceros (CD+DD), and can be heard continuously evolving on live stages across Europe. Reviews already report that Gate 5 is “one of the year’s best Danish records, and I say that with great confidence even though it’s early February” (Undertoner); “In a kaleidoscope of shifting orchestration, tempos and real sounds is Thulebasen bringing listeners into the most acid green corners of rock history” (Soundvenue); “With Gate 5’s explosive bursts, the album is like a warm-blooded geyser from the underground.” (Politiken).

Having thrown themselves, three years ago, at avant-garde explorations and the potential restructuring of rock’s traditional form, Thulebasen have finally emerged on the other side. The band has found a complex yet unified, groovy and melodic take on relatively traditional rock music, one that does not suffer from the boundaries of a traditional songwriter’s imagination, but is some where between the gutter of social realism and sparkling fantasy.
On Gate 5, field recordings from the band’s European tours blend together beautifully with vocals, unpredictable snippets of melody, noisy guitar riffs, catchy synthesizer melodies, pulsating rhythms, hypnotic space-rock grooves and sudden echo effects. The structures of the tracks are simple, but the numerous layers and attention to detail in terms of production add a multicolored and rarely encountered adventurous depth.
In their brief history as a trio, Thulebasen has played more than 100 gigs in England, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Holland, Turkey, Ireland and Denmark. Among many others they have played with Ariel Pink, Wavves, Charles Hayward (This Heat), Chimes and Bells, Kim Ki O, Threadpulls, Junglandacee and Alle Med Balloner Og Terrasser.

Escho, the underground label Bysted co-owns, has been the band’s primary release and gig platform in Denmark. As well as releasing albums by the likes of Ice Age, Goodiepal, Mit Nye Band, T.S. Høeg and Lamburg Tony, Escho has earned a reputation in Copenhagen as a peerless promoter of tailor-made, unique shows for renowned international artists such as Black Dice, Boredoms, Gang Gang Dance, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Chris Corsano, Otomo Yoshihide, and Omar Souleyman. Rounding up the significant global events of the past 12 months in December 2010, Escho was hailed by Artforum, the world’s most influential contemporary art magazine, as “one of the coolest things around”.