Happy New Year everyone! And thanks for reading this and taking an interest in Copenhagen Collaboration  Looking back, 2012 was a special year for us. Exciting stuff happened for Copenhagen Collaboration with us being trusted, and allowed, to put on two crazy concerts at both Roskilde and SPOT festival – but a lot of interesting stuff also happened for the individual bands. Here’s a message from each band and a quick round up of the most important things.

This is how we looked right after the Roskilde concert (photo by Marco Sewohl)

Obviously the Copenhagen Collaboration had two great highlights this year: our ‘live remix of a live concert’ at SPOT Festival and our two-and-a-half-hour collaborative concert at this years Roskilde Festival. We are all very happy and proud that both concepts turned out the way they did and that we could also draw on the expertise and creative minds of people outside of the bands to make both projects come to life. We need to mention the brave and nuts Thor Finland and Mikkel Meyer who took on the challenge no other remixers/DJ/producer was able to do by helping us make the live remix of a live concert become reality. But we also need to mention Tim Sorensen and Esben Marcher for taking on the challenge of doing our sound at the Roskilde Festival concert with up to 30 musicians on stage at same time playing loud drums right next to quiet acoustic violins and making it all sound great.

With both shows being highly demanding (and rewarding) for all of us, we decided not to have any other collaborative projects this year because so many of the bands had cool stuff going on on their own – here’s a word from most bands on highlights of 2012:

CODY anno 2012 (photo by Christian Klintholm)

Jacob of Hellraiserten

Before the Show (photo by Sune Sølund)

A lot of great stuff happened for our band in 2012, especially the show at Roskilde was huge for Cop.Col.

After being in the studio through out the most of 2011, we finally started playing live again in 2012. Which has been awesome and very fulfilling. Then 2012 also saw the release of our 2nd album “Years&Years&Years” in both Denmark and the most of Europe, and has been well recieved in the press (mostly the foreign press, though ). Last, but not least, we also signed a new record deal with PonyRec. (Alcoholic Faith Mission, Green Pitch), which, so far, has been incredible for us.

Alcoholic Faith Mission enjoying a glass of red

Kristine Permild, ALCOHOLIC FAITH MISSION:

You.You.You. (Photo by Casper Lundemann)

• The launch of our band was on Jan 1st 2012 and getting signed with PDH Music
• The amazing process we had with being part Karrierekanonen and all the support they gave
• The shows at SPOT and Roskilde and the creative collaboration we had with the other bands in CopCol
• We have also been working on making our debut album and want to send a special thank you to Nicolaj Rasted, Johannes Dybkjær, Malte Erbs og Andreas Sommer for being cool and supporting us.

Stærosaurus joined by Kristine from AFM at Roskilde Festival (photo by Marco Sewohl)

Andreas Stær, STÆROSAURUS:

• The Roskilde Concert. Playing there was a dream come true and completely amazing. But also the whole process leading up to it where everyone from all the bands put all their efforts into helping each other create some larger than life versions of their songs was amazing.
• Finally getting started on the making and recording a full length album. After a very long time of trying to write music and not being able to finish any of the songs I was writing, it was extremely liberating to finally be able to find a path for the album this year. We also released the first song from the album this year to good reception which made me very happy.
• A smaller, but cool, thing is that I made an actual remix of actual hit song this year. Never though I’d do that. It’s for a song called DJ Blues by Cph band Panamah.

Sleep Party People in Taipei 2012

Brian Batz, SLEEP PARTY PEOPLE:

• The Game & Dr. Dre: My manager received an email from Intercope Records earlier this year. They wanted to ask for permission to use my song “I’m Not Human At All” on The Game’s forthcoming album. Apparently it was Dr. Dre who discovered the song on youtube and wanted to use some parts of it as a sample on the track him and The Game was working on. I said yes and now it features on the album and hit no.6 on the US Billboard! Crazy dope shit.
• Touring Asia: Playing Hong Kong, Taipei and Kaohsiung was by far one of the most memorable moments in my career. The fact that the Hong Kong show was sold out the night before the concert and SPP also sold more than a 1000 tickets in pre-sale for the Taipei show was mind-blowing and pretty damn surreal. (See the picture)
• Releasing the second album: It was really nerve wrecking receiving the album master of the second SPP album, but it felt really good releasing it and to receive that many good reviews from all over the world including a Sunday Times review where they call me a genius. I’m flattered and satisfied.

Monkey Cup Dress 2012

Line Felding and Sidse Holte, MONKEY CUP DRESS:

• Playing Roskilde was a high light for sure! Being part of that big group with all kinds of big emotions going on
• Releasing our debut album finally after a very long process. Now we’ve signed with a German label and booking so it’s coming out there too!
• Our current project of making music for a Danish/Chezch/Slovenian movie which is a whole new medium for us to work with and a lot of fun

A bonus info about us is that we are following the CopCol trend of multiplying and now also have a baby in our band. Her name is Ingrid and she’s the daughter of Line. She was only three weeks when she was with us for a concert when we played at the inauguration of Campus Roskilde with the Danish Crown Prince and various high profile politicians in the audience. And in 2013 she will be going with us on the road in Germany where we will also be joined by her grandmother – so it’ll be three generations of women touring a big country in a very small van.

On July 6th Copenhagen Collaboration played a 2,5 hours long marathon show at the Arena Stage at the Roskilde Festival. If you are looking for information about the songs we played – here’s the set list:

1. Down from here – Alcoholic Faith Mission (hear song on YouTube)

2. There’s no great love! – Before the Show (Free download from SoundCloud or see video)

3. 16 Holes – CODY (see video)

4. Gazing at the Moon – Sleep Party People (see video)

5. Jeg har aldrig (haft det sådan før) – Stærosaurus (Free download)

6. Are we ok? – From Sarah (hear song on Soundcloud)

7. Alive – Monkey Cup Dress (hear song on Soundcloud)

8. Axes – Hellraiserten (Free download FULL ALBUM)

9. The Funeral (watch our version or watch the original by Band of Horses)

10. Wild Fire – The Ondt the Gracehoper (unreleased song)

11. No Allies – YouYouYou (unreleased song – other songs by You.You.You)

12. Comfort and Rage – CODY (see live performance video or original studio recording)

13. I’m not human at all – Sleep Party People (official video or live performance)

14. Demons – From Sarah (official video)

15. Running with insanity – Alcoholic Faith Mission (official video)

16. That Gentle Will – Monkey Cup Dress (unreleased song)

17. Desdemona – The Ondt and the Gracehoper (hear song on Soundcloud)

18. Mareridt – Stærosaurus (hear song on Soundcloud or watch audience recording from Roskilde 2012)

19. Grey Birds – CODY (unreleased song – out in August)

20. Years&Years&Years – Before the Show (unreleased song – audience recording from Roskilde 2012)

21. Astronauts – You You You (unreleased song – other songs by You.You.You)

22. HGMG – Hellraiserten (watch a live version)

23. Chin – Sleep Party People (hear song on YouTube)

24. Nut in your eye – Alcoholic Faith Mission (YouTube)

25. Last song (Halo by Beyonce)

You can find a really cool set of pictures by Malte Kristiansen over at the Copenhagen newspaper Berlinske’s site: http://www.b.dk/billedeserier/copenhagen-collaboration-spillede-op

Other picture sets:

http://www.tom-spray.com/gallery/recent/roskilde_festival_2012_day_2/

http://www.festivalblogging.dk/copenhagen-collaboration-arena-2/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/roskildefestival/7519341104/in/photostream/

AND:

There’s this one we’d like to show you as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcCA8U9k3rA

That’s right 30 musicians. One band. That’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to make a unique concert where each of the 10 CopCol bands will be augmented with members from the other bands and create unique versions of two or three of their own songs in arrangements that could never happen outside of CopCol. That doesn’t just mean bigger and louder (of course each band can have the three drummers they always dreamed of) but it also means that we can create moods an expressions that were nevet possible before by adding e.g. one person’s unique voice or unique touch on the bass. Expect everything to melt together. Genres, bands, instruments, original songs, covers, visuals… it’s all going to melt be mixed up in a way that we have never done before. And will most likely never do again.

So, don’t miss out. Come by Arena stage, on Friday 6th July at 13.00, at the amazing Roskilde Festival.

Btw: do I have to say that we are excited beyond all reason that we have been given this chance to make something special in such a great setting? An honour, a priviledge and pretty totally completely nerve wrecking.

We have planned three days on intense rehearsals from Sunday to Tuesday – if you wanna see how that goes down, check out instagram and look for #copcol. Here’s some of the pictures so far:

Learning the chords for a Monkey Cup Dress song (Klemme, Batz, Krisser, Sidse and Line)

Blonde men of From Sarah and Alcoholic Faith Mission hanging out between rehearsals

Tuning guitars at a rehearsal with Alcoholic Faith Mission, From Sarah and Before the Show

No toy accordions will be harmed during our show - though they might be featured (Rasmus and Laurids)

Usually when I read stuff like this I catch myself thinking something along the lines of “ahhh, how unique and special that performance is really going to be?” – well, this time we promise you that it’s true – at least it’s unlike what any of us has ever done before – and we will only do it this one time.

With the help of electronic music artists T. Finland and Mikkel Meyer we will try to pull off a live remix concert at this years festival. This is not to be understood as that they will be remixing our records live on stage. NO, they will be remixing and re-structuring our music while we perform it. Live on stage. In real time.

On a practical level this will mean the stage will be split between the band (consisting of us musicians) on one side and the remixers on the other side. We hear what we ourselves play through the headphones we’ll all be wearing while Finland & Meyer will decide what audience hears. They will re-construct all the elements of the songs into brand new remixed variations of the songs. And they’ll do it right there on the spot – and that will be what the audience hears. We, the musicians will still be hearing the actual sound of the instruments in the headphones – so even if they e.g. decide to kill the guitar on the chorus, the guitar player will still be hammering away on his guitar as always. They even have power to switch off the entire band and rework the songs as a capella numbers if they want.

We are super excited about doing this show. It’s going to be extremely complicated to plan, rehearse and execute, but I guess those things shouldn’t hold you back, right? Artistically I believe we’re gonna produce some gorgeous music through this show, and as music nerd I think its super cool to be able to give the audience an experience that’s very different from the normal procedures for a concert.

We got into this through the festival’s grand old man, Gunner Madsen, who approached us in October last year and told us that he had heard about our collective and thought it sounded like the kind of collaborations that musicians and artists did back in the 70s in Århus. Especially in the way that our collaboration doesn’t have any specific purpose or goal behind, but is more based on a shared ideology (although ours is not quite as political as groups he was thinking about). He said he liked that way of thinking, and told us, that if we wanted to try out something new, crazy or just different from what we normally did, he might be interested in including it in the festival.

Based on that, we brainstormed on a bunch of things and ended up decided that this was the most crazy/diffucult one to pull off – so we had to go for it.

A collage of artwork from the CopCol bands

We shot the video at a cool cafe called Din Nye Ven in December 2010. We didn’t really prepare it much, but were pretty happy with the end result. Our very own Leif from CODY recorded it and made sure it sounds great. Thøger Kappel Nielsen og Christopher Hornstrup Thuesen filmed and edited the images and made us look like this. Thanks guys. Band of Horses themselves were really nice and posted our video on their Facebook page last year boosting the views to number much higher than we expected. Thanks for that too. And for writing the song in the first place.

They look like this:

From Sarah: Ask, David & Moogie

And their great track “Spit it Out” sounds like this:

Enjoy!

Billetter kan købes her: http://billetto.dk/da/events/copenhagencollaboration

The collaboration has been started up in order to assist Tivoli in reaching the smaller genres. Apart from the traditional friday-rock-shows and the even more traditional bigband performances etc. new genres reach the theme park. All in all a line up of 9 acts performing 17 concerts will run between May and September.

The different acts are:

Basco

Basco

Frisk Frugt

Mames Babegenush

Trio Mio

Afenginn

Afenginn, foto Henrik Bjørslev

Henrik Jansberg Band

Falgren Busk Duo

Let me play your guitar

Danjal

Eggs laid by tigers

The program:

• 20/5 Henrik Jansberg – 17.30 at Harmonipavillonen
• 27/5 Trio Mio – 17.30 at Harmonipavillonen
• 3/6 Mames Babegenush – 17.30 at Harmonipavillonen
• 9/6 Danjal – 17.30 at Harmonipavillonen
• 17/6 Mames Babegenush – 17.30 at Harmonipavillonen
• 23/6 Danjal – 17.30 at Harmonipavillonen
• 8/7 Frisk Frugt – 21.00 at Pantomimen
• 13/7 Eggs Laid By Tigers – 14.30 at Plænen
• 15/7 Let Me Play Your Guitar – 21.00 at Pantomimen
• 3/8 Henrik Jansberg – 14.30 at Plænen
• 10/8 Trio Mio – 14.30 at Plænen
• 18/8 Basco – 18.00 at Promenadepavillonen
• 24/8 Afenginn – 19.30 at Plænen
• 1/9 Basco – 18.00 at Promenadepavillonen
• 12/9 Falgren Busk duo – 20.00 at Plænen
• 22/9 Basco – 18.00 at Promenadepavillonen
• 23/9 Basco – 19.00 at Harmonipavillonen