Thursday 24 December 2009

At the end of the year

Dear...well, everyone,

wish you all a great holiday season, be it Christmas, Hannukah, Festivus, Robonnukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice or any of the other variations. I am gonna spend my time with the family, relax and generally enjoy life, whilst reminding myself of how fortunate I am to be able to do what I do. I have had a great year, played a lot of concerts in front of mostly new audiences, met a lot of nice people and made some new friends in the process. 2010 is looking to be an exiting year. Gonna work hard to finish my next album and hopefully be able to do some music for film and maybe even an EP if the creative juices are flowing. A year is long and can contain surprisingly much!

All the best,

Thomas

2 great books read in 2009: Les bienveillantes by Jonathan Littell and The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins
3 great CDs heard in 2009: Bitte Orca by The Dirty Projectors, A Friend Of A Friend by Dave Rawlings Machine and For Sant Til Å Være Godt by John Olav Nilsen & Gjengen

Saturday 12 December 2009

On Monday, Dec 14th, at 8:15pm Thomas Dybdahl will be holding a question & answer session for all of you on vokle.com. You can join in and ask questions via webcam or text.
Use your weekend for some daring questions to collect for Monday then ;).

Sunday 6 December 2009

Thomas on Best of 2009 in iTunes

Great news these are! While Thomas is touring UK again, he has been picked for the iTunes Best of 2009 in the singer/songwriter category. See iTunes Indie Spotlight - you need iTunes for this. If you’re outside the US please change the country to US (flag on bottom of the shop) and paste URL once again…

Wednesday 18 November 2009

Songbook out now - and concert in Stavanger

Now, all waiting has an end - the songbook we announced earlier (and you demanded again and again) is out now in Norway. It is called "That Great October Songbook" and contains all the lyrics, melodies and chords for each and every song from Thomas Dybdahl's first three albums. It is beautifully packaged in a special hardcover design and includes previously unreleased photographs from the 2002-2005 period.
The book is available for NOK 299 at any bookstore in Norway (and their online shops). Infos for foreign buyers coming soon.

To celebrate the release, Thomas and his band will play live in Stavanger at Stavangeren on Nov 25th at 20.00. Ticketsale at www.stavangeren.no has just started, so hurry ;).

Monday 28 September 2009

Live video from Copenhagen

See Thomas and his band perform in Copenhagen from Sept 14th right over here. A short documentary will follow soon...

Monday 21 September 2009

Listen to Thomas on BBC radio

Jump to the BBC iPlayer to listen to Thomas' appearance on BBC radio 6music from last Thursday. Get started at about 1:42h.

Saturday 12 September 2009

Reviews for self-titled album

We have some really positive reviews about Thomas Dybdahl in various magazines and papers like The Sun, Q and NME. Here a few quotations…

“Norway’s answer to Nick Drake…sprawled-out stargazing music”
NME

“One of the most talented singer-songwriters
from the Norwegian music scene”
Q

“Brilliant…Dybdahl is a fantastic songwriter”
The Word

“Delicately heart heartwarming…varied, complex, and ultimately satisfying collection of songs 4.5/5”
The Sun

“One Day You’ll Dance For Me New York City is great…really delicate, almost transparently so.”
Elvis Costello (Mojo)

“Timeless worldly music”
Music Week

Full Review in The Sun

Tuesday 8 September 2009

In-store tomorrow in London!

To celebrate the release of 'From Grace' 7" on Sept 14th, Thomas will perform live at Rough Trade East (London) on Sept 9th at 7pm (for free!). Come early to make sure you're first in line... and grab your wristband, one per person as supplies last (starting at 6pm).

Live In-store @ Rough Trade EAST
Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane
London E16QL

Thursday 27 August 2009

Amazon free track download (UK only)

If you subscribe to the Last Suppa newsletter for Thomas Dybdahl releases, you can get a free track for download via Amazon. Unfortunately, this is for the UK only... get it here.

Tuesday 25 August 2009

Samleplate og turne med Lars Horntveth og Trondheimsolistene 09

Nå sitter jeg her og skriver akkurat i det klokken passerer 12 og kalenderen viser 24. august. Min venn og manager gjennom mange år, Kenneth, har mast på meg om å skrive en slags blogg om utgivelsen av samleplaten "En Samling" som kommer ut idag og det har vist seg å ikke være så lett som jeg hadde trodd. Derfor så til de grader i siste listen her... Hva er det å si om en samleplate? Jeg har jo passert 30, giftet meg og fått barn siden sist plate så kanskje tiden bare var kommet for å bli skikkelig voksen. Men Volvo stasjonsvogn er ikke helt min stil så da var det nærmeste jeg kom en samleplate. Det denne platen er ment å gjøre er jo rett og slett å oppsummere en del av karrieren og livet mitt som, for meg, har vært en utrolig produktiv og kreativ periode. Og så har jeg jo vært så heldig at en del mennesker har likt sangene og musikken i tilegg, som har gjort det mulig for oss å turnere land og strand for å spille for nye mennesker hver dag. Jeg vet om mange som ville gitt en fot og en arm for å kunne leve av en jobb de likte så godt. Vi har lagt ned masse arbeid i denne utgivelsen for at den skal være verdt å ha både for fansen og for nye lyttere. På den vanlige utgivelsen av platen får man med en Live DVD fra et av våre favoritt steder å spille i Amsterdam. Opptaket er fra en klubb som heter Paradiso og inneholder masse sanger som ikke er på platen og for de som kjøper boksen følger det med en ekstra CD med hele filmmusikken fra filmen "Rottenetter" som jeg nettopp ble ferdig med, pluss litt annet ekstra. Sangene som ble valgt ut til å være med på platen ble valgt ut ifra det enkle kriteriet: hvilke sanger synes jeg selv står best og det sier seg selv at dette vil det være delte meninger om. Derfor har vi også tatt gladelig imot tips fra fans og andre.

Turneen legger vi ut på 2 sept i Trondheim sammen med Lars Horntveth og Trondheimsolistene. Lars skal fremføre hele "Kaleidoscopic", albumet og stykket han ga ut ifjor, sammen med solistene. Jeg og bandet mitt, The Great October Sound, fremfører sanger fra alle albumene mine sammen med solistene. Trondheimsolistene er jo fantastiske og vi har vært så heldige å jobbe sammen stykkevis og delt tidligere, men denne gangen blir det full konsert sammen. Og så spiller vi også gjerne noe nytt:) Vi gleder oss villt til turen og håper å se så mange som mulig på konsertene,

ses,

Thomas Dybdahl

2 september Trondheim Olavshallen
3 september Oslo Sentrum Scene
4 september Grimstad Fjæreheia
5 september Stavanger Konserthuset
6 september Bergen Grieghallen

Monday 24 August 2009

New album 'En Samling' out today/Copenhagen sold out again

Beginning today, you can now buy the Danish/Norwegian best-of compilation by Thomas Dybdahl. If you’re not from the two countries, you can still buy the new and his old stuff at cdon.com . Northern souls should get it in any record store of your choice ....
Furthermore, the extra concert in Copenhagen is finally sold out again.... thanks for that ;-) .

Sunday 23 August 2009

Latitude interview

Here is an interview Thomas did for the Latitude festival, for all of you to enjoy:

Q1 How did you start out making music?
Like millions of other boys I got into playing the guitar by listening to Metallica in the late 80's. I was about 10 years when I got my first guitar and started figuring out the different parts to songs like "Fade To Black", "One" and, eventually, all the songs on the black album. After that it was all about music and bands. I played guitar in a local cover band called "Jokke Roses" (Jokke from the Norwegian band Jokke & Valentinerne and Roses from Guns & Roses of course). We played at school dances and stuff like that, but after a while my music taste changed quite a lot and I started to get more in to bands like The Band, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Beatles etc. As well as more contemporary bands like Pearl Jam, Live and some other Norwegian Bands. I started writing songs when I was about 14 and around that time I also started a band where we only played our own material. I studied music at school from age 16 to 19 and I had some friends who had moved in to a kind of "hippie collective" around the same time. They were not really hippies, but more like computer nerds with a keen interest in making music, cooking and porn. It was around that time and in their house I started to learn how to record and produce music on my own using a mic, a Soundblaster card and a recording and an editing program called Acid. This opened a whole new world to me, as we had previously thought that recording music meant that you would have to go into a studio and pay a shit load of money. Now, we were just sitting at home, recording and learning how to produce and make things sound good and the way we wanted it. And that's basically still how I work, even though the gear has changed a little bit.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
What started the whole process and ran as a red thread through the whole record was the inspiration and influence I got from a book called "Unweaving The Rainbow". It's a book by UK's most prominent and profiled Atheists, Richard Dawkins. I had long been a fan of Dawkins and "The Four Horsemen" (Dennet, Harrris, Hitchens, Dawkins), for taking the gloves off when confronting organised religion, its place in public life and its butting in on scientific areas where it shouldn't be. The book was so beautifully written and so clear that it took me back. Not to go into detail too much, but the book mainly deals with the false assumption that, when explained, nature and its many phenomenons and strange occurences lose their beauty and mystique. Dawkins just want people to know that, if they have the time and take the effort, they will find that the true explanations for the way nature works are even more fantastic than the false, mysterious "reasons" presented by cult and religion. Because the world and nature is fantastic in the way it is organised and works. So I think I can trace the whole process back to that book.

Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
I'm slow... I usually wait around for a really good idea to pop up. This can of course take a while, but I feel I'm getting better at spotting what's actually a good idea, rather than some blinged up jamsession. In the studio I don't necesserally wait for the structure of the song be finished and locked before recording. Most of the time, I start recording whenever I have good ideas and the structure may change lots of times as the approach resembles that of a jig saw puzzle. Having worked the way I have over the years, with producing, mixing, recording and writing all so intertwined, it's like the lines between them have dissapeared. So in that sense, I am far from a purist when it comes to songwriting. Then again, I have never labeled myself a singer/songwriter, others have.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
Gillian Welch, Arvo Pärt, D'angelo, Bob Dylan, Serge Gainsbourgh to name a few.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
I would shut up.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your debut album, and for the future?
Like always (almost, anyways) I would like for it to reach as many as possible and hopefully we can connect with enough people to start touring here regularly. It's very healthy for an artist to have as big a playpen as possible I think, so you don't end up treading the same route and places all the time. Not that there's anything wrong with playing the places we play at all, but it's always good to come back with new experiences and views on things. Keep the mind fresh and maybe even keeps your old songs alive longer by rethinking them at times.

Wanted: duet partner

Thomas Dybdahl is in need of a duet partner for his Norwegian concerts, as Silje cannot help him at this time. Read more in this Facebook group.

Saturday 22 August 2009

Pre-order 'Rottenetter' vinyl edition

You can now pre-order your very personal copy of the ‘Rottenetter' soundtrack, completely done by Thomas Dybdahl at Platekompaniet. The vinyl version is hand-printed by Thomas Dybdahl and is limited to 500 copies - ever.

Wednesday 19 August 2009

New Copenhagen concert - but almost sold out again!

Hi there,

Thomas has committed to an extra concert in Copenhagen on Sept 13th. Tickets sale started today, and right now there are only a few tickets left for you to buy...
Get yours right here.

Thursday 30 July 2009

New pictures from Latitude

A few pictures from the Latitude Festival concert have been added to our gallery (bottom right side on the official website). You can find it in the tour area.

Monday 20 July 2009

Thomas on BBC - listen now.

Thomas Dybdahl - Official If you have missed the show yesterday night or would like to hear it again, visit the BBC radio 2 page (don't choose the live player in the upper right corner, but the 'Listen now' button on the left side below the introduction) to listen to Thomas' interview and performance...

Friday 17 July 2009

Q the music top 10 list

Ever been asking yourself what music Thomas is actually listening to? Well, you can read here what Thomas' top 10 list of Scandinavian music looks like. He wrote it for 'Q The Music'.

Thursday 16 July 2009

Thomas mentioned in 'The Sun'

Seems it's finally starting... Thomas Dybdahl got his mention in the British 'The Sun'.

Tuesday 14 July 2009

B A Part out now and tour dates

Hi there,

Thomas Dybdahl's first UK release, the digital EP B A Part, is out now for your listening comfort. You can download it at almost any online music shop from nearly any place in the world, including iTunes, Amazon, 7 Digital, Rhapsody, Play and Musicload.

Furthermore, Thomas Dybdahl will continue performing live on stage this summer and autumn. So far the following gigs have been confirmed:

20th July - Music Week Unearthed @ Queen of Hoxton, London
17th September - The Pigalle Club, London
21st September - Café de la Danse, Paris
15th October - Shepherds Bush Empire, London (w/ Tina Dico)
26th October - Spring & Airbrake, Belfast (w/ Handsome Furs)
27th October - Academy, Dublin (w/ H.F.)
28th October - Cyprus Avenue, Cork (w/ H.F.)

Hope to see you around very soon ;-) .

Tuesday 7 July 2009

"Vinyl! Get your smoking hot vinyl here"

Hi everyone,

hope this entry find people enjoying the bliss that is summer. We are having beautiful days here in Stavanger, which means Serotonin City here I come! Loving it. It's all about vinyl these days, by the way. Just spent an interesting day in Hyde Park, where we were getting planning to spray paint the covers of 500 7" vinyls of From Grace. We did about 10 before the thunderstorms caught us off guard and we had to seek cover under a big tree....? (how smart is that) We will have a video blog of that out soon, just need to figure out how imovie works i guess. Can' be that hard!

Lots of things are wrapping up now it seems and deadlines aplenty looming on the horizon. Just sent the score for the movie "Rottenetter" to vinyl pressing the other day and also just approved covers and masters for the "best of" record coming in Norway in September. Will feature a bonus DVD with a recording from Paradiso in Amsterdam as well as the music from the movie I just scored and some other snacks. Really putting a lot of effort into this so it will be worth the money! Meanwhile, new concerts are popping up all the time thankfully. One of the newest ones being Latitude Festival in UK on the 18th of July. This gig came so unannounced that we will actually have to get a few stand-ins for the regular guys in the great october sound. (my trusty band the last 8 years) But what stand-ins: replacing KK on pedal steel this time will be legendary UK player BJ Cole. Google this guy and you'll know you've heard his licks on some of your favourite records. Really looking forward to this, probably be a bit nervous too. More than usual, I mean.

Also just in is a concert in Copenhagen on 14th September with DR Orchestra. Full string section and a welcome visit back to one of my absolute favourite cities to play in! This came in addition to the ones we are already doing with Trondheimsolistene in Norway in early September. Hope to see you all there, don't think we will be doing these kinds of shows too often:)

Most importantly though, I am working hard on the next album. Going to Normandie in late July to spend a few weeks with my producer Morten J. Olsen. I am starting to see the shapes of a great album. A little weird maybe, but I think it will be fantastic if we can grab on to those clear moment and just work really hard to get them on tape. A long process, but a necessary one.

Anyways, I'll keep this one short cause it's summer and I feel like swimming in the ocean. Will write again soon and hopefully see some of you out there as well!

All the best,

Thomas

Thursday 25 June 2009

Prepare with John Wayne

Hi Everyone,
just a quick hello from Stavanger here. Hope you're all doing good. Here is a little snippet from the show we did at Borderline in London about a month ago. This song is called John Wayne. Hope you enjoy it and also hope to see many of you again tomorrow at The Garage.

Take care,
Thomas Dybdahl

Monday 22 June 2009

"Time Flies When You’re Flying"

I’ve probably read that somewhere. Did I mention I hate flying? Well, not the act of flying through the skies at 850kmh while letting your mind wander aimlessly through the maze that is your L.I.F.E , but just about anything leading up to that point is a bitch. And yet I do it with increasing frequency. Why? I don't really know sometimes and also, I think I lost my train of thought there. Yes I did. And much like that these days pass on an endless search for that one clear moment when everything is just crystal clear and true.

I hope this blog finds everyone in good form and spirits. Contrary to what it may seem like from the introduction, I am actually getting some things done, believe it or not. Like I wrote in the last blog entry, I have been waiting to get the masters for the movie score I just finished from Nathan James at The Vault Mastering in NY. Nathan used to be an assistant to Scott Hull at Masterdisk and has worked on most of my previous albums with Scott. He is now running his own outfit and this is the first time he has mastered my music by himself and he did a fantastic job with it. It sounds unbelievably good and so it was a pleasure from start to finish to be in the mix theatre in Oslo last week as we finished mixing the sound and music to the locked picture. Me and my partner in crime, Øyvind Jakobsen, spent two days there with director Arild Ommundsen and sound engineer Gisle. What we did was basically to make sure that all the music was coming in at the right times, with the right volume, right fade ins and outs and so forth. When all this is done, they render the project finished and then eventually they put it back on a 35mm reel that the cinemas use to show the movie. At least I think that’s how it’s done. This movie was shot digitally, using RED cameras, so the cinemas that can show it digitally will hopefully do that, as it looks good and fits the digital format. (NERD INFO: the movie was shot at 25 frames per second, but when they show it in the cinemas it will most likely be showed at 24 frames per second because of the conversion from digital to analogue. Which means that all the sound and music will go slower than it was recorded. This will, most likely, make me puke)
I've been back and forth to Oslo a few times the last weeks doing a few different things. I just told you about the mixing of the movie, but I was also fortunate to be asked to sing on Thom Hell's next album. Thom Hell is a Norwegian artist that I respect a lot, so when he asked me to sing on a song of his called "The Feeling", I had no trouble deciding what to do. I think it turned out beautiful, hope Thom was happy. (Or Thomas as he's really called) The same day, we managed to squeeze inn a photo shoot (seems I'm always squeezing them in) with my good friend Johannes Worsøe Berg and graphic designer Snorre Seim. They have both worked on a lot of projects with me before and it will be cool to see what they do for the cover of the Norwegian Best Of CD that's coming out this fall.

No week is complete without a trip across the North Sea these days, it seems, and last week was no exception. I got to see a different side of the UK this time around as I spent my first couple of days in Great Yarmouth, where one side of my wife's family comes from. A quiet seaside town near Norwich, I think Great Yarmouth saw its glory days a few decades ago (it was a bit like the Florida of UK), but we had a great time nonetheless. It was great to meet my wife’s family and to be able to put some faces to the names I keep hearing. Finally, after a longer than necessary, train (and bus) ride we got back to London. I seem to remember writing something kind and romantic about British Rail last time around, but it was premature... I now think they suck. Things are getting hectic in London, as we are getting closer and closer to the release of my album there and I love that feeling. There’s always a special kind of energy leading up to a release. There are a million things to get done in time, lots of decisions to make, people to woe, covers to get done etc. But I love it and it’s a very special day when you get the finished product in your hands.

The first single from the album will probably be sent to radio soon and we’re crossing our fingers. You never know what’s gonna happen with a song, but we all have a good feeling about this. Call and bug your local radio! I’ll see you in London at the Garage June 26th, where I will play with a full band again. We will try to kick ass of course. Have a great week,

all the best,

Thomas Dybdahl

Thursday 11 June 2009

work

in a movie theatre mixing music for a movie. I LOVE MY JOB!!

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Hail Brittania!

Post #1
Thomas Dybdahl - Official wroteon June 5, 2009 at 1:33pm
So here I go, the least likely guy to ever blog is finally catching up with the times. Bear with me, these thing will hopefully only get better and better as I have no clue what I´m doing. The past weeks have been very exciting for me as I am finally getting ready to release my music and start touring the UK. Except for a few one off gigs in London I have never had the chance to play there and I have to say that if these last 8 gigs are anything to go by I have some great times ahead of me.
We started our summer tour in London at a packed Borderline where we were fortunate to have Nate Campany and Susanne Sundfør as support and what a great night it turned out to be. I was nervous as hell (as I tend to be) because this was the first gig we had played as a band in over 6 months. And to be honest, I could kind of tell, but there was something to be said about the energy that comes from that kind of resting period also. And on this night I think it played to our advantage. Thanks to everyone for showing up! We moved on to play The Great Escape festival in Brighton where we ended our 3 gig stay with a show at The Duke of York Picture House. What a great place to play a solo show, lovely acoustics and seated audience! Can´t ask for more. The last week we have been lucky enough to fall in love with the English countryside, as we´ve been traveling crosscountry by rail. Newcastle, Liverpool, Bristol, Nottingham and back to London. It´s called dart booking I believe, but we had a really good time so all´s good. Back in London I played Bush Hall as support for The Duke and the King I was told. This is the night that ended in the infamous Cocoa Pops incident which I will tell you more about at some later point. I think I had fantastic evening. Bright and early next morning I headed for Kensaltown Studios where I worked with a guy called Andreas B. Olsson on a new version of an old song of mine for UK radio. Also managed to squeese in a photo shoot with photographer Derrick Santini on that day. A fantastic photographer and patient guy. (you have to be when you´re working with the worst "poser"in the world). Been working hard on my "Blue Steele" ever since. For the time being I´m back in Stavanger in Norway just hanging with the family when I´m not in the studio working. I´m waiting to get my first movie soundtrack from mastering and then I head to Oslo to do the final soundmix on the film. I´ll try to keep this blog fresh and updated as time goes by and if nothing exciting happens then I´ll just make some shit up. No, seriously. Hope you all stay well,

all the best

Thomas Dybdahl



Road Fodder:
Book(s) brought - Underground by Haruki Murakami and Freakonomics by Stephen and Steven
Albums for the road - Histoir de Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourgh and Empty Words for Music with Piano by John Cage
Most memorable meal - BBQ´ed burgers at Al´s place in Putney
Movies seen - Once and Spirited Away