The Garage, London
16.05.06
What justice is there in a world where James Blunt can sell out every venue under the sun yet the Garage is less than half full tonight for what is arguably the best psychedelic pop band to swoop this earth since Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd tuned in and dropped far out? We shouldn’t be surprised. In a world where only the lowest common denominator will suffice, it’s hardly surprising that a band as wilfully strange as Swedish quartet Dungen would go over people’s heads. Plus, they have the guts to sing in their native tongue and aren’t afraid of damaging their commercial potential by not singing in English. And in the same way that some people won’t watch films with subtitles, some people won’t listen to Dungen, despite the fact that they write what are very odd, but very brilliant pop songs.
None of this matters one bit. It’s their loss. Throughout their hour and a half set tonight Dungen are classic seventies heavy prog-rock (‘Panda’), blissful fuzzy pop (‘Gjort Bort Sig’) and freaked-out symphonic exotica (new single ‘Festival’) and carry each shifting change in style with ease and confidence. The can swing from being crushingly heavy to achingly beautiful in a mere breath and look almost as good as they sound, coming across like extras from the Hair Bear Bunch with a Rick Wakeman look alike on guitar!
Proof of Dungen’s brilliance is in the fact that not once during their lengthy set tonight do they lose grip on our attention, sucking us into their twisted world they don’t let us go until the bitter end before spitting us out on the floor in a heap. “Fucking brilliant!” screams a clearly blown away fan from the front of the stage. “I know,” replies bassist Henrik Nilsson with a knowing nod. Dungen know how good they are. They’re just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
Def Jux’s Cage, whose album Hell’s Winter wowed critics and rap fans last year, has had a remix of album track Shoot Frank done by Glassjaw/Head Automatica frontman Daryl Palumbo.
Sevendust have had to pull their European tour dates, which included UK shows, due to lack of tour support. The group, who were due to play the second stage at the Download Festival, gave the reason for their cancellation as “lack of tour support”.
Those guys at Epitaph, famed for their Punk-O-Rama compilations, have said that P-O-R is no more, and are retiring it. However, they are replacing the famous compilation with the new breed – Unsound. They claim on the website that:
If my memory serves me well, Ricta was one of the first skate wheel companies to pioneer the ‘hard’ core element into the urethane world. Since then, it has become standard procedure. ‘Nuff said.
Whilst skateshops stock up on the big names and flavour of the month product, there are still small operations running all over the land. Eothen Skateboards is one of these operations, and it’s about to step up to the next level. I tried one of the very first boards to come from this homegrown skate company a couple of years ago and was pleasantly surprised. I didn’t hear much from Eothen after that and wondered if people had overlooked the occasion, but I was wrong. There are now riders (Jack Ryder, Ben Bucklee and Tom Davey) and a whole new line of product to choose from. 
The Kingdom deck is one of the new models that I got to test ride. The first thing I noticed was the shape: This board is virtually identical nose and tail wise. It took me a few minutes to figure out which way to set my trucks up… Next was the concave. There isn’t much, but I don’t mind that. In fact, the concave worked just fine and I din’t have any trouble trying to control the deck. There’s nothing worse than battling to control your board because it’s too flat or bent like a fish bowl.
Here is a quick rundown of what happened over the weekend:
It didn’t take long for the brand new Stappelbaddsparken Bowl in Malmö, Sweden, to get a proper thrashing, and the Quiksilver Bowlriders was the occasion to bring it on. The constant threat of rain over the weekend of May 19th to 21st, could not dampen the excitement of the huge crowds or riders in attendance. Riders dropped in from all over the Globe, including America, Sweden, France, Spain, Italy and Great Britain of course.
Aussie group The Grates have been lined up to support The Zutons on their current UK tour and will be performing their own headline shows in June in support of their debut album “Gravity Won’t Get You High“. The dates are:
This year’s Big Chill is going to live up to its name, as a line up has been announced that’s perfect to chill out to. The event will have 4 outdoor stages with bars also providing laid back grooves and up tempo madness once the sun goes down. There isn’t one style of music at this festival either, with the likes Jose Gonzales being set against Mr Scruff and Bugz In The Attic.