White Hills and Papir- Loppen, Christiania Sept 18th, 2013

It was about a year ago that White Hills played here at Loppen. Due to a miscommunication I did not play with them last year at Loppen but did the next evening in Malmo. This year we got it right and it was the opposite. I rode up on my bike at 16:20 or so just as the band was unloading their gear into the lift up to the club. We had our friendly greetings and it was so nice to see them again. Super cool people.  We loaded all our gear in and I set up the hard disc recorder to make a multitrack recording like we did last year from the Loppen show. They had a very cool Dutch guy named EJ doing the driving and sound for them that was really into Synthesizers and was one of the guys who started the first Dutch internet forum on synthesizers like 20 years ago!  Soundcheck went well and we had some dinner.  Ego and Dave did a video interview for the club which you will be able to see on the club web site sometime soon. Http://www.loppen.dk 

While the interview was going on the drummer Nick, EJ and I took a walk around Christiania and told them a bit about the place. It was a beautiful evening and I took this picture as the sun had gone down.

          The guys in Papir showed up around 20:30 and were in a good mood and excited to play. They were going to debut a brand new song they just finished recording and three songs from their latest record. After the walk, we all just hung out in the backstage and talked about all sorts of stuff and they had amazing stories about their tour with the Cult and all the cool people they met and hung out with including Steve Jones, Gary Numan, Zakk Wylde, Lenny Kravitz, and others.. Ian sounded like a really cool guy and he was really into psychedelic rock, which is cool.

Papir

          Papir started right at 22 and I had to run up and turn on my recorder and was surprised that there was really good crowd for a Wednesday night. Unfortunately, about 1/3 of the people left after Papir. I still think it is strange that these young kids come out to see them, as this is all instrumental jam music with a lot of cool solos. Dave (WH) said he could hear the EMO influence in their use of melodies, etc…  Anyway, they really played a intense and great set and the sound was good but the guitar was too low (also for White Hills) on the audience recording.

          It did not take that long for us to set up again and we were ready to fly. I love playing with this band. We started off playing the entire new record and I had made notes about things to play on the different numbers but some of this went a bit crazy as I had trouble hearing myself in the monitor and the new module called the Wobblebug I was trying out was just insane and very unpredictable. Anyway, I tried my best and think I added some cool layers of sound to make it a more trippy experience. After the new record (without the intro and two space pieces), we played Condition of Nothing and my request, Robot Stomp. This was a very short version though and I had hoped we would really extend it out but they had not played it at all this year. First time in 2013! Next were three intense tracks and that was it.. All over in about 75 minutes. People were really into it and the video projections looked really cool.  What a great time.. I can’t wait til we do it again.. Thanks to Dave, Ego, Nick and EJ for a great evening..

Set List: Forever in Space, In your Room. Internal Monologue, So you are-so you’ll Be, Rare upon the Earth, MIST, Condition of Nothing, Robot Stomp, H-p1, Dead, Oceans