Tag: music

Spring, Chocolate Eggs, Music!

Like I mentioned in the previous post, this week has been insanely hectic. A part of it was the training of a new colleague at work while still trying to make the end-of-the-month project deadline, which meant I was more tired than usually after workdays. Add in the language course evenings and a couple of other lengthy errands I had to run during the week, and suddenly my days were very long indeed. M was gone the entirety of Monday and Tuesday, and the previous weekend didn’t include much together-time, either, since he was embroiled in a forum update project that took the entire weekend (and wasn’t even completely successful, so it will take even more time in the future). By Friday I was pretty much a wreck.

I decided early on in the week that the weekend would be all about relaxing, and what better way to start it than using the Christmas gift card for champagne brunch for two (from M’s uncle and aunt) in an Italian restaurant on a beautiful Saturday morning! The weather was sunny and gorgeous, so I wore a skirt and a pair of high heels to celebrate spring. The food was delightful, and we had a terrific time. Afterwards we shopped for some Easter eggs for next week, and while my collection isn’t nearly complete yet, we did make a few good discoveries. I fully plan to sample all the different chocolate/marzipan eggs they have here to see which ones I like the best.

The rest of the day went by with both of us lazing about. I played some Guild Wars 2, we watched last week’s episode of Vikings and later a movie (Whiplash). It was just what I needed to let go of the week. Today I might even consider doing something useful… I still have one or two days of work next week, but the rest of it is definitely off, and the language course is also on a break for a week and a half. I’m so looking forward to a little spring break!

In other, completely unrelated news, I’ve been listening to Von Hertzen Brothers’ new album New Day Rising on Spotify. I liked their first album quite a bit, but after that (and especially following one really unimpressive festival gig that left me completely cold) I sort of lost interest in the band altogether. I was really surprised to discover I like the new album a lot. For now it has completely replaced my other recent favourite (Say Lou Lou’s Lucid Dreaming), which continues my current trend of falling in love with female Nordic electro-pop artists for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, but hey, if it works.

Ladies with a Voice!

M heroically battled (and won) the domain war yesterday, which means that Write Words is finally where it’s supposed to be (i.e. .dk instead of .fi). Apparently you can’t own a .fi domain unless you have an address in Finland. No matter, .dk works just fine for me. Well, it does now, anyway. It took several hours to actually configure everything so it works right…

It’s been storming like mad for the past 24 hours, but at least it stopped raining now. The wind is still quite impressive. I’m not planning on setting foot outside the apartment today, so I don’t much care, but it had better calm down for tomorrow, as I’m finally starting the Danish language course again. It started already last week, but I was sick, so I missed the first class. It’s bad enough that I have to ride the bike uphill all the way to where it’s held, so I really don’t need the wind to complicate matters further. (Also, may I point out how odd it is to not have any snow in January? The temperature has been pretty steadily at around 5-8 degrees, which is just unnatural. Not that I’m complaining. I don’t miss the Finnish winter one bit, for now at least.)


Okay, what I really wanted to write about:

Lately my taste in music has veered towards the electronic quite a bit, especially when combined with female vocals. A while back I stumbled upon Lydia Ainsworth, whose Hologram made an especially strong impression on me, although I do like Right from Real as a whole. I also bought Imogen Heap‘s latest release Sparks and listened to it until I practically wore it out. Only a few of the tracks were new to me by the time I got the album, since she’s been releasing them online while working on the whole thing, but it was still a delight to add the CD to my collection. I’ve gone through several phases where different tracks have been my favourite for a period of time, but ultimately I think I love The Listening Chair the most, not only because it resonates on a personal level, but also because the idea of it is so delicious. I look forward to hearing it evolve in the coming years, as Imogen is planning to add a minute to it every seven years.

However, right now my number one “listen to death” project is Emilie Nicolas and her debut album Like I’m a Warrior. It started with Fail, but now there’s also Us, Charge and Put Me Down, and frankly, the entire album is just really, really good. (You can find it on Spotify.) She played a gig in Aarhus in October, but back then I knew nothing about her at all, and now I’m just so miffed I missed it! Here’s hoping she’ll be coming back this way sometime soon.

If anyone can come up with recommendations of other artists in a similar(ish) vein as these ladies, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

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