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MiiKE SNOW

To avoid any confusion right off the bat, I think it’s important to clarify that Miike Snow isn’t the name of a man.  It’s actually the name of a Swedish electro-pop trio.  I first became aware of the group, thanks to friend of the site, Sean “Har Mar Superstar” Tillmann, whose personal tweets and Facebook postings expressed an appreciation of their recent self-titled debut.  Much like Har Mar, the trio has managed to gain a solid level of popularity in the UK.  Although Miike Snow are arguably still more recognizable overseas, I believe that, if they aren’t on your radar yet, they will be soon enough.  In fact, Miike Snow isn’t unfamiliar with the concept of “Radar“, because 2/3 of the group actually helped to produce a hit song of the same name for Britney Spears.

I use to be a barista at a place where I was lucky enough to work with someone who had similar musical tastes as myself.  Sometimes, our co-workers didn’t feel as lucky about that situation as we did.  A lot of Silver Jews, Dungen, Pavement, Ween, Tortoise, Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, free jazz, etc, was played during our shifts, but one day Josh brought in the Britney Spears Blackout album and everyone was so pissed off that they lost their minds over it.  Both of us, on the other hand, got really into playing it more and more.  It’s extremely popular to trash pop-stars like Brit Brit, especially at that time, but there was something really intriguing about that album.  Once you get past the ideas of commercialism, shallow marketing tactics, and Total Request Live tweens buying scrunchies at a Claire’s in a Westfield shopping mall, it contained some brilliant layering and production work throughout.  Above all, “Radar” had a super catchy hook and was the one track that I couldn’t shake.  It turns out that, along with “Piece of Me” and two other tracks from Blackout, “Radar” was produced and co-written by the Swedish duo of Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg (aka: Bloodshy and Avant).  In 2007, Karlsson and Winnberg teamed up with American frontman/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist, Andrew Wyatt to form Miike Snow and did so without any real expectations.  Bloodshy and Avant had already achieved a high level of success from their production work with vagi-centric pop acts like Spears, Kylie Monogue, Madonna, J-Lo etc.  In fact, these guys even produced and co-wrote the song “Toxic” which was credited by multiple publications as being one of the greatest songs of the Two-Thousands.  So, although their names as artists may not be as recognizable as the acts whose careers they helped to boost, most people are still very familiar with their work.  With Miike Snow, the production duo is now stepping out into the forefront to endure any risks and rewards which may come along with it. Read the rest of this entry →