Teddybears-Soft machine

Sweden

WEB

MySpace

Biografia recogida en su WEB:

A history of Teddybears,
as told by Jocke:
The history of Teddybears began when Patrik and I met at an art school in Stockholm where we decided to form a grindcore band named Skull. When Skull needed a guitar player we invited my brother Klas and changed the band’s name to Teddybears.

At the time Klas was heavily into Experimental Neo-Jazz, though, so he was forbidden by the other members to touch the strings of his guitar while playing. This led to a lot of frustration and gear smashing, which was in fact one of the key elements to the band’s musical style in the early period.

The reason we decided to call ourselves Teddybears is actually because Phil Spector had a band in the 50's called The Teddybears. They had that big hit "To Know Him Is To Love Him." He has always been a great inspiration to us as a songwriter, producer and arranger. It's an homage kind of thing. We love guns same as him too, although we're more into toy laser guns and the sounds they make.

When we started out we had pretty much the same musical influences as today; we were always listening to a lot of very different stuff - Dead Kennedys, Romanian gypsy brass bands, NWA, Bruce Haack, Bad Brains. This cocktail went through the Teddybears-blender and came out sounding like some twisted kind of hardcore-punk with a DJ making extra noise on a pair of turntables.

After a while our drummer left the band to pursue a career as a sculptor, and so we learned that cheap drum machines, electric guitars and vocoders could be a deadly combination. Nowadays, there's not a lot of punk in our music anymore I guess. We get some outlet for that kind of frustration in other areas of our lives, like painting, skateboarding and Nietzsche-reading.

Besides making music and having Teddybears together, all three band members also direct videos, short films and commercials. We got into the film business by making our own videos and eventually started getting other assignments as well.

We are also involved in other bands: Jocke is a member of the Caesars, Klas has an old school punk band called Suspiria, and Jocke and Patrik have a horror-jazz outfit called The Diamonds. We have our own little studio in Stockholm where we record most of our music, and we sometimes also have time to produce other bands.

We don’t consider Teddybears a rock band or an electronic outfit. In general we don't care much for dividing music into different genres, and we really don't feel that we belong to any particular scene. There's fantastic as well as crappy music being made in every genre today. But we like to mix it up and we don't want to feel that we have to limit ourselves to any specific style.

If we come up with a good tune or riff, we don't ask ourselves whether it's a dancehall beat or a rock song… that's something we might maybe figure out in hindsight, if then even. Obviously we get a lot of inspiration from bands like Kraftwerk, Suicide, Neu, Can, Silver Apples etc. But we hold Slayer, Yellowman and Public Enemy in equally high regard.

When people have asked us what made us collaborate with Jamaican MCs like Elephant Man or Mad Cobra, we always say it’s the same thing that attracts us to their style as to ESG, Spacemen 3 or Boogie Down Productions- it's great music! We don't discriminate; we regenerate.

Discografia:

-SOFT MACHINE (2006)

Escúchalo ahora entero en su MySpace/Listen to it completely in their MySpace

1. Intro
2. Different Sound (Feat. Malte)
3. Cobrastyle (Feat. Mad Cobra)
4. Yours To Keep (Feat. Neneh Cherry)
5. Are You Feelin' It (Feat. Elephant Man)
6. Black Belt
7. Punkrocker (Feat. Iggy Pop) (MP3 thx to IGuessImFloating)
8. Ahead Of My Time (Feat. Daddy Boastin')
9. Automatic Lover
10. Magic Kraut
11. Little Stereo (Feat. Daddy Boastin')
12. Riot Going On (Feat. Ebbot Lundberg)
13. Alma


Amazon.com
With Sweden's Teddybears, big-beat electro pop is alive and well. Of course, the insanely poppy vibe of "Cobrastyle," with dancehall kingpin Mad Cobra setting up the "my style is the bomb" chorus, is the band's most recognizable episode--boasting and hip-swiveling and carefree. And even though the tune appeared in 2004 on the After the Sunset soundtrack, it's vital mood lighting here--setting up the infectious, airy pop of "Yours to Keep," with Neneh Cherry on vocals, and Iggy Pop's chugging paean to fashion and poise, "Punkrocker." Oh, it rocks. Only in Sweden could you find an electro-pop band--helmed by a guitarist from garage rock champions the Caesars--inviting Mad Cobra, Cherry, Iggy, and Ebbot Lundberg (from Soundtrack of Our Lives) to consort across 13 tracks. Ear candy in spots, the album is perfect for heavy rotation, melodic and then more melodic. By the way, Iggy and Ebbot sound awesome--elevating the tunes with their distinctive rock yowls and drawing attention to a band that's been toiling away on the fringes for more than a decade. It bumps, it jiggles, and it swirls psych-like. --Andrew Bartlett

Product Description
Teddybears whip together a giddy, mixed-up sonic mash of international styles, resulting in their own indescribably delectable sound. Collaborators on this release include Iggy Pop, Neneh Cherry, Elephant Man, Annie, and the Soundtrack Of Our Lives' Ebbot Lundberg. The result is an awe-inspiring collection of genre-hopping modern pop that's inventive, irresistible, and impossible to pin down. The Stockholm-based trio's effervescent pop has already been featured in a variety of films and commercials. Most recently, the fab funk of "Cobrastyle" was heard on HBO's "Entourage" as well as in the Tab Energy Drink ad campaign, and will be featured in trailers for the upcoming film, "Employee Of The Month", starring Dane Cook and Jessica Simpson.


Videos:

Cobrastyle

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Punkrocker ft. Iggy Pop

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