THIS WEEK: MAN ON THE MOON
Man on the Moon is Arvid Lizell from Stockholm,Sweden and he makes lovely homemade indie folk music.
There is something blissfully beautiful about the music of Man on the Moon,its got that warm & toasty feel I speak of so often.
Its charming,gentle & endearing but not overly twee,more a natural sound that invokes a mindset of yet to be discovered landscapes and hidey-holes.
Arvid has a great voice that puts you in mind of others without exactly sounding the same as anyone-yep,thats the magic elixir right there.
Arvid makes wonderfully rich music for a 19 year old.
He has been playing the piano for 10 years,he also learnt to play the guitar from watching YouTube tutorials-don’t ya just love the internet!
I was entranced in discovering his music (on Soundcloud) with the similar feelings I felt when I first heard the music Erlend Øye and The Postal Service -Now that is some double whammy!
Yep,this guy has got so much potential.If he can continue to get these wonderful songs out of his head and into his computer you will be hearing much much more from Man on the Moon.
And get this lovely people-Arvid has made his Soundcloud tracks available for free download-what you waiting for?
Grab them,cherish them,tell your friends about them and spread the good word about a great artist.
Let’s hear from the man himself on the Prick and Ding interview No:28.
Enjoy.
1. What are you up to at the moment?
At the moment I’m on my last year of high school, struggling to find a balance between studying and writing music. Due to the fact that I’m getting more and more determined that music is what I want to be working with, I’m having more and more trouble focusing on school. Whenever I sit down to study I end up finding myself by the piano, and the paper on which I was supposed to write an essay filled with lyrics and chord progressions.
2. Favourite childhood memory?
My favorite childhood memory would be me and my brother trying to make our own version of the movie “Jackass”. We didn’t want to hurt ourselves too much, so we would – very carefully – throw ourselves into bushes, run into walls, bike into big piles of snow and then act like we were wounded for life. Watching those old tapes nowadays makes a part of me want to go back in time and say to myself “you are making a complete fool of yourself!”, but then I realize that if I really could turn back time I would just go back and do it all over again.
3. Hero?
My hero in life would be Chris Martin from Coldplay. Or maybe I should say all of the members of Coldplay. The band has been the soundtrack of my whole youth and a great inspiration to me. To be honest I don’t think I would even be writing songs if it wasn’t for them.
4. Villain?
Right now my I have to say the biggest villain in my life is school, because it forces me to put music aside and study.
5. What/who makes you laugh?
I’m a big fan of the completely insane TV-show “Family Guy”, and I often find myself laughing at the most childish jokes.
6. Describe what you do?
Sometimes when I lay in bed, when I walk to school or when I’m out biking or whatever, these little melodies come to my head. Whenever they appear I just grab a phone or whatever and just record them. My phone is filled with hundreds of these little recordings of me whistling or humming a melody. They are all like pieces of a big puzzle, and what I do is just to take the pieces that work together and turn them into a song by adding instruments and lyrics.
7. Who’s hair would you like to have for just one day?
The lead singer of the 80’s band “Flock of Seagulls”. When I wake up in the morning my hair looks pretty similar to it, but I still haven’t managed to make it last throughout a whole day.
8. Best musical experience to date
As I said, Coldplay has always been the band I look up to the most, in spite the fact that people like to call them mainstream. My greatest musical experience was the first time I saw them live. I got so caught up in the moment that shivers ran down my spine, and I was just ecstatic. If I close my eyes and listen to the live CD from that tour I can still make that feeling come back.
9. What artist inspires you?
An artist that gives me a lot of inspiration is Bon Iver. His way of expressing feelings through his songs by using different singing techniques, harmonies, dynamics and instruments just keeps amazing me.
10. What does Fresh On The Net mean to you?
The music industry is like a great big ocean. There are countless amazing artists in this ocean, but the only ones people hear of are those who are backed up by a record label. Many extremely talented people are still at the bottom of this ocean and the chances of finding their music are very slim. Fresh On the Net finds talented independent musicians and helps them on their way towards the surface by letting people find their music. That is a concept that I really appreciate, both as an artist and a listener.
