120 Days

"120 Days can make any room feel like on it's on the brink of explosion. It is awe-inspiring." SPIN
"These guys go big on everything. They exude audacity. A first-order phenomenon, with its own heat and light." PITCHFORK
"A contemporary gloss on Kraftwerk, or a keyboard-heavy take on the dance-punk of DFA Records…An exercise in deep focus that achieves its aims through subtle manipulation." NEW YORK TIMES
"Their self-titled debut album on Vice Records is one of the most amazing of the year." URB
"It's a post-punk, post-rave, post-pre-Armageddon masterpiece of sleazy, chaos-worshipping rock." FILTER
"These songs are totally allergic to restraint; they're built for huge outdoor festivals, and they push outward and unfold upward, aiming for cheap seats." VILLAGE VOICE
120 Days had its first rehersal autumn 2001 in their small hometown, Kristiansund, on the north-westcoast of Norway. The band consisted of four 19 year old friends Jonas Dahl, Arne Kvalvik, Kjetil Ovesen and Ådne Meisfjord. They called themselves The Beautiful People.
In 2002 the band moved to Oslo, to be closer to the music-center of Norway and to focus 100% on their music. In Oslo the whole band moved together in a caravan-trailer. Here they lived for 4 months. In these intense months the only things they did were rehearse. But by living in the caravan trailer they had to instantly struggle with junkies breaking in, so in the end they had to give up and move out. But by the time the 120 Days sound was created.
Early in 2004 the band released their critically acclaimed first EP titled Sedated Times on the small Oslo label Public Demand Records (see AMG review under). Late 2004 they released their second EP, this time a selftitled 5 track EP. This EP caused quite a stir in Norway. And after the bands gig at By:Larm in Norway (the Norwegian equivalent to South By Southwest) the band sent shockwaves through a lot of industry people, and the gig resulted in the band being booked to both the Reading and Leeds Festival and the Sonar Festival, and this after two Norway only releases. Also the New York label Vice Records (Bloc Party, The Streets, Death From Above 1979) was deeply impressed by the gig and started chasing the band. Meanwhile the band continued to prepare for their debut album. By this time the band had found their home with the Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound (Jaga Jazzist, Lindstrøm, Kim Hiorthøy, Bjørn Torske).
Their selftitled debut album was produced by the band themselves and recorded in Oslos Crystal Canyon studios in January and February 2006. The album was mixed by Jørgen Sir Dupermann Træen and the band in Duper Studio, Bergen, in April 2006.
120 Days' debut album will be released in the autumn of 2006 on Vice Records in USA licensed from Smalltown Supersound. The European deal is not yet closed.
All Music Guide about 120 Days:
Very few bands release really remarkable debut singles, and very few Norwegian bands manage to excite parts of the international music intelligentsia. With Sedated Times, young Oslo-based quartet 120 Days, then known as the Beautiful People, managed both. Their sound is both original and modern enough to fit in with the so-called "new rock" of the early 2000s. Their use of a drum machine and Kraftwerk-esque analogue synthesizers rather than guitars sets them apart from most of the leading international neo-rock bands. But there's a certain desperate-yet-tuneful tone to singer Ådne Meisfjord's distorted voice that made several critics rightfully compare him with a young Iggy Pop and Julian Casablancas of the Strokes. But 120 Days have something more going for them. Not that they are timeless, of course. Nothing is. But their songs have these irresistible pop hooks and vocal melodies that could have made them hits in pretty much every one of the last four or five decades. High-tempo opener "Every Day" is so bold that it opens with a ultra-catchy chorus and just gets better, deservedly making it an indie hit in Norway. "Fucked Myself Up on a Friday Night" is a successful update of the Velvet Underground circa 1968, sounding dirty and messy as hell, backed by industrial-sounding noise. The real standout, though, is the third and last song, "Sedated Times." It's a classic tale of small-town misery with a poetically desperate wanting-to-get-out-before-it-kills-me theme of such great artists as Bruce Springsteen and fellow Scandinavian pop poet Håkan Hellström. The lyrics, whether knowingly or not, even evoke classic Greek tragedy in the couplet "I've seen to much/let me go blind," and manage to do so without ever going over the top. This is powerful stuff from a band that undoubtedly has a great recording future ahead of it.