The last five years have been tough for those of us craving more Kaizers, and I am super excited about Artisten & Marlene. These are almost all top-grade Janove songs, and while I do understand the criticism that he should have distanced itself more from Kaizers, I think it just goes to show how much he actually was in charge of the Kaizers circus towards the end. It's just Janove going "who-oah" and thinking he could get away with putting a half-finished song here.īut the album is 15 songs long, and really hits its stride from song 3 to 14. It sets the stage for the story and the sound for the album, but it feels more like a placeholder, or an ouverture: all bombastic wrapping but no content. I also really dislike the opening track unfortunately. Some of the songs on Artisten & Marlene are a bit too simple for my taste, and the album doesn't deal well with restraint (the quiet closing track is really forgettable - for quiet it has to be as huge as "Mine siste berømte ord" ("My last famous words") ). As much as Janove likes a simple pop song, he is a true music nerd and a master of rhythm, melody, complex chord progressions and harmony. Repeated modulations, dizzying emotional heights and piling on the goosebumps is the recipe for success here.
![kaizers orchestra tour dates kaizers orchestra tour dates](https://www.saiichisugiyamaband.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Saliichi-Sugiyama-4088_lo-2560x1734.jpg)
My favorite songs are the most epic ones. They sound just as comfortable following Janove's whims whether it's towards hiphop, funk, polka, heavy rock, country or classical.
![kaizers orchestra tour dates kaizers orchestra tour dates](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/21/31/a9/2131a979c475ee8c582103cda4bd1877.jpg)
Micke from Sweden) is on piano, Matthias Hellberg on guitar, and the rhythm section is Gulleiv Wee (of The September When) on bass, Børge Fjordheim (of Cloroform, amongst others) on drums. The band is hard-hitting, musically excellent, and clearly having a lot of fun: Former Kaizers warm-up act Micke Lohse (aka. Images are repeated, phrases reused, sometimes lazily, but it kind of works. The lyrics don't really form a complete story arch, rather they become a thematic background that brings the music more weight and context, kind of in the way that the old Kaizers-universe did. This time around we're following ballet dancers, a French girl and a Russian boy, who met as children and feel a sort of magical collection through the rest of their lives and keep dancing for each other. III, just with a new band and a new cast of characters. On Artisten & Marlene, his first solo venture (aside from the pretty but relatively unremarkable singer-songwriter album Francis' Lonely Nights in 2006), Janove continues his maximalist approach. Also very much like Kaizers' Violeta Violeta covers, II) weirdly enough, Kaizers had started to sound "too small" for him. Janove was always the most ambitious one, restlessly aiming bigger and better, and towards the end (such as on VV vol. III, we hear only Janove's work. Written as a full-on rock opera, it leans more heavily on the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. Janove was always the dominant head of the six-headed Kaizers monster, but on the final instalment in the trilogy, Violeta Violeta vol. On the three last albums, the Violeta Violeta trilogy, the story arch is much more clearly spelled out, and I found the excitement of following the characters' fate to go well with the increasingly theatrical and bombastic music. The stories weren't always possible to follow, relying instead on the power of suggestion to draw fans deeply into their absurd world.
![kaizers orchestra tour dates kaizers orchestra tour dates](http://2lin3i1bbign2l2t392v1pxd.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/4ac472b9758d.jpg)
The three first were thematically connected, vague concept albums, creating a tantalizing cast of characters and rich, evocative imagery from a mafia-like resistance movement during the second war, and a creepy mental hospital after. Kaizers called it quits in 2012, after a streak of 8 amazing, eccentric and completely unique albums. Janove is the singer and frontman of my former favorite band, theatrical ompa-rock gods Kaizers Orchestra.