Lister

By Jakob Bagterp
Translation by Sara Marie Atkinson

The most highly sensitive ears in Denmark belong to DJ and radio host Kjeld Tolstrup. He can smell a hit several chords away, and he has been quick to pick up on the sound of Kiss Kiss Kiss. Earlier this year, Tolstrup introduced the song “Hector” to the listeners of one of the most popular radio shows on P3, “De Sorte Spejdere”.

The young rock quartet went from unknown to well known in three minutes – after all, a tail wind is a lot easier to catch if someone else raises the main sail and you can glide on the radio waves into the auditory canals of the MySpace generation.

At that time, the band had just been in the studio and the finished EP was still drying. The fact that Peaches followed suit when she visited the Train venue in Århus in June, caused drummer William Frederik Asingh to trip over the following words, in an attack of youthful astonishment over being solicited by the opposite sex and to have found a place in the Canadian electro-queens CD-folder:

“So it happens you drop into Train last night, and ten chicks fly over to my friend and me and tell us that Peaches had played ‘Hector’ a short while before we make our entrance!”

In front of the entire Danish music business

This is not the only surprising entrance they have made this year. They had to pinch themselves when they found themselves under the spotlight in front of the collective Danish music press. The band had won the Danish version of the MySpace award voted by the users of MySpace. According to Mads, they had not yet expected to have reached such a wide audience. The prize was a performance at this year’s Danish Music Awards in Tivoli’s Glass Hall Theatre.

“It was crazy that we now had to perform in front of the entire Danish music business. Before that, we were only known by a bunch of hippie schoolgirls,” lead singer Mads Koch explains, and admits that his hands were shaking before he took the stage. “After all, it gets to you a little bit when you see Tina Dickow and Pernille Rosendahl in the audience. It was a big step for us, even though we only got to play one song”.

Two days before, they had played their first concert at the Oslo festival by:Larm. The suitcase had to be packed quickly.

“It was a radical change from what we were used to,” Mads Koch tells us, who along with the rest of the band is based in and around Århus. “Before, we used to catch the train when we were going to play in Copenhagen. This time it was quickly on by plane and get the gear out”.

A great beginning

Originally, Mads got together with the guitarist Mads Kristian Frøslev, bass player Kristoffer Hvidberg and drummer William at boarding school. According to Mads Koch it was common sources of inspiration that got them into the rehearsal room.

“I remember Gang of Four and Franz Ferdinand, but the first album from Arctic Monkeys also got quite a good hold of us,” Mads lists.

The list of British working class rock bands is not coincidental – the sparkling chords and dance friendly beats have been squeezed out of the same tube of wax that is used for messed-up hair. Just as worn jeans and Converse All-star sneakers are a common denominator for today’s generation of young rock bands, they have also headlined with Danish Dúné and The Floor Is Made of Lava, and The Strokes-guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.

They met for the first time no more than a year and a half ago. Today they are all ending their teenage years, and as first year high school students, they have just gone from their exam revision period to their summer holidays.

“We are not in a hurry”, Mads states, although the ticks in the calendar for 2008 tell us a different story. And when you see what Kiss Kiss Kiss have accomplished in six months, you have to agree with the young lead singer on one thing:

“It has been a great beginning”.