Miike Snow are a collaboration between Swedes Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg (famed producing/writing duo Bloodshy and Avant who have worked with the likes of Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Kelis and won a Grammy for Best dance recording for the track “Toxic” by Britney Spears) and American musician/songwriter/producer Andrew Wyatt. So when such great names get together and decide to create a band, you know that they’re gonna have great tunes – but live, could they hack it?

In Miike Snow’s case, yes they can. They take their (rather good) album that Mary reviewed here and transformed it into a collection of party songs that doesn’t fail to get everyone moving. Coming on stage wearing mime-style plastic masks, they worked their way through the majority of their debut album, merging the tracks into a sort of Simian Mobile Disco-lite, played live with guitars and keys instead of just samples and Macs.

Dropping the fantastic “A Horse is Not A Home” and “Sylvia” in rapid succession really got the Sunday evening crowd going, immediately blowing away any reminents of cobwebs that may have remained after any Saturday night debauchery. The three band members were backed up by three further musicians to keep things sounding even better than the album.

Only one song seemed to fall a bit flat, the rather slow Sans Soleil which had people checking their phones, heading for the loo or the bar as the band took a breather.

By far the biggest cheer of the night was reserved for Animal, with the poor Thekla under threat of sinking as everyone jumped, danced and yelled their way through. Reassuringly, the band were grinning like Cheshire cats throughout, looking like they were enjoying themselves just the same as when Mary caught them last September.

Closing the set with “In Search of…”, it turned into a 10 minute rave-off, strobes and multicoloured lights galore. The shouts for an encore ignored, Miike Snow had clearly perfected the art of “leaving the crowd wanting more ” or “going out on a high” – perfect.

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MP3: Miike Snow – Animal

Miike Snow – Silvia

Miike Snow have taken a leaf out of Delphic’s post-apocolyptic school of video making (see their videos for Counterpoint and This Momentary respectively), and this video of their new single, Silvia, is both grim and fascinating, complimenting the song perfectly.

Miike Snow’s Silvia is out on Monday 25th January.

Miike Snow have announced a string of 2010 UK tour dates, taking in all the usual haunts…

Friday 29th January 2010 – Oxford O2 Academy 2
Saturday 30th January 2010 – Brighton Digital
Sunday 31st January 2010 – Bristol Thekla
Tuesday 2nd February 2010 – London Scala (Shockwaves NME Awards show)
Wednesday 3rd February 2010 – Manchester Academy 3
Thursday 4th February 2010 – Glasgow Stereo
Friday 5th February 2010 – Newcastle Other Rooms
Saturday 6th February 2010 – Sheffield Plug
Monday 8th February 2010 – Leeds University
Tuesday 9th February 2010 – Liverpool Masque
Wednesday 10th February 2010 – Nottingham Rescue Rooms

Every year NME takes over London’s best gig venues to put on some of the best names in the world, live. The month of gigs, which takes place every February in the run up to the awards ceremony itself – to be held this year on February 24 at the O2 Academy Brixton. These are just the first names announced – normally the gigs fill the 28 days of February, often with multiple clashes around different venues.

Tickets for these shows go on sale at 9am tomorrow morning (27th February). We’ll add to this list as we hear of more gigs.

Tuesday 2nd February 2010 – Miike Snow at London Scala
Wednesday 3rd February 2010 – Hadouken! at London Scala
Saturday 20th February 2010 – Simian Mobile Disco at London matter (pictured top)
Monday 22nd February 2010 – New Young Pony Club at London Islington Academy
Tuesday 23rd February 2010 – Yeasayer at London Heaven
Tuesday 23rd February 2010 – Girls at London Scala

Miike Snow is a collaboration between Swedes Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg (famed producing/writing duo Bloodshy and Avant) and American musician/songwriter/producer Andrew Wyatt. I’ve heard conflicting stories on the origin of the band’s name, so I’m not touching that with a ten-foot pole. Instead, what I am going to talk about: their electro / layered eponymously named debut coming out in physical form later this month.

Thanks to Radio1 playlist addition this year, you are likely familiar with ‘Animal’ and ‘Black and Blue’, the first two singles from the album. ‘Animal’ starts the album off right with enjoyably bouncy synths, then Wyatt’s voice comes in, just as percussive rhythms join in. This is pop, but done in a less conventional way. This is not a song custom made for a club, at least not in its current form. It’s the kind of tune that makes you want to dance out of your office chair, but not necessarily on a dance floor in Ibiza. The chorus is infectious: “I change shapes just to hide in this place / but I’m still, I’m still an animal / nobody knows it but me when I slip / yeah I slip, I’m still an animal…”

‘Black and Blue’ and ‘Plastic Jungle’ are r&b flavoured pieces of pop, almost necessitating a Jacko-style moonwalk whilst listening. The percussion is the star, but they don’t completely obscure Wyatt’s soulful delivery and on ‘Black and Blue’, the backing vocals are pleasantly Motown-esque. That said, many of these songs are amalgamations of all the right parts of successful pop recipes, but mixed up in interesting combinations or with unusual treatments (like in the xylophone-tinged ‘Burial’ or the mildly laughable robotic squeaks and drum machines in ‘Sans Soleil’).

Overall, while Wyatt’s lyrics are broad and engaging enough to be enjoyable, it’s the lush instrumentation throughout that is this band’s strength. Surprisingly, these tracks stand up well live, not exactly what you’d expect from a band two-thirds made up of a studio trickery-dependent production team. One wonders how Miike Snow would react when the tracks will – and they will, inevitably – be remixed!

The debut album by Miike Snow will be released physically in the UK on 26 October.

Miike Snow have announced a UK tour, which co-incides with the release of their new single, ‘Black & Blue’, which is out on October 19th, and their self-titled debut on October 26th.

Tickets are on sale now for all dates. Catch the group at:

Wednesday 21st October 2009 – Leeds University Union
Friday 23rd October 2009 – Manchester Warehouse Project
Saturday 24th October 2009 – Coventry The Copper Rooms
Monday 26th October 2009 – London Brixton Academy
Tuesday 27th October 2009 – Lancaster Skelmersdale Library
Thursday 29th October 2009 – Edinburgh Cabaret Voltaire
Friday 30th October 2009 – Sheffield O2 Academy
Saturday 31st October 2009 – London Matter

Watch the video for Black and Blue below, and pre-order their debut from Amazon.

http://www.vimeo.com/6653561

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the two headlining acts that stopped in Washington Friday night – singer/songwriter Jack Penate and the mysterious atmospheric dance/pop band Miike Snow. They aren’t acts that are played on mainstream radio here in America, so I wasn’t sure what kind of turnout there’d be for the evening. I needn’t have worried. Thanks to the internet and a hot tip from the Washington Post weekend guide, the tightly packed crowd enjoyed all-too-short sets from both acts at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel.

Based on seeing video for Jack Penate’s ‘Be the One’ on tv here recently, I was under the false impression that when he performed live, he only sang. This impression quickly changed when I saw photos from Reading and Leeds of him toting a guitar. Upon seeing him live, I found out he also played piano. What doesn’t he do? The set he played in Washington was, as expected, heavy with cuts from his latest album ‘Everything is New’, which was fine by me because this was the material that got me interested in him as an artist in the first place.

When he wasn’t shredding it on the guitar or seated at the piano, he was frenetically dancing to the beats of his backing band, to the delight of everyone in the club. ‘Second, Minute, or Hour’, the long song he played not on the new album, was fantastic with crashing guitars pretty much unlike like the new material. I am unashamed to say that “Pull My Heart Away” was the song I was waiting for since hearing about his North American tour and live, it was amazingly gorgeous with a female backing singer who lent an additional layer of complexity to the live versions of these songs compared to the album tracks.

There are a couple tracks from the new album that I wasn’t sure was going to translate well live – well, he totally surprised me. ‘Let’s All Die’ is an example: he prefaced playing the song by talking about the certainty of death of everyone in the room (surely such morbid talk would kill the mood, wouldn’t it?), turned into a near free-for-all when he eagerly put his mike in front of amused kids in the audience who sang the repeated “let’s all die!” chorus right with him. Phenomenal.

After a somewhat lengthy shifting and arrangement of gear and equipment, it was time for Miike Snow. The live band comprises of three actual Miike Snow members – Swedish producing duo Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg (better known in the remix world as Bloodshy & Avant) and American singer/songwriter Andrew Wyatt – plus three touring band members, so you know with all of these people on stage, there was bound to be a load of gear onstage. They took the stage with white theatrical masks, which was a little unsettling to say the least. There was a problem with Wyatt’s mike at the outset but this appeared to quickly be rectified as they opened with the crowd pleaser ‘Burial’.

During this song and all throughout their set, I was impressed with the coordination of so many different instruments; synths of every description, guitars, bass, piano, electronic drumming gizmo things, a xylophone – you name it, they had it. Fans happily sang along with Wyatt to many of the songs, which surprised me because I didn’t think that many people in America would have known who they were, let alone in Washington. I relished grooving to the electronic beats arranged by Karlsson and Winnberg, imagining just how great many of these songs would sound further remixed for the dance floor. My only complaint was that there was no encore: the crowd, manically shouting for the band to return, were certainly up for it. Maybe that’s what they intended – leaving them wanting more.

After the jump: Setlists and photos…

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Nope, that’s not a typo. It really is Miike with two “i”’s. And nope, it’s not one person. It’s a Swedish Trio, consisting of singer/songwriter Andrew Wyatt, and the producing team of Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, also known as Bloodshy & Avant.

Now we’ve got that out the way, this is an amazing track – the Guardian described it as “A-ha meets Animal Collective”, and that’s pretty much spot on. Think Passion Pit but a bit more refined, synthy pop perfection. Download and enjoy, and let us know what you think.

MP3: Miike Snow – Animal