CHECK IT OUT!
Flips | Hollywood, CA | 09/26/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"After four years in London, singing in the triphop collective Anamorphic, Andrea Kellerman longed to go back home to Sweden. She walked past a fire hydrant and saw a word printed on it: Firefox. Andrea immediately stole the name and made it hers. She wrote songs of her own and was planning to start a solo project. She picked up an acoustic guitar, and started playing her songs. Sure, it sounded good: she had the voice, the melodies, the lyrics. But something was missing. It all sounded too - nice.
Andrea Kellerman has never been a fan of making it easy for herself. She wouldn,t settle for nice. She took out her electric guitar instead, and started working with Viktor Ginner, an old friend from school. Together, Andrea and Viktor placed Andrea's soft voice on a landscape of beats, and keyboards. And suddenly, everything fell into place.
Fast forward: two years later, and Firefox AK is just about to release her first full length album: Madame, Madame! It features ten tracks of melodic electronic pop, hard and soft at the same time, a whole new mixture of warm and cold that will leave you with a feeling of not knowing exactly what you just heard. I wanted the album to be danceable, and I wanted it to contain even more beats and synthesizers, says Kellerman. It,s her album from the beginning to the end: not only has she written all the songs, sings, plays guitars and bass; but she has also made the album art, together with her husband. And of course she produced the whole lot, together with Viktor Ginner.
"The Knife is producing Belle & Sebastian in their cutest mood. Then Beth Orton goes on a picknick with The Postal Service", wrote Sweden's biggest daily Dagens Nyheter when trying to describe Firefox AK's unique sound. "The best electro pop since Kraftwerk released Man Machine", wrote another paper.
Swedish radio stations took miss AK to their hearts, giving her lots of airplay, and newspaper Stockholm City named her the most probable Gonnabe of the year. Long lost penpal, her duet with label mate Hello Saferide, became an instant hit in Sweden (hitpick of the week at ZTV).
Over the past two years, Andrea performed 150 gigs: in Scandinavia, Germany, UK, France, Austria, opening for Stereo Total, Vive La Fete, Maria Taylor and Junior Boys. She travelled in crowded buses, and played punk clubs one day, fancy concert arenas the other. She played all the big festivals in Sweden during the summer of 2006 and moved to Berlin in the fall to be near the inspiring electro scene.
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