My passion in snowboarding and the collateral devourment of snowboard videos that came with it made me a fan of Joakim Åhlund’s music for pretty much all my life although I never really knew it.

One of the founding members of Teddybears STHLM, who started out as a hardcore punk band in 1993,  in the early 2000s they changed their sound and started adding more electronic elements to their music. This shift in sound resulted in the album Rock n’ Roll High School which got them international success thanks to electro-pop gem Yours To Keep and the simply awesome  Hip-Hopper. 

At around the same time, Åhlund formed another band: Caesar’s Palace. This new band played infectious, organ heavy, indie garage pop that had interesting lyrics such as: “I wanna smoke crack ’cause you’re never comin’ back / I wanna shoot speedball bang my head against the wall/ I wanna sniff glue cause I can’t get over you” and covers such as Teddy & His Patches‘ Suzy Creamcheese. In the mid 00’s The Caesars, as they were now known due to some legal issues, went on to release their most famous song to date, the super catchy Jerk It Out, getting them worldwide attention and even an I-Pod commercial.

Les Big Byrd is his new project, and just like his catalog, it’s an eclectic mix of styles which fit together like a blind man’s jig-saw puzzle. Here he turns up to 11 the reverberated sound of Caesars Palace and throws a bucket of black paint on it, creating a wall of beautifully textured and controlled distortion.

Listen to his debut single out on PNKSLM here, and go get his debut E.P., which also contains a cover of July’s Dandelion Seeds, HERE.