Johann

Johann grew up in the Danish town Skive as the Britpop dominated Great Britain. The beats made it all the way to Skive where new British bands quickly supplemented records with John Lennon, Neil Young, John Lee Hooker, Joy Division, The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays that Johann had nicked from his dads record collection.

In parallel with his studies in cell biology at University of Copenhagen Johann has played in different musical constellations with among others SMALL (Now Slowolf) and the duo Cat Caught Lark that among others supported Mads Langer.

Now Johann is ready with his debut album as a solo artist. The album consists of ten catchy straight forward melodies with compositions uncompromisingly cut to the bone with lyrics about city life and longing delivered with Johanns at once cheeky but also fine vocal winding around solid beats and guitar riffs.

But the leap to the solo album started with a girl

In the summer of 2010 Johann Kolstrup walks down Allen Street in New York with his musical partner Camilla Bang. Theyre in New York to play with their duo Cat Caught Lark. On the opposite side walk Johann catches a glimpse of a glaring beautiful girl. The interest is returned and they exchange glances. Johann drops her gaze and continues. But suddenly he is gripped by a fear of regret and fear of never seeing her again. He turns and runs after the girl and gets stammer an awkward hey. She looks unimpressed at Johann with a watchful big-city-gaze. Johann gives her one of the demo CDs that the duos brought on tour and explains that the contact info is in the cover. She thanks, turns around and walks away.

Theres no word from the girl until the day before he and Camilla are going back to Denmark. She wants to meet up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. After a long evening, she offers Johann to come home with her if he pays the taxi. The following day Johann must reluctantly set the sails for Denmark and the biology studies at University of Copenhagen. But he is determined to return to New York as fast as possible.

Over the next few months he is in close contact with the girl and arrange that he can write his thesis in cell biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx. Here he can experiment with embryonic mouse cells while being close to the girl he wants to marry. When Johann arrives at the JFK airport he rings the girl with beating heart and the feeling of an early redemption of need. But she does not reply and Johann hasnt heard from her ever since.

But Johann stays in New York, where he, dressed in lab coat and brogues, studies in the morning, writes songs in the afternoon, plays concerts in the evening and enjoys the city's intoxication at night. After about a year, he returns to Europe with an academic cand.scient degree and a bunch of new songs. He flies directly to Berlin, where he begins recording his debut album together with Ole Bjorn, Piotrek, brother Matt from the Danish band Dn and cousin, Adam Olsson from The Good The Bad.

Future work on the music continues in Copenhagen, where he has assembled a band consisting of Ole Bjrn Srensen and Piotrek Wasilewski (Dn), drummer Emil Timmermann and guitarist Jakob Miang.

Text by Jeppe Kolstrup