I’m going back to some classics. Classics in my book. Classics that I haven’t got around in the blog. Have to be fair to all that great music I remember from the early 2000s. That’s when I got involved for real with music. And I have a terrible sense of nostalgia of that period especially of the Swedish indiepop scene then.
My Enemy is a band that was formed in 2004 and had 3 releases in 2005. And then disappeared. Their tracks were great, and you wonder what they did after. Maybe I’ll find out.
The band was formed in the great town of Gothenburg, a town I want to go back of course. They line-up of the band featured Helena Jäderberg on vocals and guitar, Samira Englund on bass, keyboard and vocals and Leonel Jäderberg on keyboars, guitars and vocals. Were Leonel and Helena siblings?
The band first release came out on a label called Vapen & Godis. I have forgotten about it! This label released also Tokyo Eye and Otur. The label, whose name translates to “weapon and candies”, released the “Elil EP” as their first ever release, having catalog number V&G001. It had 5 songs, “Can’t Blame You”, “Gullvivas Koloni”, “Don’t Need!”, “Add Some Spiders” and “Grönland”. The artwork was done by Veronica Stenberg and the songs were mastered and mixed by Peter Åhrberg from the bands THe Solar Lodge and Whippet.
Shortly after the band releases the “Roo EP”. This one came out on the fantastic Yellow Mica Recordings of our friend Martin Cannert of The Faintest Ideas. The EP was a CDR and had four songs, “My Time Coming”, “Khreis”, “Catch One Word” and “Bothers Me”.
Then came “Khreis” a new CDR single on Vapen & Godis (V*G003). This one had “Khreis (Original Mix)”, “Khreis (Tommy Eld Remix)”, “My Time Coming (Johan Fotmeijer Remix)”, “My Time Coming (Claudia’s Shoe-gazer Remix)”, “My Time Coming (Mein Feind Remix)” and a cover of Kim Wilde’s “Cambodia”.
The band covered “What is Love”, Haddaway’s big hit of the 90s, for a 2006 ompilation called “This is Love” that was released by Dig Your Own Grave (DIG003) that incldued other familiar bands like Komon, The Mexicos or Bare Knees.
Last but not least the band did a video for the song “Khreis” which I uploaded to Youtube 19 years ago. It is still there gladly and sounding brilliant.
I look for other music projects from the band members on Dicogs. I see that Helena had contributed backing vocals to an album by Nicke Lurig. There is a Soundcloud account by someone with her name with some nice music. Could it be her?
Now Leonel looks to have a website. Here he shows his projects as he is a composer, producer and mixer. There is a bit of a history about him here. It mentions that he was originally from Hälsingland in the north of Sweden but moved to Gothenburg in 2000. He was in a band called Den and toured Germany with the band Incognito Pop. Here he confirms Helena was his sister and that he founded the label Vapen & Godis. Then he started recording under the name Tommy Eld. Wow! Great info!
Samira Englund looks like a painter these days. Her art looks amazing I must say. She was from Stockholm and ended in Gothenburg to study at the Gothenburg Art School.
It looks like My Enemy continued being cool after the band split. That’s really brilliant.
I do wonder one thing, I didn’t find much information about the band playing live, did they play much? And of course, as always I am curious if there are still unreleased songs by them out there…
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Listen
My Enemy – Khreis
3 Responses to “:: My Enemy”
Our friend Martin Cannert from Yellow Mica Recordings shared this with me on Facebook:
I have a few memories of the band.
I think the reason that we (yellow mica) released them was because they asked us as Leo moved more or less in the same circles as we did, and that he and his sister came to Daniel’s apartment and either played a few songs live or already had a recording they wanted us to release. Anyway, they were friends with Marja who had the band Cyndee Lee Hulko (and released a split 7” on Vapen & Godis) and somehow I got asked to play in the band Taggarna Ut that she had later on together with Fredrik (from Love is all) and Anthonia (from A smile & a ribbon etc) amongst others. And Marja became my “producer” for a few bands I was in, and then we started a new band together called Kristen Resning (with Johannes from Hello Goodbye) and all bands were somehow related to Leo. He had a rehearsal space/ studio (where ai still play to this day, and now again with Daniel from the faintest ideas). Leo played in Kors who did a 12” some years ago and then in Rodna and numerous other bands (with Marja) and he’s been involved in the recording process for multiple bands I’ve been in.
As far as I can remember they rarely played live, but we might have played with them once.
Hi Roque – it’s Howard from the halcyon indiepopsavedmylife days.
This track is phenomenal! Thx for sharing.
Has there even been a compilation of the late 90s / early 00s Swedish indiepop scene? If yes, where is it? If no, why not?
I mean The Shermans, Free Loan investments, Sambassadeur, The Calvalcade, Nixon, The Charade, Club 8, AHK, RSB, The Anderson Tapes. It’s all killer. And I;m sure I’m leaving out a few you know.
Hi Howard,
How are you? I released the compilation The Sound of Starke Adolf Vol. 1 (https://www.discogs.com/release/3546721-Various-The-Sound-Of-Starke-Adolf-Vol-1). The idea was to do many volumes. Sadly when trying to compile volume 2 I didn’t see much support from the bands and well, it dragged and dragged, asking to get bios, songs, photos, and so on. It never came even close to happening. Would have been great.
The only other similar release is Nice Try, Sunshine! (https://www.discogs.com/master/2166052-Various-Nice-Try-Sunshine) which was put together by Rasmus from Luxury Records.