Some of Sweden’s finest have been heading west to play some serious gigs… in kitchens. Yes, kitchens. Meet ‘In My Kitchen’, which was created with the idea of asking musicians to strip down their songs and then perform them in their kitchen, with the help of various utensils and anything else that comes to hand. The Casiokids recently performed and even cooked an omelet while at it! We were able to sit down with the Ryan and Tim from “In My Kitchen” to talk about inspiration, how this got started, and their future plans.
Who are you guys? How long have you lived in West Sweden?
Hi there, we are two English gents exiled in Gothenburg for various classified reasons, if we were to tell you we’d ave ta kill ya! However, we are allowed to divulge that Ryan is from Kettering, the underage pregnancy capital of Europe, and Tim is a current world record holder, and that’s the truth!
We’ve collectively lived in Sweden got five years and eleven months.
How did this whole concept come about? Whose apartment is it?
As we both had a background working with music, bands and club nights in England we wanted to do something to help promote the local music scene but were too lazy to leave the apartment during the Swedish winter. So we hit upon the idea of rather listening to CD’s over dinner, why not get bands to play live and, while they’re at it, cook for us. Really it’s the perfect crime! The kitchen belongs to two beloved friends, Johanna and Hjörtur whose apartment Ryan squatted in for three months in 2009. They run an online magazine (www.monthly.se) that Ryan also writes for.
Why the kitchen?
Ryan: Well to quote Tim: ’the kitchen is the heart of the home’, thus the best place for creativity.
Who was the first band? and how did you approach them?
The first band we got in touch with was Casiokids who are from Bergen in Norway. They were touring, we were big fans of their music, when we contacted them they were more than up for it and so the legend was born.
Which band has been the most innovative? how?
Well, there have been several innovative moments; Casiokids used a whisk on a cheese grater plus a large casserole dish for percussion, Love & Happiness used two glasses of water as a make do drum kit, but maybe we would have to say The Isolation would win the InMyKitchen Innovation Award with their home made amps and human mic stand (soon to be available to buy on our site).
Do you plan on parlaying this into anything more than just bands in your kitchen?
Well there was talk of trying to do our own version of Live Aid, but that’s still in the early planning stages, we’re just waiting for Bono to get back to us. We are hopefully going to be doing some stuff around a few festivals in Europe this summer, there has also been talk of making a car into a mobile oven, kind of like InMyKitchen on wheels, not unlike the Batmobile!? As well as a few more things that we are working on at the moment, I’m afraid we’re going to have to keep them under wraps for now though!
Which band has been your favorite? (we won’t tell, okay yes we will.)
We’re going to have to use the old cliché and say that they have all been really good, otherwise we wouldn’t have got in touch and asked them to play. Casiokids, our first step on the path to enlightenment, were really good and great guys, everyone should go and see them live! They popped our cherry so, as everyone knows, your first time is always the most memorable.
