The Null Device

A Times article from last year, talking to Swedish pop band I'm From Barcelona about their background:

Any pressure Lundgren feels at taking the helm of this oil-tanker of a group is, he admits, entirely his fault. After years of being what he describes as a melancholy guy writing melancholy songs a funny thing happened, and he fell in love with a girl called Frida (who now plays maracas in the band). Spurred out of his malaise, an idea quickly crystallised as he found himself writing songs not just for his own benefit, but also for his friends.

Many pursue other musical interests, such as Erik Ottosson, the dreadlocked tuba player who is "the youngest by about fifty years" in a local marching band. Rikard Ljung has his own group, but joined I'm From Barcelona as their flautist despite having next to no experience with the instrument. "I know all the notes I need to know, but there are kids from second grade who are better than me," he admits, before leaning forward to make sure Lundgren is out of earshot. "If we're playing live and it's too hard, sometimes I just pretend to play."

¶ culture i'm from barcelona indiepop music swedish 1

A lengthy compedium of essentialist explanations of various languages:

English is essentially bad Dutch with outrageously pronounced French and Latin vocabulary. --Eugene Holman

Australian English is essentially Cockney without the refinement. -- Öjevind Lâng

Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are actually the same language. It's just that the Norwegians can't spell it, and the Danes can't pronounce it. --Chlewey

Yiddish is essentially the Ebonics of German. --submanifold

Dutch is essentially English spoken whilst stoned, which pretty much explains all the double vowels --Keith Gaughan

French is essentially a language that elides everything that doesn't get out of the way fast enough, and nasalises everything else. --Peter Bleackley

Brazilian is essentially a conlang created by people who wanted to have sex all the time, but still be able to talk about everyday things. --alleszermalmer

Romanian is essentially a Romance language trying really hard to blend in with the Slavic languages around it. --Jesse S. Bangs

Romanian is essentially French pronounced as written. --Christian Thalmann

German and Polish are essentially the same, only there are too many "ß"s in Leftoderian writing, and too many "z"s in Rightoderian. --Andreas Johansson

Breton is essentially Welsh with all the consonants changed to "z". --Thomas Leigh

Welsh is essentially the only language that can have four consecutive L's. --Danny Weir

Star Trek is essentially a religion for secular humanists, and Klingon is its Latin. --Jeffrey Henning

(via bOING bOING) ¶ amusing brazilian breton danish dutch ebonics english french german klingon language linguistics norwegian polish romanian swedish welsh yiddish 3