Kommode: Analog Dance Music (Featuring Derwent and Staedtler)

If you’re a fan of groovy music, this 2017 project from Eirik Glambek Bøe of Kings of Convenience and Skog fame will be right up your alley. I recently acquired the vinyl, itself a nice paper white like a good sketchpad, and saw to my delight that it’s covered in lovely stationery.

The Kommode boys are obviously fans of Staedtler and Derwent, and have worn their pencils down to the very last few centimetres. It seems they prefer softer pencils, like myself, with some well-used Staedtler Mars Lumograph HB, B, 4B, and 5B. The Derwents are older models, likely from an art set, featuring the straight red band rather than the current wavy one, and I can’t identify any graphite grades on any of these. There are also some unidentified yellow pencils, but lacking erasers, likely some European school pencils.

Rounding out the stationery are some European style paperclips, with the pointy and square ends, rather than the rounded trombones of North American style. Finally we see matches (a filthy smoking habit methinks) and various receipts and other purse ephemera. It appears there was a recent trip to Italy based on the legible items (as should be expected, as Bøe’s Kings of Convenience bandmate Erlend Øye these days calls Sicily home).

Excellent music, excellent artwork, perfect for listening to whilst writing a letter to a European pen pal.