Stol presented on the Neck Festival site

Finally, we were presented on the festival site (Danish). Graphics above by Flemming Rafn Thomsen. See you there!

Thursday night at Neck Festival: STOL inagural performance

It would very much please STOL to see you and your shitfaced friends Thursday night at 1 AM on the Neck Festival. The precise date is actually Friday morning 20 July, but we expect you to start binging Thursday afternoon (19 July) to keep the spirit(s) high.

This will be the first time we perform live with our new crew: 2 x Henrik on machines and Hans on guitar. Hope to see your bright faces welcoming us in the sweaty summer night.

Stol to play on Nakkefestival

You may not have heard about Nakkefestival ('Neck Festival') but in fact it's Denmark's largest underground festival. Stol was invited to play, and we're going.

We are right now working on our live setup, and have received reinforcements from 2 x Henrik from NeoTek.

The festival is 18-21 June July. We haven't settled the exact date for our gig yet but updates will follow.

Update
A dedicated fan has informed us that the Neck Festival is in July, not June. Apologies.

'Claymore 64' released

Finally, after working on microscopic details and a lot of ping-ponging back and forth, our newest track 'Claymore 64' is released. On June 15, 2006, 64 civilians were killed on a bus by a dual claymore mine in the northern Sri Lanka. Later that day, Martin from STOL got on a train to the city of Anuradhapura near the scene of the attack.

Below is Martin's account of the incident that inspired the lyrics - and the music:

“For several hours the train bumped and roared through the Sri Lankan tropical night with only few stops. Suddenly it slowed down to almost dead speed. This was not unusual on the old and worn rails, but when the lights and the ventilation shut off, the shabby cart quickly felt like a humid coffin. Why were we slowing down; there were no stations here? Outside in the pitch black night, distant bonfires appeared and formed a makeshift portico of light along the rails. Figures dressed in white appeared in the dark and for several miles we were escorted by a procession of what must have been hundreds of mourning Sinhalese.”

“The morning after, a national newspaper displayed a grim parade of mutilated corpses; men, women, and children alike, aligned on the hospital floor. Sixty-four dead and many more wounded. Right there in then same hospital we passed with our guidebooks and sunscreen a few hours later. To underpin the tragedy, it turned out that the attacked bus had been filled with people, many from the same family, going to a funeral. This was an obvious irony. More tepid was the fact that we were there as strange tourists, obviously frightened and perhaps even exited by the stench of unmediated human suffering.”

‘Claymore 64’ is both a musical testimonial and a call for action against landmines.

Read the press release or listen to Claymore 64 now.

Milk Milk Lemonade blog post

"Today's featured song [from STOL] takes me all the way back to the original early to mid 80s industrial music scene in Europe that would eventually cause a commotion here in the states a few years later. If you are (or were) a fan of either Nitzer Ebb or Einstürzende Neubauten, you will love this for sure."

Thanks for putting us in such fine company. Check out the full monty here.

Old news (from the old site)

12.9.2006
Slightly updated version of No Rest in Restaurants added. This track will probably change again later on - all tracks are works in progress, although some more than others. Right now we are working on a track called Claymore 64, which describes a 'near death' experience Martin had in Sri Lanka this summer. 64 civilians were killed in a bus by a double Claymore mine and many more wounded. More information will follow once we release the track.

10.8.2006
Site updated with several new tracks, lyrics etc.

27.7.2006
Forum site launched at MySpace. The feedback has been overwhelming. We are proud to say that we've made "friends" with Bauhaus, Nitzer Ebb, The Orb, Nince Inch Nails and other extremely talented bands. Check it out at www.myspace.com/stolmusic.

22.7.2008
We have now been working six months on our new album. The working title is 'Face Work'. If all goes well, we will have everything ready 2006/2007. Hopefully we will be able to start touring soon after this.

21.7.2006
Site launched.

2000
stol is formed in Copenhagen.