Lukas Graham, Freja Loeb, Rasmus Walter and 12 other newcomers at SPOT

The 18th chapter of the SPOT Festival is beginning to take shape, and now the first 15 acts are released for this year’s festival, which takes place on the 4th and 5th of May in the Concert Hall Aarhus, Godsbanen/the Freight Yard, VoxHall, and Atlas in the heart of Aarhus.

All fifteen acts will be making their debuts as part of the official SPOT line-up even though a couple of the acts have already attracted lots of attention.

Just take Danish/Irish Lukas Graham, who became 2011’s Best Track-of-the-Week on national Danish radio channel P3, and who is currently on a long Danish tour – with detours to the other Nordic countries – despite the fact that he has yet to release his debut album (click here to read a SPOT interview with Lukas Graham in Danish).

Lukas Graham - ready for SPOT debut.

From Graham’s international soul we move on to Freja Loeb’s stylish 80s-inspired pop. She too has been “Track of the Week” on P3, and she is support on Tim Christensen’s current tour. For Rasmus Walter this is also his first time around – as a solo artist that is! After the years in Grand Avenue with rock music and lyrics in English, he has turned to Danish and pop. It may be that Rasmus Walter felt this shift was moving into deep waters, but his single “Dybt vand” as well as the solo album became massive hits.

Plenty of genre diversity so far, and it continues: Spillemændene are one big patchwork of different sources of inspiration with their mix of art folk and a multitude of other art forms (read an interview with the band in Danish here). The duo Rosemary mix disco, electronica and Iranian pop from the 1970s. My Bubba & Mi are exponents of home-cooked American-inspired country, while Sky Architects excel in a kind of doom pop with the heaviest of guitar riffs.

Schultz and Forever actually started their freaky, strange, psychedelic, beautiful folk as a bed room project, but now they’ve kicked open the bedroom door for our viewing – and listening pleasure. Papir is short for psychedelic semi-improvised rock – plenty of jam. The duo Bottled In England champion a hand-played drum’n’bass with punk-like fierceness. Altmodisch is a chilling love letter to the German indietronica scene with cold synths and tender vocals while Rum 37’s pop rock in Danish deals with transitions between two stages in life.

Finally Keith Canisius & The Holy Dreamers really live up the name with their oneiric, yearning pop music. Of The Wand & The Moon explore somber, melancholic, neo folk while Taragana Pyjarama was formerly known as Eim Ick, but now goes on stage in a brand new, electronic fusion.