Ampel

Ampel is a Danish twee pop ensemble founded in Copenhagen in 1999 by high school friends Kasper Clemmensen (songwriting/vocals/guitar), Morten Hougaard (bass) and Mikkel Felland (percussion/keyboard/vocals/various) after a pubcrawl following a concert with Tocotronic initially calling themselves 'Traurig und langweilig' (German for 'Sad and boring'). After years as a trio, Ampel added Ditte Duus as a violinist/percussionist/vocalist to their lineup in 2003 and produced the EP Drink Your Milk with help from The Good Good's David Penn.

Ampel is a Danish twee pop ensemble founded in Copenhagen in 1999 by high school friends Kasper Clemmensen (songwriting/vocals/guitar), Morten Hougaard (bass) and Mikkel Felland (percussion/keyboard/vocals/various) after a pubcrawl following a concert with Tocotronic initially calling themselves 'Traurig und langweilig' (German for 'Sad and boring'). After years as a trio, Ampel added Ditte Duus as a violinist/percussionist/vocalist to their lineup in 2003 and produced the EP Drink Your Milk with help from The Good Good's David Penn. Adding a violin and using a snare drum and brushes for almost every new song, Ampel's music became the cheerful, bright twee pop wrapped up in wry guitar lines overlapping each other and with a lot of jumpy bass melodies that gave them their twee pop label. Kasper and Ditte shares singing duties, often with lyrics about the drollness of life without ever over analysing it. In 2005 the lineup was further perfected with the addition of Peter Laursen (guitar/accordion/recorder/ukulele/melodica), and the band self-released two more mini-EPs, 2005's Roger Human Toad (an anagram of their bass player's name) and 2006's Powdered Milk. Since then Ampel has been perfecting their sound adding a cocktail drum kit to their setup, and they are currently (winter 2010) recording new songs. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL..