It’s been almost two years since I wrote aboutThe Faux Noise, and apparently they haven’t released any new music since then. It’s good to know then that they are back now with a new single, “Leave Her to Heaven”, which they have released together with three remixes of the song.
It’s a suggestive, dreamy song with vibes from the eighties, where they, like before, tame a sound chaos into beautiful soundscapes. You can listen to their music on their Soundcloud page and the single is also available on Spotify. You can follow the band on their site and on Facebook.
Some music needs some time before you can enjoy it. And sometimes you need som kind of door opener before you can experience it “for real”. This happened to me with the Swedish-American band Susurrus Station’s latest album ”Antinomie”. The first time I listened I couldn’t really get it so I let it go for some time. A month later they sent me the video they made for the song “Alluvia”, which sort of unlocked the doors to “Antinomie” for me.
This is their fourth album, but I haven’t heard any of the former ones, so I can’t really compare. I can tell you, though, that this is an interesting, varied, unpredictable and dreamy genre mix of an album. Listen more on Spotify or on Wimp. You can find the band on their site.
This spring Tim Schmidt released his third album, “Dog”, and it feels like he’s carved out his own americana niche. It’s an inspired album where he with a few tools pushes the borders by not “only” showing us beautiful finger picking, but experiments more with the backing and colours of the songs also with more instruments, overdubs and variations. It’s still stripped and naked and with his special, somewhat nasal Nick Drake-like vocals, but feels more spontaneous.
Last year I wrote aboutFrida Selander’s excellent debut album “Try Again Baby”. Now she’s back with her great rock voice in the new single “Mountains Define You”. She’s recently toured the inland of the north of Sweden and as a bonus we get a video from this journey with the song “Geography”.
A little more than a month ago Emerald Park released the album “Absolute Zero”, the third one since they started in 2002. It’s been four years since the last time and one would expect some changes in the music. And there is, quite a few, which they signalled with their single “Reality Bites” last year.
It’s more naked, happier, more tounge-in-cheek, more romantic and nostalgic and the entire production feels more spontaneous. They show their love for good pop melodies, which isn’t anything new to them, but it feels, well, more relaxed. I notice the americana influences in some songs and more than once I’m reminded of Magnetic Fields and also Jens Lekman.
Overall I think it’s a great album, varied and fun to discover, and an album that grows each time I listen. You can listen for yourself on Spotify or on Wimp. Follow the band on Facebook.
Here are two songs from the album, a replay of “Reality Bites” from last year, and the new song “Someone to Love”.
No year is quite complete here on this blog without som soulful, energic rock from The Rumble. Therefore I’m happy to present a new single from the band, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Is the Medicine”, a great blues rock track you can listen to here below.
If you want more excellent rock from The Rumble, you can listen to more on Spotify or on Wimp. Follow the band on Facebook.
About a year and a half ago I wrote about Olof Svenblad’s music project Teleskop. Now he’s working under the name Fallen Timbers instead, and this year he’s presented a rich material in two albums on his Soundcloud page. I think it’s a collection of great electronica based songs which grows the more I listen.
The name Fallen Timbers comes from a poem by Sylvia Plath and Olof says that the image of a forest after a storm appealed to him, with the logs on the ground like spillikin and the clear-cut areas.
Here’s a song from Mikai Birch, or Joakim Björkholm, which is his real name. He’s been producing music since 2008 and is now focusing on nu disco and indie dance, and you can hear an example in the song below.
You can follow him on Soundcloud, where you can also find a new song he released a couple of days ago.
If there was a reward for the longest take-off run, I’m sure the band Tennis Bafra would be nominated. They started the band in the mid-nineties and during fifteen years they neither played live nor made any recordings. They were satisfied with playing together and having a good time in the rehearsal room. A couple of years ago the bass player Thomas Gjerdingen entered the band and took the role of the prince before the Sleeping Beauty-like band as he suggested that they should record something. Things took off and resulted in gigs, a label deal with Nomethod Records and now, in the beginning of the year, the debut album “Abulia Jubilee”.
They call it slacker noise and say that they got stuck in the nineties’ rock era with Sonic Youth and similar bands. I don’t argue with that, but they got stuck in their own special way and it works great for me as I listen now in 2012. They have a comfortable, relaxed, although rough, attitude on the album, more indie rock than noise I’d say, but I might add here that the last song is a 20 minutes long instrumental piece that feels like a journey with a creaking container ship in space.
They don’t have a clear explanation for the somewhat peculiar band name. They recall that they consciously wanted to do the opposite in some way. All the youth around them were all into either sports or music, so obviously they went for something that signalled sports in the name. Hockey didn’t sound to good but Tennis did. About Bafra they can only tell us that it was added shortly after Tennis, but noone remembers how and why.
After four years as the singer in the death metal act Science of Demise August Vinberg switched genre and joined the electro pop band Storbritannien instead, a band I’ve written about before. Writing songs for the band has also resulted in a pile of songs that haven’t been an exact match with Storbritannien and August decided to release some of them on an EP in the solo project Höstmarschen. You can listen to the first song “Gaia” here below.
About the name Höstmarschen (Autumn march) he says that it partly comes from that the project was started last Autumn and partly because the Autumn feels special for him, as it’s the season when he is most creative.
You can listen to the other songs on Spotify and follow Höstmarschen on Facebook.
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