Even if Jesper Norda has named his latest album “April Archives Collection No 1″ I feel that it was perfect for me to get into his music now, in the beginning of the autumn. Beutiful, safe, a little lonely, disquieting, calm but yet dramatic.
The first track “Tomorrow You’ll Be Forgiven…” is magic to me. A Satie-sounding minimalistic piano figure, a simple, but beautiful song melody, Jesper’s dark, low-voiced vocals and “…but tomorrow you will have your teeth knocked out” which feels just like a hit right in the solarpexus, in the middle of the warm safe ambience.
“April Archives Collection No 1″ is a compilation of three of Jesper Norda’s earlier EP:s, 12 songs with only Jesper and his piano and sometimes a simple drum machine. No excesses, as simple as possible, but it never gets uninteresting. The melodies are not revolutionizing but set inside my head, both from the vocals and the piano figures. I hear David Sylvain, Leonard Cohen, Roger Waters in different contexts, but in the end his own unique character.
A year and a half ago I wrote a post on Brian Kramer and his live album from Club Stampen. This time, though, he’s all alone. It’s just about Brian, his acoustic guitar(s) and you. As close and intimate as it gets.
He sneaks away into the Mississippi delta, he takes a tour to Amsterdam, he let the blues take a stroll along childhood lanes and relationships and even have a look at an old pocket watch. It’s naked and straight on and no excessive outbreaks. And just like with the other album, I feel a nice mellow warmth, and especially in the more melodic storytelling songs, I get a feeling of John Hiatt, who also have a special way of spreading warmth around him.
Today I’ll present a new colleague here on Meadowmusic, Thomas Nävsjö. First up for him is Steget:
My first post here concerns Steget, the duo from Gothenburg, who on their latest album “Förändrar Allting” create beautiful, stylistically pure piano pop filled with emotions. The voice of Mathilda Sjöström is wonderfully accompanied by the piano of Nils Dahl and with the ballad “Jag Skulle Dö För Dig” they have come up with a duet that touches me in a way no other has since Ratata/Frida or Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush back in the eighties.
You’ll find Steget on Myspace and the entire album is available on Spotify. Here’s “Baby Baby Baby” from the album:
Pull A Star Trip. Singer/songwriter with a couple of adreneline injections, or hardcore with acoustic guitars? They have been compared with Dashboard Confessional, which I can agree with to some extent, but here’s an extra intensity and energy which seems endless. And even if it’s not at all the same genre, I can’t help thinking about The Proclaimers and foremost their “I’m gonna be (500 Miles)”, in the energy and the interaction. Maybe somewhere around all this you can find Pull A Star Trip’s music.
In 2009 Pull A Star Trip released their first album “E-Vasion Inn”. Here are two tracks from the album:
The music coordinator for the British drama series Sparks on Channel 4, Alex Hancock, has taken a different approach for the selection of music for the series. He has asked the songwriters among the viewers to send in their own contributions, well, anyone can participate. And from this material he then chooses songs for some special scenes.
When this started a little more than a year ago, before the third season, they received thousands of songs, and for the first occasion a song from the Swedish singer/songwriter Desireé Duvringe was chosen. The song’s name is “Automation” and you can listen to it here, and here you can see how the scene ended up.
The song became very popular among the viewers, a singel was released in the autumn and Desireé is now working on following up on all the interest around “Automation”. You can find her on her Myspace page.
Here are two new songs you can listen to:
The last time I wrote about the musical adventurer Peter Lindström, he had just been out on a 3 month long tour in the USA. And this time he has recently returned from an even longer journey with concerts in Japan, Nya Zeeland and Australia.
He also has a new album to show us, “Petrel Petering”, which I thought I could present here in this post. It’s an 11 track long album, where he continues to explore the classic american singer/songwriter music. Add to this some blues and country songs like “Jesus’ Blood Ain’t Failed Me Yet”, a great track which almost gives me an impression like it’s Bowie singing Jaques Brel with country sound.
Peter has that kind of voice that makes it’s way inside of me. There is a warmth, a nerve and a precense that feels very real. With his story in the back of my mind, it gets even more interesting. Listen for yourself in a couple of tracks from “Petrel Petering”:
In the Autumn Magnus Weideskog released his debut EP and any day now his first full length album, “Unga hjärtan” (Sony Music), will be available. Magnus has been compared with Ted Gärdestad, which I agree with to some extent, especially cosidering his voice.
One description could be soft pop in Swedish. Delicate lyrics that never get trivial and a production that’s exemplary minimalistic which gives the music an honest and close expression. It’ll be interesting to listen to the new album soon.
You can find Magnus on his site, on Myspace and on Facebook. On Spotify you can listen to the EP and the new singel “Förlåt” from “Unga hjärtan”. Here’s the video and the audio track to “20 år”:
“My ambition is to always leave someone with a feeling, to be a feeling and to move somone. You should for a moment be able to walk away from normal life and just be inside the music”. The words are Lennart Lindgren’s, and I think that he does a good job at it. For me it means a trip back to my childhood’s troubadours with beautiful melodies and beautiful poetic lyrics.
It feels dreamy and very soft, and it’s a little like putting on a warm jacket, to go out for a long walk in the snowy landscape and dream away for a while.
You can find more of Lennart’s music on his Myspace page.
I have just woken up from the Christmas coma, and I felt it was time to present some new music again, here on Meadowmusic. And first up is Jörgen Kjellgren, more known as guitar player and songwriter in the band Oh Laura. I have spent some time listening to Jörgen’s upcoming debut album “Noir Syndrom”, a warm experience in this biting winter cold.
It’s darkly poetic and I like Jörgen’s almost low-voiced way of singing, exploring lyrcs that I can feel. At the same time there’s a warm, mostly acoustic music shroud where Jörgen like a modern troubadour tells us about “guilt, deception, loneliness and lost faith”.
The album will be released in February, and here below you can listen to the first singel from the record, “Han har gjort det igen” as well as the song “Edie Brickell”. You can also watch the video to the song “Han har gjort det igen”, directed by Simon Yemane.
“Lika lätt som att vissla en melodi (lika lätt blåser livet förbi)”, Bangalore (Gbg) calls his EP, which was released this autumn. Behind the name Bangalore (Gbg) you’ll find Tomas Persson Carlberg; a pop troubadour you could call him.
Naked and revealing lyrics, like confessions before a new start, are accompanied by beautiful melodies and arrangements according to the principle “less is more”. It’s peaceful and emotional and plenty of room for Tomas’ sensitive voice and the naked lyrics.
You can listen to the EP on Bangalore (Gbg)’s Myspace page, Facebook page or on Reverbnation, where you also can download the tracks. He has promised to present new songs this winter, so you can watch out for them on his pages.
Taxi Taxi! is the name of a duo I first heard about this summer. Obviously there was a hype around these twin sisters a couple of years ago, but I have to confess my ignorance about that.
I any case I think that they create soulful music that deserves to be listened to. They have now released their first full-length album “Still Standing at Your Back Door”, and it sounds great. It’s often naked and acoustic with a roomy, somewhat lofi atmosphere.
It’s playful and personal, with a nice sense of melodies, and at the same time fragile, tender and honest.
Here you can listen to “More Childish Than In a Long Time”:
Anna Hamilton offers quite a spectra of music. From a dance-influenced, shrewd electronic pop to dramatic songs alone with a piano. She is quite resourceful with the arrangements and has a sense of melody that makes each song grow into something unique.
But first of all I’m fascinated by her voice, a voice that sometimes sounds with sharpness and clarity and sometimes with a Björkian-Morisetteian frailty that catches the atmosphere in the songs. In one track I can hear her let go of all this and release something that makes me sense a great rock voice.
On Anna’s site, you can listen to her music. For those of you who know Swedish she also presents a really nice blog. A blog where you can follow the development of her music and also get to know her, all in a pleasant mix.
Here are two tracks you can listen to and download, with Anna Hamilton:
Behind the band name Death Ends Here we find Simon Lussi, a singer/songwriter that walks his own path. He tells us that he started out with acoustic singer/songwriter music, was inspired by metal core and hip hop and tried to combine all this in his own way.
And this resulted in his own mix of acoustic softness, aggressive songlines and a darker metal atmosphere. Armed with only an acoustic guitar and smooth vocals he does a really good job here.
Last spring he finished the EP “Abandon All”, which is available, both for listening and downloading, on Death Ends Here’s Myspace page. Here are a couple of tracks from the EP:
I’m listening to Sumie and it’s almost impossible to stop. Her low voice somehow gets inside of me and gets all my attention. So soft, so pleasant and with simple melodies that just feel right. It would have been easy to compare Sumie with contemporary singer/songwriters like for example Sophie Zelmani, but my thoughts and feelings go to artists from the past, and often to a young Joni Mitchell.
I think this is really nice to listen to. Try for yourself by listening to the two tracks below, and download if you like. On Sumie’s Myspace page you’ll find more music. And don’t miss watching the beautiful video to “All the Ugly”, created by Yusuke Nagano.
A couple of months ago, I wrote about Hillnor and his interesting experimental electronica. Now he is back in a very different shape. He calls himself Peace and Concord and he brought just his guitar (and some strings).
In a way this feels timeless, with vibes from the singer/songwriters of the sixties and the seventies, and at the same time a lot of indie. I really like the feeling of these recordings, and I’m surprised how they stick and grow the more I listen.
There is something captivating, authentic about Le Days, aka Daniel Hedin, which I can’t explain. The first track I heard with Le Days was “Hotspot”, which gave me a sensation of Conor Oberst meets Manu Chao, fascinating and rhythmic. But after having listened to more songs, it seemed like that he wouldn’t be so easy to catch.
It runs off in totally different directions, from acoustic ballads to more anxiety-loaded works, psychadelia and other stuff. I like it, to enter Daniel’s world of music, some lo-fi, no rules, to see, as he says himself, where it will lead. It’s he and his guitar (and some other instruments), naked and nothing to hide behind. It seems to me that he doesn’t wait for the “perfect” take, but he knows when he has put in the right feeling and shows it for us.
Swedish Shoes is a new duo consting of Ola Angleby and Joakim Näslund. They started directly with the creation of their first EP, where you can listen to a couple of tracks here below.
Naked and with a lo-fi feeling it’s about a guitar, two voices, some handclapping. Beautiful melancholy like in an early sixties duo mixed with the playfulness of Beautiful South. When it’s naked like this, in the end it all comes down to the songs themselves, what they can give and convey. And I think that the duo has done a really good job here.
Light, light, like bare feet on a flowering meadow in spring, I hear Ida Olsson’s bright voice with the piano or guitar play of Simon Ljungman. I don’t even think I have to listen to the beautiful words to feel a warm breath of spring break through the cold winter that predominate now, at least here in Sweden.
It’s swedish ballads mixed with some feeling of french chansons, especially in the piano based songs. It’s acoustic and naked on their new album “Ida & Simon”.
Ida has released two albums before, both of them in collaboration with Simon, and the latest album was born, in a sense, on Ida’s birthday. She received a gift card from Simon, which said “recording mix and master of your next album”!
Here you can listen to a couple of tracks from “Ida & Simon”, and I just had to add a track from her last album “Andas solsken” (”Breathe Sunshine”) also, “Spara vackra dagar” (”Save beautiful days”). Visit Ida’s site (in Swedish) to read, listen and download more songs. You can also find Ida on Myspace.
When I saw Sugarcoin live this autumn I got really surprised. The thing is that my already high expectations was surpassed. Simply put it was fantastic. I had listened to a lot of songs from him before, and I had liked them all. But live it was even better!
The main character behind these beautiful compositions is Andreas Nerström. I think that his own description of his sound is rather spot-on:
“The music is written primarily on the guitar. Often it builds upon a single idea which forms some kind of core in a song, an inner soul. It can be some small detail or a strand. Sometimes no more than a rhythm or a string of tones. In extreme cases nothing more than the grating of a dirty steel string. My motivation is to conserve and package that small idea, that original feeling of simplicity and clarity, wherever it comes from. Like if it, in spite of it’s banality, carries the answer to some big mystery”
To me, Sugarcoin delivers a really beautiful and fragile music loaded with emotions. And with the voice of Andreas on top of this…well, can it be any better? Right now, the second album is out, “A Great Wall of Antagonism”. I don’t know what to say. I have bought about 20 CD:s in my entire life (and it’s not because of downloading or copying of my friends’ records), and Sugarcoin’s second album is one of these. And doesn’t that say it all?
Fortunately you can download here a few of the pearls from the second album, for free. And I’m very happy about that. Because this music should be spread to a lot of people, everywhere! You can listen to more tracks on Sugarcoin’s Myspace page, and on Sugarcoin’s site you can also listen to and download tracks from his first album “A Moment of Weakness”.
We all need some breathing space somtimes, a moment where we can sit down and just look out the window, maybe daydream a little, maybe just watch what’s happening outside and just be. I find this space when i listen to Lovisa Samuelsson. Maybe it also helps that two of her songs are called “Andrum” (”Breathing Space”) and “Fönsterplats” (”Window Seat”). :-)
Backed by piano or guitar and sometimes a cello she performs soft, beautiful jazz ballads. Listen here below, and if you’d like to listen to more songs you can visit Lovisa Samuelsson on Myspace. There you can also buy her EP.
Mrs Time & Dr Leopold is the name of this beautifully singing duo, consisting of Jacob Svensson and Pelle Jonsson. They have been members of several bands before, and decided now that they wanted to create something very basic and let their creativity decide where they might land.
And they have landed in an acoustic style with nice, playful song arrangements, and partly I feel the vibes from the early sixties with artists like Everly Brothers and other similar groups. Here they give us a taste of their music in a couple of tracks, and if you want to listen more, you can visit Mrs Time & Dr Leopold on Myspace.
For me, December usually feels like a pleasant and calm period, waiting for Christmas. People around me gets a little happier, my children think that everyday has some extra excitement, nice summaries of the year and thoughts about what has been and what is to come pop up every day in the blog reader, in the newspapers and in other media.
That is, until five or six days before Christmas eve. Then it hits me. Ouch, so little time left, so much to do. Buy things, fix things, cook, plan the holidays and so on. And the New Year-holiday is just around the corner. Well, I have of concluded that it’s all my head of course. I mean, what could really happen? Will they ban me from the stores next year because I don’t shop enough, will the family say “Yuck!” when they taste the Christmas food or will I be less loved because I didn’t have time to send all the Christmas greetings? A lot of noise in my head, that places me anywhere but here and now.
The question then is how I stop this endless noise going on? One way is to listen to music. But I need music that really makes me stop and listen, music that catches my attention and makes me come back to reality. For me, Mikael Herrström’s music has this effect. Mikael has an honest and urgent voice. In an atmosphere that sometimes reminds me of Nick Cave, he presents his thoughts, and the noise disappears. And today, the day before Christmas Eve, this voice is really needed.
For many Mikael Herrström is no stranger. He has produced Thåström, Stefan Sundström, Mattias Hellberg and many others, and he has played with a lot of artists. But that he also is a solo artist, is maybe less known, and that his songs are as strong as he shows in the songs below, I really hope more people discover. The tracks come from his album “The Second Waltz”, an album where he gets help from artists like Martin Hederos, Pelle Ossler and Andreas Söderström.
If you haven’t heard it already, you should also listen to his version of Hanoi Rocks’ “Dead By X-mas”, with Martin Hederos on the piano, which I presented a couple of days ago.
After listening to Best-of Christmas albums too many times, too many Christmases, I thought it would be nice to find some new favourites. And why not start looking among all the artists we have presented here at Meadowmusic?
So, here’s a collection of new christmas songs, and I hope that you too will find some songs that gives you that extra Christmas atmosphere.
Merry Christmas!
ad dios, the masters of ambience have created their own version of an old Christmas carol. On their site you can also download the wav-file of the song and a cover, so that you create your own Christmas gift. Once In Royal David’s City
I thought it was time for some blues again. This time with the blues veteran Brian Kramer, who have recently released the album “Live at Club Stampen” under the name Brian Kramer & the Nights of Blu-topia. Brian invites us to an intimate and soulful performance in the company of great musicians like Mats Qwarfordt, “Iron Hand” Mike Haglund, Marcelo Nunez and Peter Freij.
It’s a wonderful collection of songs that Brian presents here. I find a nice earthy, positive (can I say that?) blues, together with folk music and bluegrass, which makes my feet move, and also nice bluesy singer/songwriter tunes. Good music, of course, always comes from within, but somewhere I feel that the blues lies as close as you can get to the soul. And judging from what I hear it would be real nice to meet a person like Brian Kramer.
There’s been too little blues on meadowmusic.se, no doubt about it. At least if we’re talking about pure blues in it’s basic form. Of course the blues is present in a lot of the music we have presented, as an inspiration, a base and an origin of many of the different styles of music that have been presented here. But to dig down to the true soil of the blues isn’t easy; to expose this naked, dirty ground of yourself so we can feel it and also to add something new to this is limited to a few people.
How happy I am then, that I bumped into Slidin’ Slim. He digs down into the swamps like he’s done done nothing else and howls with his blues-vibrato so I can feel it. Slidin’ Slim feels for real! But does he add something new?
The answer is definitely yes! There is a weight and a play with new modern beats and sounds that I haven’t heard before in blues. And the way that he does it, without leaving the dirt and the swamp for one second, while his slide guitar cries out it’s moaning.
Like a little mountain brook with the clearest water, sometimes floating still and sometimes purl, striding through small waterfalls; that’s how I feel when I listen to Maja Alderin’s voice. Already the first time I heard “Darlin’” it got to me. There’s something catching, touching, magical about Maja’s voice that I won’t even try to explain in words, as I may only make a mess of it for myself. Listen for yourself is probably the best advice.
She is a singer/songwriter with guitar in hand, even if she sits down in front of the piano sometimes as in “Til’ Your Heart Stops” below. Beautiful pop melodies that trips along, dynamic arrangements, and a light melancholy that doesn’t prevent the light and happy feelings in the music. A little inspiration from country sometimes and sometimes more dramatic, but… so beautiful. A voice to fall in love with.
The music that comes out of my speakers right now feels like a soundtrack to the cold, snow-covered landscape outside my window. This first real taste of winter makes an effort to penetrate the window to reach inside, but the tones from Winter Took His Life create a comfortable peace in the room.
Now the name “Winter Took His Life” may seem a little ominous to have as a soundtrack right now, but I feel really good. This naked music with beautiful melodies rather promises that the sky will clear up and the gray days will be followed by sunny, bright winter days. That’s how it feels.
Winter Took His Life is Susanna Brandin, a singer/songwriter that released her debut album last year, “You Know What It’s Like to Be Alone and Shut Down” (Bless the Press). Enjoy three tracks from the album:
A couple of years ago Henrik Åström released the album “Miracle” and he is now on his way to release his second album, aiming for the beginning of 2009. And it feels nice to be able to listen in on some tracks here below.
I would like to call Henrik’s music downscaled pop. Which is a quite stupid thing to say since nothing is downscaled from anything; it is what it is and maybe also what it should be. But something makes me want to differ Henrik from the singer/songwriter-genre that comes from another direction with Dylan and others in the background. Here I feel more pop in the melodies, even if I sense the folk influence in the verses sometimes.
And the way I hear it now, no upscaling is needed; the guitars and the piano is quite enough for these beautiful melodies and emphasize the closeness and the thoughtfulness. And the whistle-melody in “Oscar Wilde” is forever stuck in my mind…
The Örnsköldsvik citizen and the singer/songwriter Lars Ekengren plays a number of instruments when he creates his beautiful Americana-inspired music. The acoustic guitar is used frequently as well as the piano, but I think his strongest instrument is his voice, that seems to be made for this music. Sligthly rough like from one of the finest sandpapers and a soul-bluesy softness and feeling that makes it sound great. It’s obvious that he’s influenced by American music, and one of the sources of this is of course him living there for more than five years:
“I have a love-hate relationship with the songwriting: 10% comes all by itself (a frase, a chord etc), the remaining 90% is pure discipline. If one should write songs only “when inspired”, nothing ever would be done. I think those that tell the contrary are lying. If that is the case, then I really lack inspiration.
The lyrics take time…” (translated from Swedish)
He claims that “I wouldn’t be able to play a barre chord even if my life was at stake”, so besides the ambition to play more concerts in the future and maybe form a band, a goal is to learn barre chords… :-)
Listen to and download three tracks from Lars Ekengren:
I’m sitting here listening to Petra Engdahl’s debut album and just enjoying. It’s soothing and beautiful and it’s made for just to be inside the music and let go of all thoughts. She uses few means to build the strong ambience in the songs. Mostly it’s about the piano and Petra’s voice, but the acoustic guitar is also used frequently, and often she colours with electric guitars, organ, strings and other sounds.
As an album it’s as varying as I like an album to be. You can’t tire of the music with these range of songs and yet she keeps it quite still with an atmosphere that runs through the entire album.
You can listen to and download three tracks below and of course you should visit Petras on Myspace to discover some more.
Listen to new swedish music and download mp3-files. (right-click link to download)
Do you like what you hear? Then tell others about it! Add links about the artist on communities and other websites, write about it on your blog site and tell your friends.
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All songs you find here on this page have been approved for publication by the the artists.
Even if Jesper Norda has named his latest album “April Archives Collection No 1″ I feel that it was perfect for me to get into his music now, in the beginning of the autumn. Beutiful, safe, a little lonely, disquieting, calm but yet dramatic.
A year and a half ago I wrote 
Pull A Star Trip. Singer/songwriter with a couple of adreneline injections, or hardcore with acoustic guitars? They have been compared with 
The music coordinator for the British drama series 
The last time 
In the Autumn Magnus Weideskog released his debut EP and any day now his first full length album, “Unga hjärtan” (Sony Music), will be available. Magnus has been compared with 
“My ambition is to always leave someone with a feeling, to be a feeling and to move somone. You should for a moment be able to walk away from normal life and just be inside the music”. The words are Lennart Lindgren’s, and I think that he does a good job at it. For me it means a trip back to my childhood’s troubadours with beautiful melodies and beautiful poetic lyrics.
I have just woken up from the Christmas coma, and I felt it was time to present some new music again, here on Meadowmusic. And first up is Jörgen Kjellgren, more known as guitar player and songwriter in the band 
“Lika lätt som att vissla en melodi (lika lätt blåser livet förbi)”, Bangalore (Gbg) calls his EP, which was released this autumn. Behind the name Bangalore (Gbg) you’ll find Tomas Persson Carlberg; a pop troubadour you could call him.
Taxi Taxi! is the name of a duo I first heard about this summer. Obviously there was a hype around these twin sisters a couple of years ago, but I have to confess my ignorance about that.
Anna Hamilton offers quite a spectra of music. From a dance-influenced, shrewd electronic pop to dramatic songs alone with a piano. She is quite resourceful with the arrangements and has a sense of melody that makes each song grow into something unique.
Behind the band name Death Ends Here we find Simon Lussi, a singer/songwriter that walks his own path. He tells us that he started out with acoustic singer/songwriter music, was inspired by metal core and hip hop and tried to combine all this in his own way.
I’m listening to Sumie and it’s almost impossible to stop. Her low voice somehow gets inside of me and gets all my attention. So soft, so pleasant and with simple melodies that just feel right. It would have been easy to compare Sumie with contemporary singer/songwriters like for example 
A couple of months ago, I wrote 
There is something captivating, authentic about Le Days, aka Daniel Hedin, which I can’t explain. The first track I heard with Le Days was “Hotspot”, which gave me a sensation of 
Swedish Shoes is a new duo consting of Ola Angleby and Joakim Näslund. They started directly with the creation of their first EP, where you can listen to a couple of tracks here below.
Light, light, like bare feet on a flowering meadow in spring, I hear Ida Olsson’s bright voice with the piano or guitar play of Simon Ljungman. I don’t even think I have to listen to the beautiful words to feel a warm breath of spring break through the cold winter that predominate now, at least here in Sweden.
When I saw Sugarcoin live this autumn I got really surprised. The thing is that my already high expectations was surpassed. Simply put it was fantastic. I had listened to a lot of songs from him before, and I had liked them all. But live it was even better!
We all need some breathing space somtimes, a moment where we can sit down and just look out the window, maybe daydream a little, maybe just watch what’s happening outside and just be. I find this space when i listen to Lovisa Samuelsson. Maybe it also helps that two of her songs are called “Andrum” (”Breathing Space”) and “Fönsterplats” (”Window Seat”). :-)
Mrs Time & Dr Leopold is the name of this beautifully singing duo, consisting of Jacob Svensson and Pelle Jonsson. They have been members of several bands before, and decided now that they wanted to create something very basic and let their creativity decide where they might land.
For me, December usually feels like a pleasant and calm period, waiting for Christmas. People around me gets a little happier, my children think that everyday has some extra excitement, nice summaries of the year and thoughts about what has been and what is to come pop up every day in the blog reader, in the newspapers and in other media.
After listening to Best-of Christmas albums too many times, too many Christmases, I thought it would be nice to find some new favourites. And why not start looking among all the artists we have presented here at Meadowmusic?
I thought it was time for some blues again. This time with the blues veteran Brian Kramer, who have recently released the album “Live at Club Stampen” under the name Brian Kramer & the Nights of Blu-topia. Brian invites us to an intimate and soulful performance in the company of great musicians like Mats Qwarfordt, “Iron Hand” Mike Haglund, 
There’s been too little blues on meadowmusic.se, no doubt about it. At least if we’re talking about pure blues in it’s basic form. Of course the blues is present in a lot of the music we have presented, as an inspiration, a base and an origin of many of the different styles of music that have been presented here. But to dig down to the true soil of the blues isn’t easy; to expose this naked, dirty ground of yourself so we can feel it and also to add something new to this is limited to a few people.
Like a little mountain brook with the clearest water, sometimes floating still and sometimes purl, striding through small waterfalls; that’s how I feel when I listen to Maja Alderin’s voice. Already the first time I heard “Darlin’” it got to me. There’s something catching, touching, magical about Maja’s voice that I won’t even try to explain in words, as I may only make a mess of it for myself. Listen for yourself is probably the best advice.
The music that comes out of my speakers right now feels like a soundtrack to the cold, snow-covered landscape outside my window. This first real taste of winter makes an effort to penetrate the window to reach inside, but the tones from Winter Took His Life create a comfortable peace in the room.
A couple of years ago Henrik Åström released the album “Miracle” and he is now on his way to release his second album, aiming for the beginning of 2009. And it feels nice to be able to listen in on some tracks here below.
The Örnsköldsvik citizen and the singer/songwriter Lars Ekengren plays a number of instruments when he creates his beautiful Americana-inspired music. The acoustic guitar is used frequently as well as the piano, but I think his strongest instrument is his voice, that seems to be made for this music. Sligthly rough like from one of the finest sandpapers and a soul-bluesy softness and feeling that makes it sound great. It’s obvious that he’s influenced by American music, and one of the sources of this is of course him living there for more than five years:
I’m sitting here listening to Petra Engdahl’s debut album and just enjoying. It’s soothing and beautiful and it’s made for just to be inside the music and let go of all thoughts. She uses few means to build the strong ambience in the songs. Mostly it’s about the piano and Petra’s voice, but the acoustic guitar is also used frequently, and often she colours with electric guitars, organ, strings and other sounds.
