Last year Joakim “Budji” Buddee” released the album “Eldsjälar och bananskal” (“Driving spirits and banana peels”), a hip hop album which doesn’t sound like I would expect hip hop would sound like, seen from my perspective as someone who just occasionally dive into the genre. Here I don’t find any drum machine beats or synth backgrounds; instead the sound is built upon drums , bass, piano and foremost acoustic guitars.

It works perfectly well, and I guess it’s a sign of the span in hip hop today. The formula of the songs is the traditional verse-rap + pop refrains and he does both really well. There are sticky, melodic refrains where he gets help from a number of singers like Hilda Dahlberg, Lovisa Birgersson and Tom Goren, and tight rap lyrics performed in a nice relaxed way by Budji himself plus a few guests like PelleP and Adam Opinio, lyrics that add a needed sharpness with social criticism about shallowness, comersialism and cynical politics.

You can download “Eldsjälar och bananskal” for free on Whoa, and you can listen to the album on Budji’s site, the Facebook page or on Spotify. Here are two songs:

Sjukt kallt
Dygnet har vänt på mig

Joakim Jakobsson is a former member of The Search and last year he started the band Duellen (The Duel) together with Argentinian Brian Biezki. Brian soon left the band and instead the former The Search-members Tina Bergström and Mikael Saltzman plus Olle Bilius (Jeniferever) and Simon Lundström entered the band. Then in december the five-track debut EP was released.

It’s indie pop in Swedish, rather darkly colored, radiating with vibes from the eighties’ new wave scene. They vary smoothly from synth based songs to guitar driven ones without losing the atmosphere. Straight melodies that stick quite fast on a good EP that promises more.

You can listen to the EP on Duellen’s Bandcamp page and on Spotify. You can follow the band on Facebook.

Sanningen

Pal is Albin Johansson hailing from Malmö. In December he launched the 7-track debut album “Weeks”. It’s about a rather soft, dreamy pop, a bit minimalistic. The mix of analogue synths, guitars, old drum machines and often a nice rolling bass give a special feeling to the sound. It feels a little retro and I can’t help thinking of Air when I listen to the harmonies and the bass figures. A very nice new acquaintance and you can listen to the entire album on Pal’s Bandcamp page.

The name Pal, Albin invented in 2007 when he uploaded his first home recordings to Myspace. He wanted to be anonymous and he liked the combination with the hint to his first name and the meaning of the word.

You can also find Pal on Tumblr, Facebook and on Spotify.

Anything

Four years after the last album The Culture In Memoriam released the third album, “Rest In Pieces”, in the end of last year. Behind the artist name we find Victor Håkansson as the only permanent member together with a range of musicians in what Victor calls a music collective.

Pavestone pop he calls the music which in more than one way symbolise the music, also in a way like two opposites meet. The beautiful melodies, the string and backing vocals arrangements that give an air of classic bombastic pop from both the sixties and the seventies, and at the same time the distortion, the unpolished and fragility in Victor’s voice that give everything a raw indie vibe. Together with the critical lyrics it all ends up as an urgent message.

I haven’t listened to the earlier albums, so I can’t compare, but to me “Rest In Pieces” feels like a solid album that grows after time, with no in-between tracks at all. Listen here below to the first song of the album, “Run Emelie”.

You can find The Culture In Memoriam on the home page, on Facebook and on Spotify.

Run Emelie

Behind the artist name Morris i motljus we find Henrik Ivarsson. In the Autumn he released the EP “Morris i motljus”, seven instrumental songs, which directly transfered me to the movies. There are alternating bombastic rock orchestral works and softer, more ambient tracks, like it was made for an epic adventure on the big screen.

A couple of years ago Henrik read a newspaper article with the headline “Jag fruktade att de hade ätit Morris” (“I feared that they had eaten Morris”), a story about an old lady who was afraid that the fox had taken her cat. During summer 2010 he came up with the idea that he would compose music for the story, thereby also starting to realize his dream of creating music for film.

“Jag fruktade att de hade ätit Morris” was only a project name from the start, but soon after he had released the music on the net, it de facto became his artist name. As he never was comfortable with that name, he took the opportunity to change it before this release.

You can listen to and download the EP for free on his Bandcamp page and you can also find him on Facebook. Here’s the opening track “Drömmar är som vackrast innan de går i uppfyllelse” (“Dreams are most beautiful before they come true”:

Drömmar är som vackrast innan de går i uppfyllelse