Tenonsaw is a Swedish-Irish duo with the members Salt Eriksson and Thomas Luke. In the Autumn they first released the debut album “Beginnings”, and later, in November, the EP “Pact”. It’s not that easy to describe their music and I can’t really find any close comparisons among other artists.

The foundation, and what they also started with, is folk music; melancholic and with Tom’s acoustic guitar accompanying Salt’s sad song melodies. Soon, electronica, guitar figures and other sounds add new layers in a minimalistic way. Scales clashes with other scales and new layers add other types of emotions, which sometimes create slightly chaotic situations where there are no rules. They describe the ambition themselves:

…create emotional songbased music, based on the principle on finding the balance between clarity and confusion and between ugliness and beauty.

There is a large span between the songs, where they sometimes lie very close to folk music tunes and sometimes have left it completely behind. You can listen to the title track from the EP here below, and the rest of the songs are available on their Bandcamp page. You can find the duo on their site and on Facebook.

The name Tenonsaw they found in a dictionary while looking for a suitable band name. They liked the association with sharpness and details, and that it’s a small saw, not a big dangerous one.

Pact

Charlie Persson has released a couple of songs from the upcoming EP “Re:cycling”, which is to be released next week, on January 26th. “Den Stora Kärleken (Tur & Retur)” is a beautiful and sad song, sparsely arranged yet grand, and it feels like Charlie has taken a step back with his mic, if I compare to the earlier closer productions. A new sound coming up maybe, and it’ll be interesting to listen to the EP.

There is another song to taste from the EP, which you can listen to on his site. For news about the album I recommend following Charlie Persson on Facebook.

Den Stora Kärleken (Tur & Retur)

Klifton Filente released the new album “Breaking the Clouds” in the end of the last year. It’s a good album with nice melodies in the same spirit as the last album “Common Ground”. I don’t think, though, that “Breaking the Clouds” reaches the same heights as the predecessor, but if you’re a Klifton-fan, you won’t be dissappointed.

The artist name Klifton Filente is, according to the man behind it, Jonas Lundvall, a play with words. In french you say “un étoile filante” (a falling star, a meteorite), and this frase stuck with him a couple of years ago when he started the project, and was transformed into Klifton Filente.

You can listen to and download the album for free on his Bandcamp page. It’s also available on Spotify.

Foremost of the Westeners

Ambas is a duo who’s name is formed from two members Amber Watts’ och Jonas Lundqvist’s first names. In the Autumn they released their debut EP, the soul vibing “Places”. There you’ll find four quite enjoyably songs; it’s feels souly, a little jazzy and airy, and at the same time experimental, liberated from many of the clichés from the genres they are walking into. Amber Watts has a nice, soft tone in her vocals, like it was made for this music.

The fact that they have created this as a part of a project on the music highschool Rytmus, where they both attend, makes it even more impressive. They write, though, that it won’t stop there and that they will continue with the band afterwards. If you like what you hear, you can follow them  on Facebook, and then you can read their Tumblr blog, where you also can listen to the entire EP and download it. Here’s a song from the album:

Train

In November Black Guillemot, hailing from Göteborg, released their first EP, “Knut Hamsun”. The band consists of members from Jet Link and Since Our First Guitar, two bands I have presented here before. And it’s also easy to recognize Josef Wikström’s characteristic vocals in these indie pop vibing songs.

You can listen to three good songs and download them on the band’s Bandcamp page. You can also find them on Facebook and on Spotify.

The band name comes from Josef Wikström’s fascination for birds and especially bird legs. He says that he would like to try to have bird legs one day, preferably thick and resilient ones, like ostrich legs.

He was looking for bird names that sounded good, found that Red-Footed Falcon didn’t work as a band name, and finally found the bird Black Guillemot, which sounded cool (tordmule in Swedish).

Here’s the title track from the EP:

Knut Hamsun