Sometimes I’m asked if we’re not soon going to run out of intesting new Swedish music to write about. We do have the ambition to a new artist every day (even if we also present new albums with the artists.) I think I have a pretty good overview and I normally answer that there are tens of thousand great artists in Sweden that deserve more attention. There is a lot of listening to artists and sometimes I get extra happy from a new discovery.

Like when I found Gocart System. Their apparently straight pop songs didn’t fool me. This is really joyful. Retro flirting songs run away and become something completely different. Like in for example “Always Been the Same” where they start with a “No One Lives Forever”-intro and then runs off to all kinds of directions.
This is imaginative pop that’s inspired by many sources, so at the moment I’ll stick with the label “Gocart System”.

This autumn they will release their debut EP on their own label Lashiec Records. Listen to two tracks here:

Always Been the Same
Silver Guitar

Visit Gocart System on Myspace

Here’s a voice that will catch your attention. The music reminds me of classic folk singers like Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. . There’s something especially capturing in Hector Projector’s music, that’s hard to describe. Maybe it’s the ambience or his voice, or the combination of them. Well, judge for yourself by listening to the songs below.

Hector Projector is also a brilliant animator, and you can see a sample of it in his video for “It’s Art” here below. You’ll find more films on Hector Projector’s Youtube page.
Last spring Hector Projector released the album “Missing Limbs”. If you wanted a physical copy of the album, then you could send him a drawing, either according to his instructions or freely. A guess of mine is that this will lead to a new animation project, and it will be interesting to follow this.

You can download the interesting album “Missing Limbs” from Hector Projector’s site, and here you can listen to two tracks from this album with the addition of the song “In Retrospect” from the album “Ballpoint Covers”.

Hector Projector also has a Myspace page.

I’m Playing the Strings Tonight
Does It Matter
In Retrospect

I like the close acoustic feeling when I listen to Ulf Ljusberg. My thoughts wander of to a small jazz or blues club, where people in a relaxed way are sitting down, sipping their beer, with their attention on Ulf and his collegues performing on stage. It feels familiar in a way.

It’s hard to directly put Ulf in a single genre. I would say that the base is the blues that often marries folk music in the songs, but there is more than that. There is a nice jazzy playfulness, which surprises me and catches my attention, and an experimention with rhythms that I seldom hear with other artists. Maybe it’s this last thing what makes me sense the uniqueness in Ulf’s music. That he can take an apparently common style and make something new out of it, with a different accent.

Ulf has released a number of EP:s, some of them under the name “Something From a Forest”, but since 2005 in his own name. Read an interview with Ulf on It’s a Trap.

On Ulf’s Last.fm page you can listen more and download songs. You can also visit his Myspace page.
Here’s three songs to enjoy:

Whatever Was
Caught In This Skin (acoustic)
Puzzle

William S. Burroughs wrote the novel “Port of Saints” in 1973. The story consists of several interwoven substories while the main theme is about a bunch of wild boys that try to change history by travelling through time to different places.

Maybe they are not rewriting history, but the description of the book feels right on target when it comes to the band Port of Saints. They sample from different eras of rock history and get influences from many directions like Soundgarden, Queens of the Stone Age, Black Sabbath older psychadelia rock and others. Many threads that may lead to different areas but they blend it beautifully down to a heavy driven rock that is fun to listen to.

I really recommend a visit to their Myspace page or their Facebook page, so you can hear more sides of this interesting rock band.

Listen to and download three songs:

The Martyr
Monster
Dead End

With Minaya we meet Swedish soul pop, close to the neighbourhoods where Mauro Scocco has been a ruler for a long time. I would say that there is also a dash of latin vibes in some songs, which of course could be explained by Minaya’s origins from the Dominican Republic.
This is very soft, the melodies are straight and catchy, and Minaya’s beautiful, tender voice seems to be made for this music.

Minaya is working on the completion of her debut album, together with the producers Fredrik Samson and Peter Cartriers. You can listen to two promo songs here below, a taste of what is coming up. Here’s what she writes about her song “Ung sorg” (“Young pain”):

“A song I’ve written, inpired by our children and our young ones. From what I see, children and young people today many times have different demands hanging over them, than what you and I had growing up. And I sense that they don’t feel that well. Considering the media and the body ideals there, it’s not surprising, and at the same time children are supposed to do well in school, and fulfil many other requirements imposed on them both by us and themselves. This can lead to many complexes, and many problems for a young life.” (translated from Swedish)

On Minaya’s site you can listen more and also on Myspace.
She also has a blog (in Swedish).

Ung sorg
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