Zeonlight is a music company that focuses on cassette releases, a trend that’s clearly growing, although not as strongly as the vinyl revival. They represent quite a few very interesting artists, and have jumpstarted the year with with a number of releases which I thought I’d give you a taste of here below. It’s about the artists Testbild!, Folkmun (upcoming release), Tidlös and Heat and White, and more cassettes is coming up. When it comes to me, I don’t have any cassette players left, if I don’t count the one in the car, but luckily the albums are also available digitally, on Zeonlight’s Bandcamp page.

If any music deserves the tag dreamy it’s Houston‘s music. Their ambient electronica and whipering soul voices soars right up into the clouds and it feels relaxing and soothing. Behind Houston we find the producer team Sum Comfort and this is their way of showing themselves as artists. An album will be released later this year. On the EP you’ll find four tracks where “14 februari” is an interpretation in Swedish of Sade’s ”I Never Thought I’d See The Day” and “Eldflugor” an interpretation of John Martyns  ”Hurt In Your Heart”.

Houston on Twitter – on Bandcamp

Old Friends

Last week I told you about Kvartetten Raekan and their philosophy of creating their own country, which you reach by listening to their music. Another band that has embraced this idea and created this is Lymland. The name of the country is of course Lymland, and on the cover of their debut album “Ensamtidsroman”, which was released in the end of September, we can even study a map of this island.

In Lymland it feels harmonic and quiet, but also a little lonely sometimes. The pace is slower than here in our world, when we quietly stroll along to some well-chosen organ or clarinet melodies, or lie down in the grass watching the sky filled with large cotton-like clouds, to the tones of a guitar figure. It’s not a carefree world, though, which we’re reminded of as disharmonic tension intrudes in”Mannen med rök i handen” (“The man with smoke in his hand”) or the only vocal track “Söndagstråkigt” (“Sunday boredom”), or as the beast rages in “Räven och hägern” (“The fox and the heron”). It’s an album you can escape to when life goes a little too fast and we need to think about what we’re doing.

Lymland was created by the duo Sonja Perander (If They Ask Tell Them We’re Dead) and Jerker Kaj (Scraps of Tape). The album was recorded during a few days in December last year, with the help of the singer in the band Solander, Fredrik Karlsson.

Lymland on Facebook – on Spotify – on Wimp – on Bandcamp

Långsam glöd
Mannen med rök i handen

Here’s a song from the upcoming album “The Straw Boys” with electro duo Fort Fairfield, “Danziger Strasse”. A soundtrack to an ordinary day on Danziger Strasse, in Berlin I guess. It obviously feels quite pleasant to walk along that street.

Fort Fairfield on Facebook – Spotify - Soundcloud

Olof Persson from Broken Boys also has a solo project he calls Heat and White. In spring he released his debut EP “Sea-Through”, which is a different cup of tea than Broken Boys. Here we move down to the sea in 4 ambient and melodic variants of the same theme, with a very special mix of  melodica, reverb heavy guitars, synth figures and beats.

You can listen to the entire album on Bandcamp. The EP is released on the label Zeon Light who explain that they are a tape label, which obviously means that  ”Sea-Through” also is available on cassette tape.

Sea-Through

The productive Conny Olivetti, whom I have written about before, released the new album ”Ley Lines” in May. And while that album was waiting for a post another album was released, “Lumino”, but I will come back to that in a later post.

As before I’m fascinated by Conny’s ability to move from different ambiences and themes, in time and space, from one album to another, and each time manage to create a wholeness. It’s also the case on this album, which for me more feels like an inner journey than a journey to another place or time. The title theme “Ley Lines” frames, with it’s six parts that start and end the album, 5 other songs.

Ley Lines feels a lot like retro electronica, somewhat minimalistic but yet with a lot of detail and shifting. The other songs feel suggestively dark and on three of the songs we can hear the vocals from Linnea, a singer Conny has collaborated with before in the band wHaT iF?. Fun is also the jungle adventure “Speed Dating in the Amazonas”, a song that brings up memories from Yello.

The albumet is available for free on Conny’s Bandcamp page. You can follow him on his site.

Connections

Amina Hocine is a young interesting artist hailing from Göteborg, who also has Algerian roots. She experiments with ambient backgrounds, which she explores with her lyrics and vocal melodies. It’s naked, creative and entralling as I listen to the albums she’s released on her Bandcamp page. You can also follow her music on Soundcloud. You can find her site on Tumblr and she also has a Facebook page.

Redwood

I wrote about A. S. Swanski’s electro ambient music last year. Now he’s released the album “Electro Noir”, from which you can hear a song here below. It’s a fitting name for the album, which feels like a dark journey through gloomy, hard cities with Orwellian undertones, but also with spots of beauty here and there. A really good and well-made thematic album, which feels filmic and full of images.

The vocal additions and the style place us in Europe and it’s not hard to draw parallels to Kraftwerk. The album cover, though, is a tribute to the New York-based, electronica-pioneers Suicide, according to the artist himself. The first song, “Moscow Hearts”, which you can listen to here below, is referring to a crime novel he has published and you can read more about the song here.

A. S. Swanski is a pseudonymy which was created in 1999 when he was searching for a name which didn’t sound English, but more European in general, without defining from exactly where. He had been playing rock and pop for several years, but wanted to go in a different direction, and created this name.

You can listen to “Electro Noir” on the Bandcamp page, on Spotify or on Wimp. You can follow A. S. Swanski on his site and on Facebook.

Moscow Hearts

The electronica duo Posttod, which I wrote about a little more than a year ago, is back with a new release. It’s about the 7-track album “Moon”, which you can enjoy on their site. Here’s a range of ideas and textures, from beautiful pieces of ambience to more energetic songs with vibes of synth pop. A really pleasant album to listen to.

The band name is a composition of the word post (in the meaning of after) and the german word for death, tod, which in some view is meant to reflect their thoughts and music.

You can also  find Posttod on Facebook and on Spotify. Here are two songs from “Moon”:

Wild
Under the Stars

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