After four years as the singer in the death metal act Science of Demise August Vinberg switched genre and joined the electro pop band Storbritannien instead, a band I’ve written about before. Writing songs for the band has also resulted in a pile of songs that haven’t been an exact match with Storbritannien and August decided to release some of them on an EP in the solo project Höstmarschen. You can listen to the first song “Gaia” here below.

About the name Höstmarschen (Autumn march) he says that it partly comes from that the project was started last Autumn and partly because the Autumn feels special for him, as it’s the season when he is most creative.
You can listen to the other songs on Spotify and follow Höstmarschen on Facebook.

Gaia

This Vision are releasing their second album on May 11th. As an appetizer they have released the excellent single “20th Century” and yesterday also the video for the opening track, “Ashes”. Judging from “20th Century” the sound is no longer only about pure electronica with vibes from the eighties, but the development of the sound makes me feel even more of eighties’ retro, especially since I grew up during that decade. Maybe more New Order now than Pet Shop Boys I’d say, even if the band themselves say that they are more inspired by the Cure from those days.

You can follow This Vision on their site and on Facebook. Listen more on Spotify and on Wimp.

20th Century

During years Emil Fitger was a singer, songwriter and guitarist in the alternative metal band Melaina, a band I’ve written about before. The band split up a couple of years ago and Emil decided to continue as a solo artist.

This has now resulted in his debut album “A Long Wait Beneath the Snow” where he’s heading in a quite different direction than before. First of all it’s about electro pop with nice, somewhat melancholic melodies, but his acoustic guitars and different influences makes this a quite varied album.

From the harder industry vibing start with “Forgotten Streets”, to the dance pop beat in “Numb”, to the beautiful, ambient “Levanah” to the finishing, almost hymnlike “Rays of Light” to name some examples. Emil has a good, smooth voice for this and experiments a lot with effects and overlays on the vocals, which works really well in most cases, even if I think it gets over the top in some song where it makes me feel too distanced to the song.

You can listen more on Emil’s Facebook page and on Spotify. Here’s the first song on the album, “Forgotten Streets” plus the videon to “Numb”.

Forgotten Streets

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 duo Kids, with the two members Jonas Linngård and Maria Pettersson, took the band name as a tribute to MGMT and their song with the same name. I haven’t listened that much to MGMT, but it’s quite obvious that they have been an inspiration for Kids, where they move in the same music area of pop electronica with nice and efficient melodies.

Kids recently released their debut EP with five songs, a really good EP full of nice melodies and hooks. It’s quite dynamic and airy, with a clear “less is more”-vibe in the arrangements. It doesn’t hurt either that the EP starts with the irresistible guitar figure and intro to the song “My Sincerest Apologies” which drags you right into the album.

You can download the album for free on Kontroll Recordings’ site and listen on Soundcloud, Wimp or Spotify. Follow the band on Facebook.

My Sincerest Apologies
Two Hearts Forever