Slottet released their new EP “Servants” last month. Besides being available on Spotify the EP was also released on casette tape. It’s not the first time I’ve encountered cassette tapes this Autumn, so I think I can say that there is sort of a cassette revival going on.

And the EP  is a quite pleasant acquaintance. The first three tracks contain a rather minimalistic electronica accompanying good indie pop-vibing melodies and close vocals by Marcus Wahlström, while the finishing two songs change lane somewhat in that “Please” lets the guitars come up front and normal drums is used, and “Vanity”, the last song, is built upon an acoustic guitar.

They came up with the band name Slottet (The Castle) a summer’s night one and a half year ago. They were trying to invent a name by associating with things they saw in the room, when suddenly, Yin Fai Chan, the band’s keyboard player, saw the cover of Hayao Miyazaki’s movie “Howl’s Moving Castle” and threw out the word “Slottet”. According to Marcus Wahlström, this led to a kind of eureka moment for the band, and the name was set.

You can follow Slottet on their Facebook page. Here’s the first song on “Servants”

Agnostic Nightmare

I Am Trip is a music project created by Filip Forsström, who, on the EP “As It Was” serves experimental soundscapes where he mixes ambient, dub/step, glitch and IDM. Harmonic, soft sound spaces are broken up with chopped beats, “glitches” and sound figures which create a special atmosphere. It becomes an interesting work of sound art, which I imagine can give rise to very personal associations, which is also Filip’s objective with the project:

The project and it’s name stands for going on an inner journey and explore which places, experiences and emotions the music creates. It’s not about what the music whas meant as , it’s the individual experience that is the goal.

For me personally the character Trip is created. If Trip will join anyone else on their journey is entirely up to each and every one. And the personal interpretation is the focus of what the journey can become.

On I Am Trip’s site you can download the EP and you can also listen to the tracks on his Soundcloud page.

I Don’t Know

Postiljonen was formed by the two Swedes Joel Nyström Holm and Daniel Sjörs and the Norwegian Mia Bøe. They found each other as late as in August this year, which is quite remarkable as they have already created a style and a feeling in the music that sounds characteristic.

When I asked them about the band name (Postiljonen: the postillion, the mail-coach driver) they told me:

A feeling came over all of us when we were backpacking in the nordic mountains. Freedom, skies, Winter, Spring, fairy-tales, thunder, vast mountains, hazard games, humanity, love, memories, dreams, happiness, sorrow and escape.
We want to be messengers.

And I can clearly imagine that the music was inspired by this tour up in the northern wide landscapes. The music feels grand, dreamy, warm and a little like laying in the grass studying the clouds passing by slowly up in the sky, in a pause from the hectic daily life. Just close your eyes and let yourself be enshrouded by the soft blankets of sound and beautiful interwoven melodies and I’m sure you’ll find your own associations.

You can listen to more songs on their Soundcloud page and you can find the band on their blog or on Facebook.

På väg tillsammans

http://vimeo.com/31265643

I’ll continue today with more instrumental music, but of a different character, with Broken Boys’ new album “Heat and White”. Here it’s about dub, electronica, samples and a rather dark, urban atmosphere.

The album gives an impression of being carefully crafted and feels like an art collage of music interwoven into a whole. A strong debut from the Malmö band where Olof Persson tells us about the band name that he once saw it sprayed over a wall in Mocambique and felt that it went well with their music as being tough and sad at the same time.

Broken Boys have made the album available on their Bandcamp page, where you can listen and download it for free. You’ can also find the band on Spotify and on Facebook.

A C# (E F#)

Support the artist: Buy “Heat and White” on iTunes

Conny Olivetti is a productive artist. In April we could listen to the album “Strategems”, which I wrote about, and now in November he released his next thematic album, “Edgeland”.

As before it’s about instrumental electronica, ambient but yet containing melodic parts that make me think of Jarré and Vangelis. He brings us to “Edgeland”, which for me becomes a journey into the future and away to a city on the edge of the civilization. Like science fiction in other words, and like all good SF, it also hints at the world we’re living in.

So the music seemlessly takes me through this somewhat cold and hard city, a city full of details, voices and activities. And at the same time a glimpse of eternity.

Conny Olivetti is an alter ego for Leif Franzén, and since I was curious about the origins of the artist name, I asked him about it:

Conny Olivetti was born in 1980 when I, at fRa-film, started to create music for our own film productions. And in order to make the movie credits not too monotone we invented Conny Olivetti as responsible for the music production. Conny is my second name, and our scripts were written on an Olivetti typewriter.

The only incident with the name happened around 1989 when I, during a film editing break at the local Medieverkstan in Västerås, went to buy some food at the pizzeria nearby. The weeks before there had been some kind of nightlife article in the local newspaper, where I had said my name was Conny Olivetti. The pizza baker recognized me from the article and started to ask disturbing questions about my family and so on.

He’s been around since then and it seems he will continue with that

As with all his album releases, “Edgeland” is available for free download and streaming on his Bandcamp page. You can find Conny on his site or on Facebook. He’s already working with his next album, which has the working title “Connections”.

Insights From the Past