Last year I wrote about the Norwegian/Swedish duo Lerin/Hystad and their album “Mount Buzhou“. There they combined their instrumental music with traditional chinese music, including field recordings from a large music summit in China. On the new album they have crossed the water and gone to Japan to get their inspiration.

Like before they have sampled field recordings in the tracks, but this time taken from arcade halls and subway stations in Tokyo and Osaka. This is mixed with vibes of traditional japanese music, jazz, electronica, progressive and experimental rock. It all becomes a fascinating melting pot where the past meets the present, east meets west, the finetuned organic meets the hard, machinelike. It can coexist at one time and in the next moment the other aspect takes over. Well, it is a bit like I can imagine what Japan is like with it’s deep roots in their own traditions living side by side with the modern society and the influence from the western world. An album with an amazing creativity, abundance of details and a large span of music. Here are two songs:

Lerin/Hystad on Facebook – on Spotify – on Bandcamp

And now a bit about Flip Lion. Behind this nick we find Carl Ågren, hailing from Malmö, a producer inspired by hiphop, trap, dubstep and bass music in general. Here are two tracks showing his brew of experimental and genrebending electronica:

Flip Lion on Facebook – on Soundcloud

I continue today on the instrumental theme. Here’s Sanjin with the album “Fjärde soluppgången” (“Fourth sunrise”). I hear a delightful seventies-sound with krautrock vibes and retro-synths. The electronica is dominating in experimental ambient creations, but other elements are offered as well, like in the finishing “Utan dag utan timme”, with it’s rock-progressive touch. A fascinating listen all the way through.
Sanjin runs the site “Allt för musik“, a quite readable blog about art, nisched music and sound phenomena.

Sanjin’s site – on Spotify – on Bandcamp

The Spiny Normans

I receive more great music than ever, so I’ll kickstart this week with six releases:

The Spiny Normans – “Waiting For the Storm” – EP

The Spiny Normans are based in Stockholm but have some of their roots in Åland. They released the debut EP in the Autumn, which will be available on Spotify and other services in a couple of weeks. I’d say it’s about folk inspired pop with a certain sense of drama. Here are two songs:

Lejonsläktet – “In och ut” – EP

The duo Lejonsläktet, whom I talked about last month, have released their debut EP now, full of great psychadelia with a vibe of Jämtland. Here’s the starting track “Ett svagt hopp om” from the EP:

The Tarantula Waltz – “Scandinavian Minds”

The Tarantula Waltz has released this Americana-sounding single from the new album “Tinder Stick Neck”, his third album which is being released this week.

Iris & Hedvig – “The Watcher & The Mind”

Here’s a new interesting young pop duo, Iris & Hedvig, with the debut single “The Watcher & The Mind”.  The song was produced by Christina Wehage, whom we’ve met before in her own project Be The Bear.

Rökmorsa

Rökmorsa is one of the projects the trio Pontus Björlin, Anders Åkesson and August Sörensons have been working on. They have collected 12 songs they recorded already in 2008 on the album “Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight”. It’s instrumental, experimental and a blend of influences from now and then. Here are two tracks:

Manor Rungs

The producer deadbeat has written songs and produced music for other artists before, for example electronica artist Compute and The Girl & The Robot. Now he’s grabbed the microphone himself and released seven songs under the name Manor Rungs. It’s a quite special blend of electronica and rock in Swedish, with some instrumental breaks. Listen for yourself:

This Is Head also released a single in Summer, from their second album, “The Album ID“. It’s one of my album favourites together with two remixes by El Perro Del Mar and Prince Rama that made it to the single. Here are two of the tracks together with a music video made by Maciej Kalymon.

This Is Head’s site – on Facebook – on Spotify – on Wimp – on Rara