Salma Gandhi – “The Quest For Nonsense Never Ends”

December 12, 2012 at 4:05 pm

Salma Gandhi

Back in Summer 2008, at the very start of this blog, we wrote about the band Salma Gandhi, hailing from Malmö. They said then that they were working on their debut album, but it took four years more, until “The Quest For Nonsense Never Ends” was released this Autumn. But it was worth waiting for…

What they call stoner jazz appears to me as wild instrumental journey into the world of psychadelia, also coloured by progressive rock, jazz, blues and other stuff. It breathes of the late sixties/the beginning of the seventies, and even more so from from the filmic vibe in the music, where it sometimes feels like I’m drawn into a hardboiled detective thriller with car rides, smoky nightclubs and drama. But during the 75 minutes they achieve much more than that, as they can travel from a flipped-out jam to blues to a beautiful melodic ambience.

It’s a solid connective album where also the crazy track titles have their own meaning. As I understand it, the band members have made it into a kind of game, coming up with titles which with word acrobatics in some way describe the songs. What about, for example, “Paranoid Cow On a Mushroom Lawn” or “Polish Rodeo For Drunken Teenage Midgets”? Listen for yourself here below in a couple of songs.

Salma Gandhi on Facebookon Spotifyon Wimp

Dr. Steveroll I Presume

Cyan Marble – “Mirror”

November 21, 2012 at 4:33 pm

Cyan Marble

The band Cyan Marble, hailing from Västerås, say that they get inspiration from movies and old TV series like Twilight Zone. And that ingredient is quite obvious and makes their sound special on their new EP “Mirror”. There they present three songs, which first of all make me think about progressive rock, a rather intense one and then also with this old TV-thriller vibe, highlighted with organs and theremin-sounding synth figures with that classical horror trembling. Even if I haven’t been able to enter the lyrics at all, the songs overall feel filmic, where they pass through quite a few sequences during the rather short song durations (for being progressive music). An experimental album with a rather unique sound.

Cyan Marble on Facebookon Bandcamp

Ankh

Mackaper – “Staden vaknar”

November 20, 2012 at 11:11 pm

Mackaper

Mackaper was created by Markus Hulthén and Per Nyström as a side project to their band The Concretes. They sat down at two organs, jamming forth new song ideas, which then was completed and in the end released on the instrumental album “When All Is Sad and Dawn”, which I wrote about a couple of years ago.

Now the project has grown even more, and the duo has become a quintet, where the two brothers Elias and Ville Krantz now handle the bass and the drums respectively, instead of their computer colleague, and furthermore Gustav Nygren has joined the band with his saxophone. You can listen to the result in the song here below, “Staden vaknar” (“The city awakes”). The title describes the atmosphere well, in this new sound with more depth and warmth, with a soft, smooth, saxophone that paints new textures in the soundscape. The song is taken from their upcoming album”Mot ljusare tider”, which will make us stop and catch our breath in the middle of the Christmas stampede on December 19th.

Mackaper on Facebookon Spotifyon Wimp

Kompaniet – “Vi i dalen”

October 22, 2012 at 2:13 pm

Kompaniet

Kompaniet, hailing from Sala, takes us back to the early seventies’ psychadelic and progressive rock on their debut album “Vi i dalen”. Well, in fact there’s a range of influences that meet on the album, like blues, folk, jazz and rock which is also significant for that era when artists started to mix genres and experiment wildly. The songs started to live their own lives, both when it comes to length and structure. Kompaniet have found their own strong character in the middle of all this, as they cruise between Pink Floyd-influences, blues, Swedish progressive rock and folk music, from a relaxed ambience to drama.

Yes, I’m quite impressed by this debut. I don’t know more about the band than that they started in 2011 and that there are ten members in the band. You can find two songs to listen to here below, with the second one being the finishing 16 minute long “Nere i Dalen”.

Kompaniet på Facebookpå Spotifypå Wimppå Bandcamp

Tystnaden ljuder
Nere i dalen

Stone Carpet – “Exordium” och “Narratio”

August 24, 2012 at 10:07 am

Stone Carpet

In the beginning of last yearwe wrote about Stone Carpet and their single “The Sound of a Thousand”. Now they’re back with an ambitious project, with the plan to release 4 EP:s during this year. On each EP they explore one of the different genres which have influenced them during the years.

First out in May was the three-track EP “Exordium”, where they set out for a more progressive direction. The song here below, “The Plan”, comes from this EP. In July the second EP “Narratio” was released; an EP that focus more on metal.

A fun project, and I’m quite curious about what the upcoming EP:s will be about, especially since it’s so well executed in these two first EP:s. You can listen to their music on Spotify and follow the band on Facebook.

The Plan

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