While Humfree Bug Art are working on their next album, several of the members are taking the opportunity to dive into side projects. Fredrik Forell and Sebastian Svensson Nylin express their newly won love for samplers in their electronica project Rööd, and in June they released the second EP “Segersånger”. Here they experiment with ambient soundscapes which feel playfully distorted in various ways, often with a vaudeville or cirkus vibe. Maybe is this what happens if you forget your collection of arpeggios in the sizzling, hot summer sun?
Pontus Torstensson is a drummer who’s been involved in a number of projects. We have heard him before here in the band Echodeck in a couple of posts. In Spring he launched a new solo project where he released the debut album through the cassette label Zeon Light.
He calls the music “cosmic electronic krautdisco with ambient elements”, which works well as a description but hides the fact that the music is quite varied on the album. He moves from NIN-hard industry-pumping synths to jazz-caressing works to ambient environments. There are universal elements, though, like the pulsating rhythms in dark, retro-vibing rooms which sounds of psychadelia, krautrock, German synth pop, techno and a lot more. Well, and the space sounds also of course, they are there and push me into the Moonbase Alpha-laboratory every now and then. And this music would fit well in a space opera just as it would in the retro disco.
Imi Fal’s music is made for making you decelerate, sit down and take it easy for a while. On his third album “The Lightest Touch” he continues to build on his melodic ambient music with a sound he showed us in a couple of tracks last year. The feeling reminds me of getting up early in the morning, before anyone else, seing a sun that has just managed to crawl over the horizon. After a while other sounds seep in from the outside, from nature, from the city, from people, but it falls into the calm, slow pace of the music. Beautiful and relaxing and definitely the best album from Imi Fal so far.
Max Lilja is a Finnish cello player and composer, most known as one of the original members of the cello metal band Apocalyptica. He has also been a member of the thrash metal band Hevein and is a part of Tarja Turunen’s (Nightwish) solo band since 2007. His first solo album, “Plays Electronica By One Cello”, was released in 2013, and next month, on the 10th of April, the second one, “Morphosis”, will be launched.
All music on “Morphosis” is written on cello and you realize when you listen how much he’s stretching the limits of how a cello can sound knowing that all the voices in the arrangements come from his cello. I am already a fan at the first track when I listen to the powerful “Revelations”, where we’re reminded by his metal background by a distorted, pumping, dark metal riff which forms a base under a filmic soundscape of screaming, ominous sound winds as well as beautiful classic cello tones. The following song “Silent Highway” heads off in another direction as a beautiful, light cello melody is a accompanied by electronica-sounding, clock-ticking rhythms. And the album continues with another seven tracks that take us on fascinating excursions in the borderline regions where different genres meet and is morphed together, commanded by fair melodies. Listen to the first two tracks here below. There’s also a video to “Revelations”, created by Janne Laiho:
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:
Meadowmusic presents new music from many corners and edges of the world, but with a strong focus on Swedish music. Listen, read, watch, comment and share the music. All songs you find here on this page have been approved for publication by the artists and labels.
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