Today Sibirien, aka David Björk, is releasing the mini album “När jorden blev rund”. After the beautifully dark single “Eld” in Spring I had some expectations on the album, but he certainly fulfilled them all. Here I’m met by a wonderful balance between the beautiful, soothing and that which tears, worries and rips your heart in two, in both music and lyrics.
He completely master the large, dark, reverbing room and fills it with beautiful, sad pop melodies, accompanied by everything from heavy distorted synths to a lonely piano. It’s a powerful album that should be listened from the beginning to the end. The title track is also released as a single and is about violence that nurture more violence, about how people disregard history when they react to conflicts of today, without questioning or learning from the past, David writes. Here’s the single track plus the grand, finishing “Hål i min hand”.
Here’s Jennie Abrahamson with her new single “Wolf”, a song that is taken from her latest album “Gemini Gemini”, which was released in Spring. A beautiful, ambient pop song with a Kate Bush-vibing chorus. Right now she’s touring Europe and in November and December she will join Peter Gabriel on a part of his tour, as a supporting act and as a duet partner.
Dark lyrics about a gray land but with colourful music. Yesterday the trio Systemet released the album “Välkommen till fördomen”, 11 songs with a quite unique sound where they blend analogue-sounding retro synths with melodic, straight guitar pop. A strong album with quite a few memorable lines. Here’s the starting track “Killarna mot tjejerna”:
Dimman consists of the two friends Matthew Bolger and Richard Egan, now based in Malmö. In Spring they released the debut EP and this week the lively, melodic and instrumental track “Sigmal”:
Manifestet, Jonas Carping’s and Martin Karlsson’s common project, released their second singel in June. It’s called “Rännstenens kungar” a spicy and tasty song which, according to Jonas, is about dancing on the edge of destruction, to do what you want to do without caring about what others are saying:
The Radio Dept. have released their first new song in four years. And that they do it this week with this song, “Death to Fascism”, is of course because of the upcoming Swedish elections on Sunday.
The frase “Smrt fašizmu, sloboda narodu!” (“Death to fascism, freedom to the people!”) which is repeated through the whole song, was a Yugoslavian and an Albanian partisan motto during the second world war, and after the war it was accepted as the slogan of the entire resistance movement.
Later this Autumn Dennis Camitz will release the single “Blame”, but since we have elections in Sweden on Sunday he hurried to make an acoustic version and present it as a music video. He takes the opportunity to call on people to vote with the heart, for humanity and equality.
Because that’s how it is nowadays in Sweden. The most important issue we have to consider is if we want to defend our basic human rights and equal values for all, regardless of gender, origin, religion or sexuality, or if we want a society where we disregard this. A rather simple choice and an important one too I believe, even if you’re normally uninterested in politics. Every person that doesn’t vote will unfortunately leave more room for these dark ideas to influence our country. So, vote!
Long time no see. It’s been more than one and a half month since I posted. As I’ve been out on the road in Europe most of the time, without Internet connection, I haven’t even listened to music for quite some time. In the end I got such an abstinence that I just had to find a place with w-fi, put my headphones on, put on a playlist with new music and just dwell in this for a couple of hours. Probably my best listening experience this year. I guess I had to rest my ears for a while, find some new motivation and lust to take on a new music season.
So, let’s start today.
I have told you before about the duo Dödens Dal’s project about inviting singers to put lyrics on and perform songs from the duo’s last album. First up was Jenny Wilson with “Under lager av is” and now it’s Peter Morén’s (Peter, Björn & John) turn. The song is called “Måste det vara så?”, the original title is “Över fältet, mot ljusen”, and it’s another hit in this interesting project.
It’s unusual to meet songs in this way, first as an instrumental, and then as someone else’s interpretation lyricswise. I can compare it with reading a book, creating your own images, and then looking at the book-based movie, where you have to struggle with mixing your own interpretation with the director’s. An added song track can of course change a song to something completely different, but what happens here is that both Jenny and Peter add another layer to the ambience that’s already there, but at the same time add images and places that wasn’t there when I listened originally. Next month they will release an EP with more artists and songs, which will be exciting to explore.
Here’s a fresh single release from the duo Grapell. “Shaping My Love” is wonderful, warm soul pop with a touch of the eighties. The song is taken from the EP “Friends”, to be released on the eighth of October.
Alexandria is a band from Stockholm I wrote about last year, when they sent me the rehearsal room-recorded “Whatever”. Now they are signed to a label and have recently released their debut EP “Laid Back Forever EP”, about a week ago. The earlier song “Whatever” is there in the company of three other songs, in a sound that feels like indie pop inspired by the seventies, a bit in the direction of psychadelia, with distanced vocals and dreamy harmonies. There is a common denominator in the sound and the harmonies between the songs, but they vary the rhythm in an interesting way; from the nice soul-tasting groove in the title track to a more straight rock beat in “Secret Beach”, with it’s hooky guitar figure. A fun and great debut to listen to. Here’s “Another Station” from the record together with the video to “Secret Beach”.
Luha is the name of a Swedish-Filippino artist, who recently released her second single, “Heart”. It’s a light and pleasant pop-track with a percussion-heavy chorus that makes me think of Iida. Sung with a bright and delicate voice the reminds me of Frida Sundemo.
Last year Noras Falcon, or Elin Rosenberg which is her real name, released the debut EP “The Spark”. One of the songs from the EP, the duet with Staphan O’Bell “Kiss the Night”, made it to my “Best of 2013”-list, but it could just as well have been this song, “Sing It Out Loud”. Her new video to the song gave me the opportunity to play it again:
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.
Go to the contact page if you want to suggest music or if you have anything else to discuss.
