Borlänge-pop, doom-folk and chinese postrock from Billy the Zombie Kid, Marigold, Sisilisko and Lerin/Hystad

April 8, 2014 at 6:12 pm
Marigold

Marigold

Billy the Zombie Kid – “The Blessing and the Curse” – EP

Billy The Zombie Kid is a band from Borlänge, who released the debut album “The Blessing and the Curse” a couple of months ago. It contains five songs with a melodic, alternative pop/rock spiced up with electronica, well a bit in the direction of The Killers. Here’s the title track “The Blessing and the Curse”:

Marigold – “Allt kommer bli bra”

The next band, Marigold is also from Borlänge. A month ago they released the single “Allt kommer bli bra” and last year the excellent EP “Och så kom regnet”. I can sense a part of The Killers here also, but here more in the direction of synth pop, as a melancholic, a bit eighties-like ambience sweeps into the room. Here’s the latest single together with “City Farewell” from the EP:

Sisilisko – “Waldeinsamkeit” – EP

I wrote about the duo Sisilisko, Albin Boman and Peter Engqvist, in the Autumn. Now they are back with the EP “Waldeinsamkeit”, an EP where their doom-folk music runs further into the dark woods to explore the mystique, nature and darkness. Here’s “The Woods” from the album:

Lerin/Hystad – “Mount Buzhou” – album

On the 25th of April the Swedish/Norwegian duo Simon Torssell Lerin and Bettina Hvidevold Hystad are releasing their debut album “Mount Buzhou”. The album title is taken from the name of a mountain in Chinese mythology, a mountain said to have supported the heavens.

The Chinese tradition also run through the music. In 2010 the duo travelled to Kunming in the south west of China, where over 1000 retired musicians gathered each day to play traditional Chinese music together. During two months they recorded this music, and later blended these recordings with their own instrumental music. Postrock and progressive rock meet Chinese traditions which create a very special atmosphere. Here’s one of the six songs on the album:

Read an interview with Lerin/Hystad on Alltformusik.se (in Swedish)

Avgrunden – “The Cursed Earth”

November 8, 2011 at 3:53 pm

Avgrunden

The band Avgrunden recently released their second album, or LP, like they prefer to call it; it was primarily released on a good old cassette tape through Ominous Recordings (sold out at the moment).

The name of the album is “The Cursed Earth”, and like the name implies the music is rather dark, or at least with a strong mellow ambience. Drone music the genre is called, though the title track is referred to as doom country. It’s about instrumental, slow music, where the closest music I can refer to is ambient music, but here the instrument setup is based on guitars, drums, strings, and percussion.

The ambience reminds of a barren, desolate landscape with a heavy, fateful atmosphere. In a song like “Crazy Horse Redress” I’m looking at american deserts, but overall the feeling I get from the music is a strong nordic melancholy.

Victor Granat, who started the band, explains that the band’s name Avgrunden (The Abyss) is partly based on the quote from Nietsche: “If you stare long enough into the abyss, the abyss will in the end stare back at you” (my translation). In the beginnning (2 years before the band was formed and the concept consisted of just Victor and two guitars) he could play a guitar riff for 15 minutes and that was it. The idea was that if you repeat something enough it will change it’s shape and appearance, Victor says and continues:

I also get the feeling that Sweden is kind of “The end of the world” or at least “The end of the western world” (according to many). There is a melancholy within Swedish culture that I, personally, love and it’s the same melancholy you would expect if you were standing on the edge of the end of the world, staring into the infinite abyss.

Th music is supposed to picture that border land at the end of the world, it’s music that hopefully will take the listener on a journey through musical landscapes on the edge of the abyss.

You can find Avgrunden on their site or on Facebook and you can listen to more music on their Soundcloud page.

The Cursed Earth

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