The Swedish Scene
THE SONS OF GOD
(Leif Elggren & Kent Tankred) The Sons of God’s field of activity can be described as an investigation of a mental airspace, undertaken with the aid of unconventional tools. The aural aspect is important, but equal care is devoted to the visual. The Sons of God is often augmented with supplementary performers who then also influence the ideas and their expression. The Sons of God put themselves at the disposal of civil defence and strive to imbue fortitude and courage.
www.thesonsofgod.com
SEWER ELECTION
Dan Johansson, born 1979, began recording as Sewer Election in 2002. Heavily influenced by the mid 90’s americanoise and the japanese counterparts, Sewer Election quickly became a household name among connoisseurs of crude harsh noise around the world. While perhaps not reinventing the wheel, Sewer Election delivered his take on harsh noise with a rare sense of sincerity and passion hard to resist. Some of the highlights from the first five years would be the split LP with Incapacitants (Segerhuva, 2006) and the Sex Death CD (Troniks, 2007). A change in both approach and sound would come with the much praised Kassettmusik, released by iDEAL in 2008. This album consisted solely of decayed tape loops, mostly based on body sounds. While having experimented with cassettes before, this release marked a important change and a shape of things to come. Since then, the organic sounds has become a natural part of the sound of Sewer Election, and these days most of the FX-units and noise generators from the early era has been swapped with field recordings, reel-to-reel loops and oscillators. The attitude and atmosphere haven’t changed much though, whatever equipment Sewer Election currently handles, there’s the same certain kind of bleakness on the actual output. Brutish musique concrète.
www.sewerelection.se
DAG ROSENQVIST
For eleven years, Jasper TX was the musical moniker of Sweden’s Dag Rosenqvist. Using electric and acoustic guitar, piano, pump organ, melodica, glockenspiel, voice and various other instruments as a foundation for his compositions, Dag has managed to create his own musical universe. Elements of drone, improvisation, noise and lo-fi aesthetics are all filtered through a skewed melodic pop sensibility, often resulting in something quite unique. Since the debut album back in 2005, Dag has been releasing albums on labels such as Miasmah [NO], Fang Bomb [SE], Kning Disk [SE] and SMTG Limited [US]. Over the years he has also collaborated with artists such as Machinefabriek, Aaron Martin, Mike Weis (from Zelienople) and Simon Scott (ex Slowdive) and in addition to that he’s been doing remixes for several artists from a wide variety of genres. Over the last couple of years he has performed live in the USA, the United Kingdom, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey and Germany. As of 2012 the Jasper TX moniker has been put to rest. And what is dead shall remain dead. Dag Rosenqvist is currently residing in Gothenburg, Sweden.
http://dagrosenqvist.bandcamp.com/
RUNE LINDBLAD
Rune Lindblad (1923-1991) was a Swedish composer of Musique concrète and electronic music, and artist. He first began composing in 1953 and composed over 200 works. His first piece, „Party“, is considered the first electroacoustic work created in Sweden. For three years he experimented with optics and sound, and produced five works using over 1800 meters of film. On 14 February 1957, Lindblad, Sven-Eric Johansson, and Bruno Epstein put on the first concert of concrète and electronic music in Sweden at the Folkets hus in Gothenburg. The audience responded poorly and demanded refunds, critics referred to the music as „pure torture“. As an artist, he created paintings, drawings, etchings, collages, woodcuts, and etc., some of which adorn his albums. Lindblad taught at University of Gothenburg, his students included Rolf Enström, Åke Parmerud, and Ulf Bilting.
RONNIE SUNDIN
Sound and visual artist Ronnie Sundin (b.1973) has been recording and producing his own music for more than 15 years covering a wide range of styles within electronic and experimental music. During the second half of the ’90s he operated under the name Bad Kharma with a string of self produced releases on his own BonBon Records imprint which showcased an interest in noisy tape collages combining influences from The Hafler trio, Merzbow and Illusion of Safety. During the first half of the ’00s however, he investigated a gradually more and more quiet approach utilizing plenty of field recordings from his extensive archives combined with computer processed and electronic sounds in an attempt to create dreamlike, sensitive hypnagogic states presented on releases on critically acclaimed labels such as Ground Fault (US), Fällt (N.Ir), Häpna (SE) and Antifrost (SP) and Komplott but in recent years we have seen him revisit to the more loud noise oriented field he explored earlier.
www.ronsun.se