My brother gave me Dungen's debut record for my birthday and I can't stop playing it. I love the feeling of opening a record for the first time and finding out there are 4 sides to listen to instead of just 2. I love vinyl for a lot of reasons, but lately its been because it forces me to take a break, get up and turn the record over. When I get deeply involved in a project (sewing, writing, whatever...) I forget that I might be achy or hungry and I end up not stopping for several hours. Dungen make truly out-there psychedelic rock'n'roll. This is a great record to play while transitioning from getting ready to go out to actually going out. This summer has been all about micheladas (mexican beer mixed with chile, lime and salt) and balconies with Dungen as my soundtrack. From the Dungen webpage: "Gustav Ejstes grew up in a big 17th century house in the little village Lanna in Vastergotland, Sweden. His father who's a fiddler, violinist and a music teacher, gave him a thorough insight to the mysteries Swedish folk music, early on, but also in classic 60s pop and rock, piano and guitar playing. During his teens Gustav entered the world of Hip-Hop and samplings. He botanized around in the record jungle and on his expeditions got to hear many incredible Swedish 1960s-70s recordings that he had never heard before.
This opened up a brand new world. Suddenly it was clear that he, instead of taking a detour through sampling, should play all the instruments he heard and prove that he could make it himself. Gustav simply returned to the old servants guitar, drums, bass and keyboards. He moved on to his mothers farm situated deep in the woods of Smaland where his interest for the Swedish folk music intensified. After the daily tasks at the farm he worked all night long in his music studio down in his grandmothers basement. The music that he created became more and more his own and it wasn't long before rumors started to spread about Dungen who created willful "folkrockpsych" in the Swedish countryside." You can listen to a couple of songs here: http://www.myspace.com/dungen Another experimental band from Sweden is Anekdoten. They've got a large Japanese following and some pretty cool songs: http://www.myspace.com/anekdoten
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Sounds pretty cool. Thanks for the heads up. You can see them perform a song at Bonnaroo here.
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i'm on it.
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Great sound, thanks Kate.
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I have it, listened and found them not quite so melodic...but you clearly have damn good taste, Kate, so I'll give them another go-round. Have you heard The Soundtrack of Our Lives? Also Swedish, also sike-ay-delic...whoa.
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Dungen is one of the best live shows I've ever seen! They had the drummer up on a platform, so Gustav had a huge amount of space to dance around in. I kept thinking it must be so much fun to write a bunch of rock songs and then hire your friends to play them while you dance around like Chris from The Black Crowes and play jazz flute. I'm probably not making this sound awesome, but it was very charismatic.
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Dude- jazz flute is always awesome (: Ever since I saw the 10 minute jazz flute solo in "Anchorman" i've been hooked.
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I wish I could see them live. They are such good summer-into-fall music. But maybe that's just becuase I got into them this time a year ago... Anyway, great write-up! Glad you are turning more people on to them!!