April 28th – May 5 held The Hans Arnold Exhibition at Gallery Steinsland Berliner in Stockholm. Produced by the creative label Power Plant Records and hosted by none other than the brains and talent behind the label, La Fleur. We teamed up with Power Plant Records as co-promoters for the expo, and got some inside info while we were there.

Most of us know her as the Swedish-born, berlin-based DJ. La Fleur is most recognized on the dance floors by her self-produced, soulful, feel-good house tracks. Flowerhead Revisited EP landed # 32 in DJ Mags Top 100 Singles. Followed by the Defected Records Low:Rise label release of Petals on Fire EP this past February. She was also recently invited to guest DJ at Berlin’s infamous Panorama Bar, La Fleur is definitely getting the media attention she deserves.

The beauty behind Power Plant is that it is actually much like the electrical generators we use to supply power into our cities. Replacing electricity for creativity, Power Plant produces in three forms. Music, Art, and Fashion. The three are natural complements to each other and hold a special interest to the artistic DJ. Starting with the first record released on Power Plant, La Fleur has combined inspirational art work with music.

Taking in a new piece, illustrated by well-respected artists, the Power Plant record covers are unique and distinctive to each release. La Fleur pointed out how searching for a piece that brings out a track’s emotion, is a timely process. “I’m not in a hurry to find the right artist, I like to take my time to make sure everything is right. Each record is like my baby, it requires a lot of preparation before it’s birth”.

A powerful and precisely fitting illustration created by Sweden’s Hans Arnold was exclusively selected for and shares the name to La Fleur’s Eavesdropper EP. Released on April 25th, Eavesdropper was celebrated with two memorable release parties (Stockholm and Berlin) followed by the inspiring Hans Arnold retrospective exhibition -”From horror to fairy tales” at Steinsland Berliner in Stockholm.

The Eavesdropper EP contains two warm house tracks, Tjuvlyssnerskan and Eavesdropper. Both include nostalgic french vocals but are entirely free from one another. Tjuvlyssnerskan -defined by piano keys and a softer bass line while Eavesdropper -combines a bolder bass line and soothing melodies. The two tracks are easily favorites on the dance floor. Remixes by Ian Pooley and Jordan Peak are scheduled to be out beginning of June.

This coming fall brings us Power Plant Elements. An exclusive, androgynous, fashion line created in collaboration with American designer Stacey De Voe and La Fleur. The all-black, 8 piece collection combines delicate jersey, leather, and wool and will be available for purchase online and in selected stores.

Power Plant flourishes with creativity this year. We look forward to more new releases, launch dates, label nights, and art expos powering up in Stockholm, Berlin, and possibly New York.

www.djlafleur.com
www.power-plant.se

By Vanessa Gil

TRACK LISTING

1. World Tour – Believe
2. Theo Berndt – Supersized (David Borkmann Remix)
3. Azure blue – Catcher in The Rye (Harald Björk Remix)
4. Holiday for strings – Unwilling/Not Able Dance Remix
5. The Tough Alliance – Silly Crimes
6. Lilla Sällskapet – Morgonen Efter
7. Niki & The Dove – Mother Project (Goldroom Remix)
8. Caviare Days – The Awakening (Name in Lights Remix)
9. Tight Silk – Ain’t Gonna Get Me Dreamin’
10. Rebel Rebel – Love Songs
11. Kornél Kovács – Down Since ‘92
12. Jonas Rathsman – Tobago

Summer may be a few months away, but with elaborately layered melodies that wash over you like waves on a sundrenched beach, World Tour’s EP Believe, provides a glimpse of what lies ahead. Hailing from Östersund, in Northern Sweden, the trio’s new release, a dreamy, chillwave effort, draws on a range of warm weather influences to weave an exotic tapestry of sound that couldn’t take you any further from the arctic.

In “Believe”, the title track, a well developed rhythm builds to a crescendo before melting into a delicate male-female exchange that hints of past romantic encounters under tropical sunsets. Under the steady tempo of steel drums and washed out vocals that exude a warm glow, Too Far keeps up the good vibrations.

Air France’s recent break up left a major void in the Swedish Balearic-pop scene. With Believe, Felix Hedberg, Tobias Gerhardsson and Merike Kjaergaard provide comfort that this emptiness shouldn’t last for long.

World Tour’s Believe EP is out April 10th via Cascine

Get Believe EP here

By Mickey Reardon

Video by Makode Linde

Wading into the waters of Lake Hearbeat, Nicolas Makelberge finds his own beat and brings his signature shiny synths to shed on the crystal clear chord collaboration with Stockholm’s Le Prix and Johan Agebjorn. Lyrics begging the listener to watch the world go by, just don’t let this song out of sight because some might say it is.

By Graham Tucker

It has taken half her life, but with her upcoming record Swedish pop phenomena Sibille Attar has found her own musical home. In her living room, under some colorful banners, stands an old upright piano. Even though she doesn’t want to be known as “the girl by the piano”, that’s still where most of Sibille Attar’s songs are created. For the last number of years, the Swedish music scene has been buzzing with whispers of her forthcoming album and, finally, in May her first EP is coming out on Universal label Stranded, with the full LP due this fall.
Foto: Carl Von Arbin, Textile Art: Nadine Byrne

“She changes rock’n'roll history (2012 is spelled Sibille Attar)” reads the headline of a recent post on PSL, one of Sweden’s most influential music blogs – and this time it’s actually true.
“I’ve been experimenting with music for the last 15 years, with different bands and under different names. For some of us I guess it just takes longer to find home”, says the singer over Skype on a Friday afternoon in March.

Tired from last night’s wine she sits in her literal Stockholm home, the apartment she shares with her boyfriend, overlooking a typical Swedish pine forest. But there’s nothing typical about Sibille Attar. With a background in the art world she sees herself more as a creator than a musician or a songwriter. To her, it’s the wholeness that matters.
“It was important for me to do something that felt like it went straight from the heart to the brain to the ears. It took some time to get there. I tried working with different producers and it went really well, but I just didn’t feel that it was 100 percent me”.

At a February show in New York she mesmerized the audience with stripped down versions of her new songs. The settings are simple yet dramatic, but what really captures you is the sincerity with which she performs. At the piano Sibille Attar carries her heart on her sleeve.

“Music is my artistry and my mode of expression. To me, the point isn’t to be honest with anyone else. You need to be true to yourself and to do that I guess you need to use your own life”.
And there’s more than enough to pick from.

“My life hasn’t been very easy. I’ve been spending a lot of time just keeping my head above the surface. And under the surface there’s a lot of material. I think it’s important that you’ve experienced what you write about, that you know what you’re talking about. That’s also one of the reasons why this project has taken such a long time finding it’s form, I think”

Over the years she’s lived in Örebro, Stockholm and Glasgow. She has worked as a bartender, a picture framer, a kindergarten teacher and a bathroom tiler. But art and music both came natural to her.

“When I was 16 I didn’t really have a place to be, so I used to hang out at this theater in Stockholm, Teater Plaza. I was a hang-around, selling sandwiches. Then we started the band The Tourettes. We played for years with mixed success. During all that time I never really thought about music as my focus. I actually went to art school but gradually I realized I was good at music and that I loved being on stage. Slowly, slowly things have moved in this direction”.

The past 10 years she’s been active in a number of other bands: Speedmarket Avenue, [ingenting], as Little Red Corvette and now, finally, going solo. Her musical inspirations are eclectic – the day we talk she’s been listening to a mix of Kate Bush, old Stockholm punk and this lute based song she sends me, rightly described as “17th century shoegazer”. The lyrics come after she composes the music and although they’re somewhat autobiographical, the meaning is not always clear even to her.

“I just want to create these worlds in each song. I might write a lyric and it doesn’t make sense to me until six months later. I’m sort of living in oblivion, without knowing what I’m doing. But I trust my instincts, my intuition. Someone might call that irresponsible, but that’s the luxury with being an artist, that there aren’t any rules”

Writing in English comes natural to her, a good thing since Sibille Attar has her sights set outside Sweden and briefly returns to New York in May. For the moment, her other art is put aside.

“Right now I’m in this really nice, creative musical flow, so I’m focusing on that. I’m not very good at multitasking since I have a really short attention span. I’m not very complicated, I just need to have some fun. I like kicks!”

By Katarina Matsson

Available on Sincerely Yours

Swede indie psychadelic band Ikons, hailing from west coast town Gothenburg, is releasing a new album Life Rhythms in May. Here’s the first video from the release featuring a colorful spectrum of blue sky views, nuns in the air, happiness, hope and death.

http://srvc.se/ikons

By Lydia Kellam

Summer Heart – A Million Times from Jonas Börjesson on Vimeo.

Video by by Jonas Börjesson
soundcloud.com/summer-heart

Coaxing Korallreven’s song from the sweet shores of Samoa into the deep jungle with aural ecstasy, the Minneapolis-duo Elite Gymnastics balance on this break-beat rework beautifully. James Brooks and Josh Clancy turn Victoria Bergman’s chant of “ecstasy” into an homage of the drug-fueled raves of the mid-nineties. Drum’n'bass beats and an opening fletched from Final Fantasy, this remix is riddled with references to that time. Tributes come to a timestamp of this century when they salute -with a sample of- Whitney Houston. Bring a musical machete to get to this pure e(motion).

Watch below.

By Graham Tucker

Two Swedes and one American form one of the best dance acts right now. Period. Their talent as mega hit producers (Britney Spears “Toxic) can since 2009 be enjoyed in more likable outfit offering brilliant indie dance electro rock.
Miike Snow’s eponymous debut in 2009 found it’s way through beating hearts all over the world. On March 27th they are set to release the follow up “Happy to You” on Downtown/Universal Republic.

With the sophomore release Miike Snow are traveling further on their grand indie electro journey. They continue the formula of happy, jolly beats supported by darker and deeper lyrics. It takes a few times to hear this side of Miike Snow, on the first impression they seem to be the happiest band on the planet.

While the debut was more consistent in it’s sound, “Happy to You” offers a diverse mix. For instance, on gloomier and slower “Black Tin Box”, where we hear the whispering vocals from Swedish superstar Lykke Li.

“Happy to you” also make less emphasize on the electronic sound – probably due to the band’s hectic tour schedule.
The band is currently playing at SXSW, then hitting some American cities (and probably rest of the world) to spread their genius mix of bizarre dance pop and eclectic indie rock.
Tour dates here.
Below the video for “The Wave” which continues on the peculiar path director Andreas Nilsson (The Knife, Jose Gonzales, Peter Björn and John) started in “Paddling Out” video. With no disclosure of the plot the piece includes death, cops, donuts and a dry desert.

MIIKE SNOW – HAPPY TO YOU TRACK LIST
01 Enter the Jokers Lair
02 The Wave
03 Devil’s Work
04 Vase
05 God Help This Divorce
06 Bavarian #1 (say you will)
07 Pretender
08 Archipelago
09 Black Tin Box [ft. Lykke Li]
10 Paddling Out

Pre order new album “Happy to You” here

By Lydia Kellam

The amazing vocals of miss Lykke Li layered with the sounds of tropical drums, the chorus of Sweden’s indie rock soul outfit Deportees and heavy harmonies in a new collab tune just revealed on the songstress twitter.  “A New Name to Go By” expresses the brilliance of Swedish music right now.

(and with it’s breezy beats how much we long for summer.)

By Lydia Kellam

After the break up of Those Dancing Days, where does one go to for young, catchy female pop out of Stockholm?
Look no further than Amanda Mair. She’s seventeen and possesses the pipes to sing.
Amanda Mair recently released her self-titled debut album on Labrador Records and a lot of blogs are barking. Well beyond her years, Mair sings of things that many listeners, with the years that she lacks, could not fully emotionally grasp.

In grabbing songs like “Doubt,” Amanda manages to swoon her audience while her tinkling black keys become forceful aural objects to reckon with, and yet, those same keys of ivory welcome and make the listener feel at home in the song “House.”

In the music video “Sense”, Mair declares that it doesn’t make sense and many would agree that it makes none whatsoever why she isn’t Sweden’s female answer to Bieber for the babes with brains.

Get her debut album here

By Graham Tucker

Sa Sa Samoa, by Korallreven feat. Julianna Barwick
Directed by Filip Nilsson. Produced by Antoine Piechaud Cinematography by Fredrik Backar

Big Productions, Paris / Folke Film, Stockholm

www.korallreven.se
www.folkefilm.se


photos by Felix Swensson

Electric, poetic, and with a breeze of African beats, would summarize the feelings of Korallreven’s performance at Strand in Stockholm December 3.

A boy with a flower behind his ear. Vulnerable, slightly hidden, yet completely present. Black and white moving images of palm trees, cityscapes and birds are projected on the screen behind him, and the patterns throw their shadows across the singer’s white tee and pale face. The monochrome hues are mixed out with florescent strobes and the music is of that rare kind that makes you both want to slow dance, cheek to cheek on a deserted dance floor covered in confetti, and rave until lunch time the following day.

Two pretty boys warmed up the crow with dancey tunes, although Henrik of Air France, was up until now unfamiliar with the concept of having djs before a show. Korallreven live set is tight, with no encores. The crowd is happy, at least for now, filled with beats to keep the heart in tune, come winter.

By Ebba Åkerman

Serenades – Oceans (White Sea Remix) by serenadesofficial

Kornél Kovács – Down Since ’92 (BARN 006)
Studio Barnhus, 2011
Video shot in Stockholm, late autumn 2011

Kornél Kovács – Down Since ’92 (Studio Barnhus, BARN 006) by Kornél Kovács

Get it here

Fort Fairfield – Patience (With Cosima Lamberth) by fortfairfield