Dungen – Blandband
There are few contemporary bands out there currently that I find more satisfying than Sweden’s Dungen. Gustav Ejstes’ approach to making music has such an incredible attention to sound (very much like a Hip-Hop producer) that I hesitate to call it “neo-psych”. The first time I heard a Dungen track was on Matthew Africa’s radio show on KALX, and I was convinced it was some super rare material from the late 60s he’d dug up. When I heard the same song (the instrumental “C. Visar Vagen” which serves as my closing theme music on my radio show) in Amoeba later that week I was able to find out that in fact it came from this group and their album “Tio Batar,” one of my faves of 2007. 2008’s “4” picked up where “Tio Batar” left off and was once again one of my ten favorite records of the year.
On first listen to “Skit I Allt” (which means something to the effect of “Fuck it All” or “Fuck Everything”, a great sentiment, but a little problematic for the FCC even in Swedish) I’ll admit that I was initially disappointed. The material didn’t jump out at me in quite the same fashion as the two prior releases. But during a road trip I listened to all three albums back to back and discovered that of the three, “Skit I Allt” had the strongest songs and proved to be the most cohesive and enjoyable listen from start to finish of the bunch. Some of this could be related to the sentiment behind the title, but it must also be related to the fact that this record features the regular touring members of the band much more prominently than in past recordings, which were primarily Ejstes on all variety of instrumentation. The instrumental “Blandband” (which translates as “Mixtape” from Swedish) is my chosen representative from the album, which features some bright piano work along with break-neck paced drums, floating flute and guitar and simply irresistible hand claps. I can gaurantee with 100% certainty that not only will this record be on my year end list of the best releases, but that this track in particular will be the closing theme for my “Best of 2010” show on KPFK’s Melting Pot.