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If like me then you’d have felt slightly betrayed and deflated by Dungen’s last full length ‘Tio Bitar’. As an album on its own merits it was a competent and clinically crafted body of work. Its problem was that it was signed off as an aural work of Dungen and a follow up to 2004’s ’Ta det lungt’. Despite brimming with confidence and perhaps a hint of conceit, the deserved critical acclaim attached to that 2004 masterpiece (seriously there is no other way to describe it) was a resounding death knell to ’Tio Bitar’. The bar had been substantial raised, the spotlight turned upon Dungen’s leader Gustav Ejstes, the expectancy crushing the anticipation choking. ’Tio Bitar’ fell short, excellent by any one else’s standards agreed, yet for Ejstes the impeccably woven artistry and finite attention to detail that had revealed itself with disturbing aplomb had for once forsaken him. In short it was disjointed, uneven and most importantly a victim of its predecessors success.
I don‘t mind admitting that ‘4’ arrived in our gaff under a cloud of considerable caution and hesitancy. Nervously we peeked in while armed with trepidation. ’satt att se’ the opener softly drew us in almost spellbound by its slender considered finesse. Just shy of thirty eight minutes later only the dead silence following the sets last laid brush stroke broke that spell. In that (by today’s album standards) brief spell we were enchanted and beguiled for ‘4’ is a beautifully conceived and deeply intoxicating body of work and it should be said for the record the true and natural successor to ‘Ta det lungt’. This succulent ten track pan psychedelic suite is a finitely woven labyrinthine bouquet of kaleidoscopic leylines reaching out from the past, present and a future to come, a head swirling voyage that radiates a subtle inward beauty and draws from a lushly exquisite myriad of timeless melodic languages drawn and dappled succulently in embracing welts of lounge, west coast (as on the silken honey tipped swirling sun speckled symphony ‘Ingenting ar sig likt’ - very much recalling Le Mans) and prog all diligently fed with a psyche persona.
‘4’ delicately shift shapes throughout, mixing up the moods and the dynamics from the romantically pastoral florets of the tumbling cascades of the bewitched folk motifs on the Drake-ish ‘maleras finest’ and the parting ‘bandhagen’ to the alluring cosmic lounge funk of the bracingly sophisticated ’det tar tid’ itself freewheeling in aural orbs more commonly navigated by the likes of the Assemblers and the Superimposers after that is - a brief sojourn in the company of the much missed Le Mans (again). Those fearing the omission of the trademark psych freak outs - fear not - ’samtidigt 1’ should adequately fill your Hendrix pangs with its blissed out lysergic blues inclines while those wanting your fix of acid hazed grooves will do well to set your hi-fi controls for the heart of its half cousin ‘samtidigt 2‘. Elsewhere there’s the strangely entrancing tug of the baroque florets ’mina damer och fasaner’ which without warning has an incurable knack for shimmying in passages of zig zagging fuzz packed side winding arabesque motifs.
Best moment without doubt comes courtesy of ‘fredag’ - initially taking its cue from White Noise’s ‘your hidden dreams’ and as though finding itself fed through some Floyd-ian kaleidoscope wherein elements of Van Der Graaf Generator and Goblin have somehow been tie dyed in the process thus creating a captivating crystalline prog odyssey of the highest order that’ll simply blow your inner minds eye.
A faultless return to form, ‘4’ finds Ejstes and Co back on radar and traversing fast into undiscovered out there psyche territories.
www.subliminalsounds.se
Key tracks -
Fredag
Mina damer och fasaner
Ingenting ar sig likt
MARK BARTON
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