Album Review: Dungen – 4 [Subliminal Sounds]
Dungen appear to be a band in transition. Changing from the more auteur driven set-up of previous releases where frontman Gustav Ejstes was Dungen, a one man band in the studio, and bringing along some touring musicians for short stints in between recording sessions. Now Dungen has been reconfigured, 4 was recorded by a full band leaving Ejstes to mainly focus on vocals and piano. He is accompanied by a host of musicians who have revitalized Dungen.
The album is rife with their signature psych-folk sound. Where 2007’s Tio Bitar saw Ejstes sounding like he needs a new approach to Dungen with tracks starting to melt into previous releases, 4 sounds is an album that see Dungen at the top of their game. Ejstes voice is still the seed of their sound, with it’s eerie ability to fill the gaps in the orchestration, like a warm glowing core in the middle of the mix. The fact that he sings in Swedish, for those, like me, that don’t speak Swedish, only enhances his ability to use his voice like an instrument and not make the vocals sit on top of the music, but reside inside of the sound. Whether he is whispering or belting, his voice bleeds into the sonic landscape seamlessly.
Despite the beauty of Ejstes voice, the album is all the more ambitious for it’s attempts to focus more on their instrumental work. Sparse, single note guitar melodies come out thick enough to bury the countryside, but never thick enough to bury the interplay between the piano and the strings, which dive in an out of each other’s melodies.
“Satt Att Se” takes the album’s orchestral philosophy to the extreme, subtly piano driven, jazz informed drums that never settle into a beat for more than a few breaths, twitchy guitar lines laced with distortion, anxious strings subdividing the paced piano and guitar. The genre salad that is Dungen has never been so adept at incorporating their wide array of influences, all the while remaining distinctively Dungen. Instrumentals, like the subsequent “Malera’s Finest,” verge on ecstatic pop-minimalism, yet they are tidy enough to avoid the tedium it could slip into, and are promptly followed by tracks such as “Der Tar Tid,” which inform the odd juxtaposition of keys and mood which may only be described as deliriously, rapturously depressed. Even the Hendrix inspired jam “Samtidig 1” thrives on that juxtaposition of Sad Bastard folk balladry and the joyous exploration of sonic capabilities throughout it’s three and a quarter minutes of 60’s guitar jam.
4 is an intricate, fragile structure that never becomes complacent. It is set on surprising expectations, from murky balladry, to intense psych-rock jams, the album is beautiful collection that understands the art of the album, and how that is a different structure than a olio of songs. Ejstes and co. have revitalized the sound of Dungen and made one of the best albums of the year.
