2 hours ago
4
Swedish producer Olof Dreijer is best known for projects with his sibling Karin: namely their duo the Knife, plus Karin’s solo act Fever Ray, with whom he created four brilliant tracks on 2023 album Radical Romantics. For all that his beats on these records often had African-Caribbean-Latin syncopation, they also had a Scandinavian winter gloom.
Conversely, his debut solo album seems to crane upwards towards sunlight like flowers – and each of the tracks has a floral name. Dance heads will already be familiar with some of them (having appeared on EPs stretching back to 2023) but together they show quite how distinctive Dreijer’s own musical accent is: you can tell it’s him sometimes from just half a second of music.
His melodies squiggle through the air like a beach ball punted into a strong breeze; distorted notes rear up in surprise or cock their heads quizzically. The rhythms recall cumbia, kuduro, dancehall, techno and more but are complicated with fiendish funk and anti-quantised detailing, and charismatic guest vocalists from Sudan (MaMan), Colombia (Diva Cruz) and South Africa (Toya Delazy) go toe-to-toe with these beats.
Later, the drums ebb away for contemplative studies in metal strings and ambient tones, and if these are a tiny bit less original than the dance tracks, they still move with the same impetuous rhythmic sensibility. Dreijer has created his own walled garden of psychedelia, conjuring the light and scent of a summer in bloom.
