Written by Bjarte Edvardsen
The Stockholm-band Kriget released a new record just a couple weeks ago called Dystopico. The first time I heard it I instantly knew two things: 1. It was the best Swedish music I had heard in a long while. 2. I had a lot more listening ahead of me to do this record justice.
Clarity. If there is one thing I truly appreciate from a band it is clarity. By that I mean a band which sounds like they're heading into a clear direction. Whether the band makes energetic music, atmospheric music, emotional music, chaotic music, minimal music, groovy music, funky music; I don't really care. What I care about is that the band makes me feel something particular and that it is obvious what they're trying to do. A band which is just almost energetic, almost emotional or almost groovy is a band holding something back and therefore producing music which sounds dull and uninspired. Kriget is the opposite of such a band.
Dystopico is a crystal clear record. To me, every single sound on this record seems to be co-operating in harmony and working together to form a distinct type of music which I'm struggling to describe with one or two words. Yes, that's my fancy definition of what a genre is, right there. And I think the main reason why I'm struggling is that it simply is not possible.
Since I'm not going to talk to you about what genres this music might best fit into, at least not quite yet, I'll talk to you about flies instead. The opening song 'Sleeping With Buddha' starts with the sound of some flies buzzing around accompanied by a beat. Flies have served as the most annoying creatures on this planet throughout my life so far and I had no idea the sound of them could set a unique atmosphere to start off a record like Dystopico. After they've buzzed around for a while the song evolves into a groovy and noisy spectacle with multiply layered beats, noises, rewinded guitar grooves and a saxophone being played very fast and rhythmically. This saxophone is one of the key factors to the brilliance of Dystopico to me. It also plays an important role in two of my other favourite songs; 'Holy Mountain' and 'Don't Worry, It Will Be Over Soon' where the same pace and the same rhythmical technique is hard to resist. On one of their promo photos the three band members in Kriget appears headless. This illustrates their music quite well as there is no vocal throughout Dystopico. It's a piece of work crafted entirely by their hands and feet.
'Kriget' is Swedish for 'The War'. Yes, I think that describes it quite well. Kriget sounds like the making of a war. The already mentioned 'Sleeping With Buddha' have several times created a fascinating image in my head of a locomotive rushing through a deserted landscape. Other songs are clearly influenced by industrial music and could easily resemble a war-making factory. Some dude wrote 'Kriget is not electronic - it's mechanical' to promote the record. I find that description very spot-on even though it's not true, because it's interesting how Kriget has made electronic music which I often tend to forget is actually electronic while listening to it. Their ability to add organic sounds throughout the record is an important reason to that fact. I'd also like to add another comment to the aforementioned quote: Kriget's music is psychedelic. Oh, and did I mention groovy? Groovy, sometimes in a Dungen-kind-of-way? I can't promise you Kriget has been directly inspired by Dungen, but I'd like make a wild guess these two bands dig each other's music or that they definitely would if they were to came across each other's records. I think that's as close as I can come to a reference. Best to leave it at that.
I told you earlier that Kriget comes from Sweden. Now I'm not so sure anymore. They must come from the land of Groovyness.
