Posts Tagged ‘solblomma’
Tuesday, June 10th, 2025
How to sum it up? The best I can offer is Pink Floyd meets Judy Garland, somewhere over a rainbow.
She says it is the track she loves the most and it is called ‘Eugen’.
Every track on the album refers to a different character and each has their own story to tell.
Some of them have regular names such as Kjell, Eugen, Jasmine, Solvej, and Mats while others carry a more familiar moniker, like Brigitte Bardot and Don Quijote.
Trying to figure out the meaning of a Solblomma song is like challenging Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. In fact I’m surprised Einstein isn’t one of the characters, he would have blended in perfectly.
Solblomma also describes it as “very mainstream”, which means she’s stepping well outside her comfort zone, which is anything but.
Here is a sample snippet of the lyrics:
“It’s been a long time/the wine fell from the clouds
You turned on the music/and asked me to come in”
Hm.
And then, later, some lines that have significance for me in an obscure way.
“It’s been a long time/we rode our bikes on the highway
and swam in the bay/where’s the blue scarf?”
The cognoscenti will know that Oldham Athletic, a founder member of the Premier League in 1992 and who play in blue, was promoted back into the Football League’s fourth tier last Sunday after too long away from it and 35 years since they last won a promotion.
And you see that’s what I’ve said before about Solblomma; she doesn’t write nonsense lyrics any more than Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) or Voltaire (Candide) or Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men in a Boat) or Alexei Sayle (Barcelona Plates) wrote nonsense prose.
She writes stuff that you can easily fit to your psyche, your history and your view of the world.
But then the final lines,
“I have pigs in my stomach/they moved in/one morning in July
That’s when/they came”
do test me, I admit! Were they in blankets?
Musically, having deserted her trademark electronic sound last time she’s very much back there on this occasion with a constant repeating riff (this time a synthesised bass note gnawing its way into your subconscious), following an intro that sounds as if it is played on a toy single octave piano and a tune that might accompany a merry-go-round funfair ride.
How to sum it up? The best I can offer is Pink Floyd meets Judy Garland, somewhere over a rainbow.
It isn’t psychy but it isn’t that far off it and could easily gravitate that way.
There are many avenues left for her to navigate yet.
/David Bentley
Solblomma (Sweden) – Eugen (single/future album track)
Tags: david bentley, Eugen, recension, solblomma
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Friday, May 2nd, 2025
And that’s Solblomma through and through. She lives on a little planet of her own, on the cusp of normality and the world of dreams and nightmares. (David Bentley, Nordic Music Central)
Solblomma, quite possibly the most quirky, enigmatic artist ever to appear in these pages, took a lengthy break since her last album, ‘Tiptoe into limbo’, almost 18 months.
I described that album, which was her take on Dante Alighieri’s allegorical poem La Divina Commedia in a modern day setting as being her most satisfactory to date, excellently conceived, written, recorded and produced.
But she hasn’t been snoozing since then by any means, rather working on another album, ‘Alla var där’ (‘Everyone was there’) which will be released on 15th August and in which, as the title suggests, she returns to her native Swedish language and for the entire album.
The album tells a story in every song, all songs are titled with a name and each of those names is a character with their own story to tell, some of them nondescript; others bizarre.
And that’s how it is with those characters’ names too, varying between the everyday (Kjell, Eugen, Jasmine, Solvej, Mats…) and the unlikely (Brigitte Bardot, Don Quijote…). ‘Torkel’ is but one of them.
And that’s Solblomma through and through. She lives on a little planet of her own, on the cusp of normality and the world of dreams and nightmares.
I have tried to get to the root of the philosophy behind it all but have drawn a blank so far. Does the album title and the strapline that accompanies it (‘No one is here – but everyone was there’) in some way reference quantum physics and the possibility of being in two places at once? Like Schrödingers Cat was both alive and dead depending on how you looked at it?
Or are these just fairy stories recounted to tease?
Frankly, I haven’t a clue. And that is what makes her so enigmatic.
In ‘Torkel’’s case “a worn out tram is going up a hill”. Later it is “going down the valley” and then “into a tunnel”. (NB. She has a thing about trains and travels the world to ride or photograph or video special ones).
If it is Metrolink Manchester she should be grateful it turned up at all.
In each case it has left behind the one passenger that matters – her. Thrown into the lyrics are random observations like “I don’t have any mittens” and “Puccini is playing” and “the passengers have lost weight”, which have no apparent significance.
And by the end she has changed her tune, from “come back, pick me up” to “leave me, just keep going”.
The only handle I could get on it is that it is perhaps making some obscure reference to an obscure subject, Chaos Theory, in which even tiny initial differences can lead to significantly different outcomes over time, like the ‘butterfly effect’ whereby a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon could potentially trigger a tornado in the US Midwest, thousands of miles away.
We are all intertwined in every way possible. If I don’t finish this write up tonight Solblomma won’t read it until later than she should have done and that in turn will affect what she does and everyone else she knows and so it goes on.
Ok, enough of this, my brain’s hurting.
Musically, (and I recall her doing this on other Swedish language songs) she has sacrificed her trade mark electro pop sound and melody for a simple bass-led riff, assisted by the clanging sound of the tram, that is actually danceable if you are so inclined.
The song is released on Walpurgis Eve, the eve of May Day on which witches are held to ride to “an appointed rendezvous” in the culture of many countries across Northern and Eastern Europe including Sweden. I don’t think that is directly connected to the release date but with Solblomma you just never know.
The enigma continues.
Solblomma (Sweden) – Torkel (single)
Tags: låt, sång, singel, solblomma, Torkel
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Tuesday, February 13th, 2024
Most pop artists of today seems to look for, and tries to copy, ”the flavour of the week”. Not Solblomma. Solblomma moves through time and space in another direction.
Tags: magic man, outer space, solblomma
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Friday, January 12th, 2024
Solblomma has been described, quite accurately, as perhaps the quirkiest artist ever to come out of Sweden and while there is a lingering degree of eccentricity about her latest album, the conceptual ‘Tiptoe into Limbo,’ it is also the case that she displays a sense of maturity in it, the sort of maturity that says she knows the bridge between non-conformity and mainstream acceptance is not a wide one.
The album’s 11 compositions combine to tell a mystical tale set around Dante’s Divine Comedy but interwoven with the mundane reality of daily life in the 21st century. The story takes place in Hell, and in this interpretation Solblomma takes Dante’s place as she undertakes a journey through the three kingdoms that are thought to await man after death – Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Paradise) – with the Roman poet Virgil (he of the Aeneid) in tow, through two halls and the nine circles of Hell.
Together they encounter the underworld’s immortal ferryman Charon, cross the River Acheron, and voyage down through the funnel of Hell. They tiptoe into Limbo, meet Kerberos, the multi-headed Hound of Hades, fight with lions, hide in the Charles Wain (Big Dipper) and then…check into a hotel.
The absurdity of these situations is on a par with those of Beckett and Camus.
Musically, this is undoubtedly Solblomma’s most satisfactory album to date.
Great imagination has been deployed in the use of synthesisers. I thought I’d heard most of what they are capable of at one time or another but there are sounds here I hadn’t previously encountered and ditto drum machines, producing here a heavier sound than you normally hear and some pieces that could have been penned by Vangelis or Jean-Michel Jarre.
There is a constant momentum to the album which rarely fluctuates, thus underlining the concept of a journey and the tracks range between soft vocal ones to a lively, poppy, orchestral synths and booming percussion dance track, to laid back groove, to mysterious pieces with complex rhythms, to this fascinating one, ‘Charles’ Wain (Circle VI)’, a softer piano piece to open, set to trap beats, which is more poppy, with a big melody and with Polly Scattergood-like lyrics to finish it off and complete with her ‘delivery’.
Nordic Music Central’s Songs of the Year 2023
Tags: Nordic music central, solblomma
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Saturday, August 19th, 2023
Back in April we ran the rule over the first track to be released from Solblomma’s concept album that chronicles Dante’s journey through the three kingdoms that are thought to await man after death: Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Paradise) and via two halls and the nine circles of Hell. The album will be released in November.
I said at the time “this is possibly the most powerful piece I’ve heard from Solblomma”.
Since then two others have been released, namely ‘Killer Bee {Circle II)’ and ‘Good Swimmer {Circle III).
We’ve arrived at the fourth one now, ‘Drowning in Greed (circle IV)’ which she describes thus in the sleeve notes:
“We could jump between the trees. We could dance below the clouds. A few bluebirds are passing by. I can build my dream to fit the main road. There are machines designed for that.”
If that doesn’t make any sort of sense to you join the club of people who haven’t yet grasped what Solblomma is about and her weird take on real life, fantasy, and the twilight zone between them. After a while you will sense that as bizarre as it seems she appears to have the ability to create the sort of oddball parallel universe that we come closest to when we dream.
I don’t know how many members there are in Solblomma’s fan club but I’ll bet they are all members of MENSA.
I’ve often used words like ‘zany’, ‘screwball’ and ‘quirky’ when describing Solblomma but it’s long past the time now to put them away.
These are serious compositions wrapped around lyrics that fall between deep philosophical discussions and the language they used to use on ‘Bill & Ben, the Flowerpot Men’ when I was a kid.
Musically you won’t find many works that combine experimental electronica, a catchy piano melody, random percussion ‘noises off’, funky synths, an equally funky beat and which is danceable into the bargain.
When this album comes out I fully expect to hear it in full on a highbrow radio programme like Night Tracks on BBC Radio 3 because that is where it belongs.
David James Bentley for Nordic Music Central
Tags: Dante, solblomma
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Sunday, July 2nd, 2023
Den tredje singeln från albumet heter just Tiptoe into limbo (Circle 1). Solblomma och Vergilius har nu precis korsat Acheron och kommit fram till Limbo. Här måste de vistas ett slag tillsammans med hedningar innan färden går vidare.
Jag gillar ju verkligen känslan i låten. Den bygger upp stämningen och känns lite förväntansfull, samtidigt som den är lite kuslig. Låten i sig är uppbyggd av synthar och slagverk och det är en skön retrokänsla över produktionen. Jag hade ju kunnat tänka mig denna typ av låt och produktion på duon Electronics första album. Snyggt!
Så följ med på tå tillsammans med Solblomma ner i helvetet på nya singeln. Albumet Tiptoe Into Limbo släpps sedan den 3:e November.
Photo by Jonas Dahlberg
Tags: Dante, inferno, popmusik, solblomma, Solblomma Hedin, tiptoeintolimbo
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Thursday, May 4th, 2023
Photo by Jonas Dahlberg
Solblomma tar oss med till Helvetet på kommande albumet Tiptoe Into Limbo som släpps den 19:e Maj. Låtarna på albumet är nämligen inspirerade av berättelsen Dantes Inferno från Den Gudomliga Komedin. Vi får följa henne på en resa genom de olika cirklarna som utgör Helvetet, en resa Solblomma gör tillsammans med den romerske poeten Vergilius.
Först ut från albumet är singeln Pale like a Clown. Låten inleds filmiskt med dramatiska stråkar och piano och övergår sedan i ett lekfullt syntharrangemang och skön rytm. Känslan i låten fick mig att tänka på ett soundtrack till ett TV-spel, vilket någonstans känns helt rätt då det handlar om musik som ska ta dig ned i Helvetet. Ett äventyr kräver sin äventyrsmusik. Då kan förväntningarna inför vad som skall komma byggas upp.
Jag skickade över en knippe frågor till Solblomma om arbetet med låten och albumet.
Hur föddes idén till att göra musik till Dantes Inferno?
Jag har tidigare gjort ett tema-album om den nya Messias, ett auditivt skådespel där jag spelade alla roller. Ännu ett sådant ville jag åstadkomma. La Divina Commedia är ett skaldestycke som tillhör oss alla och envar, fritt att tolka och reproducera. Jag tänkte; häri kan jag uppfinna mitt eget Inferno, stoppa in vad som helst, hur som helst och vara fri såsom Dante en gång var när han skrev det på 1300-talet. Jag återupprättar Helvetets nio cirklar, men omskapar dem, gör dem till mina.
Hur arbetade du fram din alternativa berättelse utifrån Dantes original?
Jag utgick från den synd som bestraffas i var cirkel, behöll synden men förändrade utförandet av vedergällningen, justerade rollistan en smula och miljön där det hela ägde rum. Min väg genom Helvetet är otäck men slutet gott, såsom i Dantes original.
Var det en utmaning att hitta musikbild för varje cirkel i Infernot?
Faktiskt inte så svårt alls. I dödsrikets nio kretsar finns inga planeter och inget ljus. Där råder evigt mörker och tröstlös plåga och till på köpet står det skrivet på Helvetets port: ”Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch ́entrate” (lämna allt hopp ni som går in.) När jag och min producent Håkan Folkesson väl befann oss bland cirklarna gjorde klangerna det också!
Det känns som ett väldigt ambitiöst projekt. Hur länge har du jobbat på låtarna?
I nära nog två år har vi arbetat med detta album. Vi ville ha allt perfekt i betydelsen; komma så nära den ursprungliga visionen kring ljudbild, stämning och tonlandskap som bara gick.
Först ut från albumet är Pale like a Clown, som då utspelas i första tamburen i Helvetet. Vilken känsla ville du fånga med den första låten?
Att vilddjuren smyger bakom träden, natten är djup och mörk och jag vilse, kall om benen och blek som en clown. Vergilius väntar på mig i skogens sista hörn. Han håller min hand och vi står på perrongen. Resan ska börja. Men färjekarlen Karon trilskas och vill inte ta mig med. Vergilius övertalar honom. Vi tar oss över Acheron och vidare in till sorgestaden. Det är känslan jag ville fånga i albumets första sång.
Jag älskar låtens syntproduktion. Hur jobbade du fram arrangemanget till låten?
Vi har i så hög grad som möjligt sökt skapa ett arrangemang som ska återspegla dödsriket och den orgie av mörker, plågor, förtvivlan och vanmakt som råder där. I första sången Pale like a clown står jag och Vergilius på tröskeln till alltsammans. Men vi vet ändå – vi är bara på besök! Färden genom underjorden går mot slutstationen, där hoppet står och möter oss med blommor i sin korg.
Håkan säger om musik och arr:
”Urspungsidén var att hålla allting 100% elektroniskt. Jag hade lyssnat en hel del på tidig techno, house, ambient typ Psyche/BFC – Elements & B12 – Electric Soma och fascinerats av hur avskalat men ändå kraftfullt det var. De första skisserna var mer åt det hållet men sedan tog låtmänniskan i mig över och tillsammans med Solblommas texter och melodier blev slutresultatet något annat. Många ljud på albumet kommer från syntar och trummaskiner. En del piano och stråkar blev det ändå till sist. Jag fastnade främst för Rolands maskinpark, eftersom jag för tillfället tyckte om deras mjuka analoga ljud mest: TR-808 & TR-606, Jupiter-4, Juno-106, System-100 mm. En del andra favoriter har också smugit sig in på albumet, som t ex KORG M1 & Yamaha FS1R. Det finns definitivt en 90-tals-influens i många ljudval. Arbetet med rytm och arr blev en interaktiv process, som pendlade mellan spontan känsla och funktion, med målet att hitta något jag inte gjort eller hört förut”.
Vad kan lyssnarna förvänta sig från resten av resan ner i helvetet tillsammans med Vergilius och dig?
Efter det att Vergilius och jag trippat på tå in i Limbo, där allting är ganska lugnt och stillsamt, åker vi vidare. Vi möter poeter, gamla grekiska filosofer, trehövdade hunden Kerberos, Minos och mördarflygfän. Men i dödsriket kan man inte dö, hur dödlig man än må vara. Vi lurar Lucifer och närmar oss Skärselden. I den sista och nionde kretsen välver sig en öppen himmel och på den solen, månen och stjärnorna. Tiden går; dagar följs av nätter. Snart stundar ändhållplatsen och Paradiset. Bara när du genomgått den mörka världen får du återse den ljusa och kärleken som väntar dig på bergets högsta to
Tags: Dante, dengudomligakomedin, helvetet, inferno, intervju, ladivinacommedia, solblomma, Solblommahedin, thedivinecomedy
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Thursday, May 4th, 2023
Photo by Jonas Dahlberg
Solblomma (Sweden) – Pale Like A Clown [Hall 1] (Single/Track From Forthcoming Album)
It’s been a while since Solblomma was last here, back in October 2021, just after we started, with a video for a re-released song called ‘The Station,’ one which, she said, “is about what all my songs are about. Waiting. Waiting for something … I do not know what”.
She’s usually highly productive so I should have guessed the 18-month gap during which I’ve waited for some new material was accounted for by the writing of an album. (Apart from the fact that she’s involved in all manner of other pursuits including theatre, children’s books, performing as a clown and writing headache inducing IQ puzzles).
Never underestimate this lady’s brainpower.
And what an album; one that gives her free rein to experiment with a ‘concept’; something she was born to do.
‘Tiptoe into limbo’, which will be released on May 19th is a monster of a thing and I suppose a natural consequence to where she was going with the 2016 compilation album, the last one, ‘Zombic Bombs and Dr Pouts.’
Its 11 compositions combine to tell a mystical tale set around Dante’s Divine Comedy but interwoven with the mundane reality of daily life in the 21st century in an epic production to rival that of the character Rael’s underworld adventure in Genesis’ ‘The Lamb lies down on Broadway’.
The story takes place in Hell, in Dante Alighieri’s allegorical poem La Divina Commedia. In his comedy, set around Easter in the year 1300, Dante undertakes a journey through the three kingdoms that are thought to await man after death: Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Paradise).
But in Solblomma’s liberal interpretation of the work, the author is excluded. Apparently and unlike U2, he’s already found what he’s looking for. Instead, she makes the perilous journey herself, then with the Roman poet Virgil in tow, through two halls and the nine circles of Hell.
Along the way they get to encounter the underworld’s immortal ferryman Charon, cross the River Acheron, and voyage down through the funnel of Hell. They tiptoe into Limbo, meet Kerberos, the multi-headed Hound of Hades, fight with lions, hide in the Charles Wain (the star cluster in the Big Dipper) and then…check into a hotel!
Only Solblomma could end such an epic journey at a Travelodge reception desk.
This is the first track, ‘Pale like a clown’, released as the first single prior to the album, and possibly the only one as the album is only three weeks away.
She sets the scene:
“I’m lost in the woods and pale as a clown. Virgil, take my hand! The sun doesn’t belong here. We can tune the violin. Something good is waiting on the highest hill.”
Don’t get it? Well you haven’t entered the Solblomma psyche yet, that’s all. She gets you thinking right from the off. Yes, clowns are pale but they are also colourful as she well knows from dressing up as one. In what way is a clown a metaphor for pale?
Musically it starts off with a sound like a cruise liner leaving port; Phileas Fogg starting off on his 80-day trek around the world perhaps, and to a subdued melody not that dissimilar to Urban Cookie Collective’s ‘The Key, the Secret,’ which ticks a huge box for me straight away.
Then a powerful string section comes in which could be the prelude to a piece of symphonic metal before the main theme arrives, a peculiar melange of pop, electronic and even trip hop, wrapped up in break beats and that unique vocal of hers which can sound like Kate Bush on helium. And other substances.
Make no mistake about it; this is a composition, not a song. And for good measure you can dance to it. I’m not sure what Virgil would have made of that. When he isn’t working on his Aeneid.
This is possibly the most powerful piece I’ve heard from Solblomma, and I’ll certainly be reviewing the full album.
And for good measure she sets aside the heavily accentuated voice for a moment towards the end and proves, as if anyone ever doubted it, that she can sing perfectly sweetly in a ‘normal’ voice if she wants to.
I was talking only the other day about Denmark’s Slagger Lund, a character if ever there was one and how the music business needs them desperately to counteract the TV talent show blandness that has overwhelmed it in recent years.
Solblomma comes right out of the same mould.
The single is streaming now via Blomkraft Records, her own label.
Tags: Dante, Davidbentley, dengudomligakomedin, helvetet, inferno, ladivinacommedia, solblomma, Solblommahedin, thedivinecomedy
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Wednesday, April 26th, 2023
Platform 7, Gare du Nord: “Soon I tiptoe into Limbo”
Tags: commediadivina, Dante, dengudomligakomedin, Garedunord, music, newalbum, solblomma, Solblomma Hedin, thedivinecomedy, tiptoeintolimbo
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Wednesday, March 8th, 2023
Photo by Jonas Dahlberg
Tags: album, artist, festival, solblomma, Solblomma Hedin
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