Vinyl of the week
Svart Ridå – APONIA
When the Curtain Goes Up, Svart Ridå, this three-stage rocket. Dressed like old men in white shirts, black trousers and shoes, and black ties, like The Blues Brothers. Perhaps completely off the wall to some people, but I think I get it. They are absolutely taking the piss out of patriarchy, touché and they do it so bloody well. “Take me seriously, for fuck’s sake, look how I conform,” while in reality it is one big: “Fuck you, I’ll do whatever I want.” On the outside, they stand there at Way Out West in their uniform, almost rigid appearance in stark contrast to their explosive and physical performance on stage. Svart Ridå absolutely stand out, and they have more than deserved all the positive attention they have received recently. And the way they play. Only three of them in the band, yet they sound like many more. They wear out the skins on the drum kit and shred the strings on bass and guitar, without it ever feeling forced or contrived. This is pure, unadulterated rock: guitar noise, improvisation, swinging arms, headbanging and powerful emotional outbursts delivered straight from the spine. I realise I’m stating the obvious when I say that this is a band who own the stage. The music is raw and played with incredible authority and confidence, on a level with the biggest bands of the 1990s. Like a reincarnation from a bygone era, they suddenly appear. The openings are heavy as lead, dystopian, frightening, direct, fearless, full of bloody-minded determination only to unfold into beautiful melancholy and deeply emotional storytelling the very next moment. There is Nirvana’s fragility, distortion and sudden explosion, attitude and attack, only to land moments later in that distinctly Swedish melancholy and emotional depth. We are thrown from the extremes of punk, down into dreamy Slowdive, through The Hives and Jeff Beck, before finally being lulled to sleep by Kent. Their performance and expression are so strong that they never need to shout for your attention. Instead, you suddenly find yourself standing there, swaying in a trance, mouth open and eyes fixed. They clang, they wail, they roar in unison, just like the very best. So come on, lads, come and have a look. All you bands full of blokes trying so bloody hard. Svart Ridå have already cracked it long before their death and before the curtain has even come down. And as for why I skipped half of my Way Out West headliner, Gorillaz: the LP APONIA is 100 per cent brilliant, just buy it. But as a live act, Svart Ridå make you tremble.
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David Bowie – Reality
David Bowie – Reality. Unlike last week’s LP, Silverhead, I remember exactly when I bought this record, Reality by David Bowie. It came after Heathen (2002), and Bowie was then going through a period of resurrection and a more down-to-earth phase. There may well be people out there who disagree with me, but to me this felt more like back to the roots, an art performance, and more like the period of 1976–77. A period which, in my opinion, is one of his very best, with Station to Station, Low and Heroes. This long period in between, starting in 1993 and lasting until 2002, felt to me as if I had lost my great hero from my younger years. From my 80s teenage years, with my Kermit-green DIY speakers, a Lenco 75 turntable and a 35-watt Marantz 1040 amplifier. When the spark was lit again for me, it was with Heathen. A little anecdote is that Bowie was actually in Gothenburg that year to promote Heathen. I still have the LP, but I never got it signed. The queue was long, stretching all the way down and past the Sjöfartsmuseum. So, on 15 September 2003, when Reality was released in Europe, I had it marked in my calendar. I bought the CD at Bengans in Gothenburg, too, and it landed straight in the glove compartment of my Golf. It wasn’t available as an LP, you see. About 20 days later, I became a father for the first time. My first daughter, eager and curious about the world, was born six weeks prematurely. She was due around Christmas Eve, but right then my life took a new turn. Bowie and I travelled back and forth to the neonatal unit. My entire focus was on my daughter, with Bowie soothing me into some kind of harmony. Reality received its share of criticism. Bowie had stopped trying to be the man who changed music and had instead become very good at simply being David Bowie. Everyone agreed that the album was well made. Many thought it was intelligent; some found it vague, with strange lyrics, a little pretentious, leaving the listener with a whole lot of questions. And that, in my opinion, is the most interesting thing about it. Like Low, it makes you think as you listen. The album demands your attention. Something new appears each time. It doesn’t get “worn out” by being played on repeat. It can quietly and happily sit there in the CD player of my white Volkswagen Golf, back and forth from work to the hospital, home again, and round and round. Reality is Bowie as a more mature version of himself: guitar-driven, dark, melodic and down-to-earth, with electronic veils and a distinct sense of reflection.
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Silverhead – Silverhead
I honestly can't remember when I bought Silverhead, but I'm fairly sure I picked it up at Satisfaction in Haga. Martin was probably behind the counter, while Claes was somewhere in the background, towel in hand, wiping the worst of the dust off one of the Arthur Lee & LOVE records. A special thought goes to Claes. He was the one who introduced me to LOVE. "Have you heard this album? It's brilliant." And just like that, Forever Changes changed hands. Full credit to Claes. He worked hard in the world of vinyl, surrounded by record sleeves, crates of LPs and a never-ending mountain of paperwork, until one day the air simply went out of him and his health finally gave way. Rest in peace, Claes, and thank you. But it isn't LOVE I'm here to talk about today. It's Silverhead – Silverhead, the band's debut album, packed with swagger, catchy riffs and a hefty dose of grit. Silverhead were one of those British bands who never quite achieved the success their music deserved. Fronted by the charismatic singer and actor Michael Des Barres, the band carried a unique energy. Throughout the album you can feel Michael's intensity, much in the same way Ozzy Osbourne's personality seems to come straight through the speakers. It's more than singing – it's a performance. In my mind the whole thing unfolds on the stage of a slightly dystopian, drug-fuelled former theatre, with cobwebs hanging from the scenery and torn plush seating scattered throughout the auditorium, now taken over by an obscure underground band playing to an ecstatic and heavily intoxicated audience. Perhaps it's the spirit of 1972, combined with the fact that Michael was, after all, an actor, that creates this feeling. Plenty of attitude, glam, blues and a blend of doomed hard rock. The music shifts from being gloriously rough, almost sloppy and gloriously ragged, as if it were recorded live, before suddenly turning sentimental and surprisingly delicate, as on the penultimate track on side one, Johnny. It's genuinely moving for about 95 percent of the song, only to almost throw it all away during the last few lines with some rather silly, inexplicable babbling. Even so, I can thoroughly recommend this LP. If you happen to come across a copy, it's still remarkably affordable, largely because Silverhead seem to have slipped beneath the radar of the wider record-buying public. Perhaps that's exactly why it still feels like one of those hidden gems that's worth sharing.
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GNOD - Gnod Drop Out With White Hills II
This time I simply couldn't resist choosing an LP that holds a particularly special place in my heart – Gnod Drop Out With White Hills II by GNOD – and once again using it as the starting point for a deeply personal memory. The music itself is superb, without question, but what I really want to tell you about is what happens to me every time I take this record from the shelf, turn it over in my hands and let the music pour from the speakers. This story takes us back to 2010 and the very first Supernormal Festival at Braziers Park in Oxfordshire. Supernormal grew out of the International Artists' Workshop (IAW), an initiative founded by artists Gill Ord, Bernadette Moloney, Andy Cohen and Simon Faithfull, which was also based at Braziers Park. In its early years it was simply known as the Braziers Workshop, an event I had attended on several occasions ever since its takeoff in 1995. It is also worth mentioning that WOOD Festival, launched in 2008, emerged from exactly the same creative environment, driven by many of the very same people. I remember being genuinely excited. I'd arrived at Braziers a couple of days early to help with the final preparations before the festival opened. That meant everything from finishing the outdoor compost toilets to marking out the footpaths and boundaries across the festival site. I had noticed GNOD on the line-up but knew very little about them. People kept telling me they were excellent, and that they had released a new LP earlier that year which had been receiving glowing reviews. The evening GNOD were due to take the stage was grey and overcast, with a light drizzle hanging in the air. You know that peculiar effect when you squint towards the stage and the lights catch the rain, making every single droplet suddenly visible? Everything became slightly blurred, like looking into a world of moiré, almost as though I were peering through a camera lens filled with bokeh. Of course, there was beer and jazz in the mix as well, seductively heightening the whole sensory experience. GNOD took to the stage ahead of Faust, Saturday's headline act, on that cool evening of 21 August 2010. Many of us were lying there in the soaking wet grass, staring up at the sky, wrapped in a warm, vibrating blanket of rhythmic sound. I learned later that one review described the performance as "brain crushingly brilliant", and to this day I can't think of a more fitting description. The festival is remarkable not only because it feels like a direct descendant of the late 1960s, but above all because everyone genuinely shares accommodation with the very artists who are performing. Everything exists within the same festival grounds. Tent is therefore the very essence of the experience – come rain or shine. And this time, very much rain. After the performance I stumbled down towards the stage area and immediately found myself face to face with, as I remember it and still believe today, a completely drunk Chris Haslam. (Some band members use invented names, such as Neil the Fish, which makes it difficult to know exactly who was who afterwards.) Chris was the one playing keyboards and synthesizers in the band at that time. I expressed my feelings in much the same way that I remember him embracing them – with a great deal of warmth, affection and loud, euphoric enthusiasm. I distinctly remember him hugging me. Somewhere in that haze, in the middle of the swirling moment, I may have stretched the truth slightly. Wanting to preserve and honour the momentum of our connection, I blurted out that I was a huge fan and that I had travelled all the way from Sweden specifically to see them play. Faust, I explained, were not my main attraction. I can still picture his reaction, a mixture of surprise and pride. Chris put his arm around me and said that this was something he absolutely had to tell the other band members. And so we did. We made our way over to a cluster of GNOD musicians who, surrounded by a group of friends, were standing in the middle of a lively party gathering. At the time I was wearing a long kaftan, embroidered with beads and gold thread. My hair was loose, long, and accompanied by a beard. On my feet were a pair of open leather sandals. The overall effect placed me considerably closer to a wandering Jesus figure than your average festival-goer. I was received almost like a mascot and guided around among the band's friends and members of other groups. It was as if they wanted to show me off: "Look at this – our fan has travelled all the way from Sweden." There was a warm, playful pride in their voices, almost as if they were wondering whether the other bands could boast of having fans who had travelled such a distance. Within this kaleidoscope of soundscapes spilling over from the other stages, shimmering lights, loud cheers, muddy sandals, soaked clothes, jazz tobacco and alcohol, that strange state of intense intoxication and euphoria began to take hold – where everything swirls around in a haze and neither sight nor thought remains entirely clear. Time lost its shape, and all impressions merged into one continuous blur. And right in the middle of it all, almost as if conjured by magic, an LP record and a black permanent marker appeared. Naturally, the lad was going to get a signed copy. To describe Gnod Drop Out With White Hills II is like trying to capture a bank of fog with your bare hands. The music moves slowly but relentlessly forward, built upon hypnotic rhythms, grinding basslines and guitars that gradually dissolve their own contours into a sea of echo and distortion. Everything is built around repetition, but never repetition as monotony. Instead, the repetition becomes a mantra. The longer you listen, the less you distinguish the individual instruments, and the more you are drawn into a single, organic current of sound. Yes, you get it. This is the perfect record for that particular feeling of dropping the corner flag, surrendering completely and entering a state of total exception, with the naïve hope that by morning everything will somehow be forgotten. The album is not psychedelic through showmanship or bursts of colourful experimentation, but through a near-obsessive endurance. GNOD and White Hills remain locked into a groove until it ceases to be a groove and instead becomes a mental space. The music does not drive towards a climax – it circles, breathes and loops back into itself. The result evokes ritual music, drone and the endlessly humming machinery of early krautrock just as much as it does rock music in any traditional sense. If you have a weakness for this kind of music, I would go so far as to say this record is a complete no-brainer – an absolute must.
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William The Conqueror - Proud Disturber of the Peace
The first time I came across William The Conqueror was at the Wood Festival at Braziers Park, Oxfordshire, in the middle of May 2018. The band had released their debut LP, Proud Disturber of the Peace, the previous year. They were set up beneath the dim lights of the large circus tent, the one with the magical yellow and red striped canvas roof. The atmosphere was intimate, smoky and loud, and the crowd was thoroughly over-refreshed. Naomi on thunderous bass, Harry beating the life out of his drum kit, and Ruarri standing at the front of the stage with his guitar slung low and the microphone stand hanging out over the audience. I remember thinking, "Shit, these guys are brilliant." After the show I wandered over to the band, who were chatting by the bar. Ruarri was incredibly friendly and talkative. He asked me about Braziers Park, and I happily painted him a picture of the place. In return, I asked about the band's discography, and that's when I discovered they had only just released their debut LP. I was drunk enough that Ruarri took my phone and typed in both the band's name and the album title himself, just to make sure I'd remember it the following day. Proud Disturber of the Peace is a remarkably confident debut album, blending blues rock, Americana and indie rock into a warm, organic and live-sounding record. It sounds like a band completely at ease with themselves, playing with enormous confidence from start to finish. The grooves are relaxed, the guitars are raw and the melodies are instantly memorable, while Ruarri Joseph's distinctive voice gives every song both character and emotional weight—you simply don't want to stop listening to them. The album moves effortlessly between driving rock songs and more reflective, folk-tinged moments, creating a wonderfully dynamic whole. The result is timeless, earthy rock music with deep roots in the American tradition, yet delivered with a thoroughly modern identity of its own. William The Conqueror comes highly recommended.
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The Lemonheads – Love Chant
1986 was the year my passion for vinyl really took off while I was a student in Lund. At the very same time, The Lemonheads were forming in Boston. Strangely enough, our paths never really crossed. Of course, over the years I'd heard the odd song, liked what I heard and thought, I really must look into this band. Yet it has taken almost forty years for me to discover The Lemonheads via the LP Love Chant – and the first thing that struck me was just how un-American the band actually sounds. Instead, I hear echoes of British guitar pop, melodies that could just as easily have come from Manchester or Glasgow. This is an album where punk energy meets the melodic sensibility of pop and the reflective nature of folk rock in a way that feels both grand and completely natural. When the album was released in 2025, I could hear the DNA of so many bands on my very first listen. It was almost as if every track had already found its way, in one form or another, into the British and American bands from the 1980s and 1990s that fill my record shelves. The emphasis here isn't on crushing guitar riffs, but on memorable melodies and intelligent lyrics with a subtle political edge. There's a quiet confidence in the stripped-back arrangements – the songs never have to force the issue to leave their mark. I'm particularly drawn to those moments where the performance feels deliberately a little rough around the edges. It creates the impression of a spontaneous jam, an "Oops moment" that simply happens in the flow. Perhaps that's exactly why Love Chant feels every bit as relevant today as it undoubtedly would have done if it had, at least in theory, found its way onto my turntable back in the late 1980s.
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REN - Violet's Tale
The first time I heard Violet's Tale by Ren Gill – better known simply as REN – I was left utterly speechless. It is one of the most compelling performances I have ever witnessed in music. Existing somewhere between music, spoken word and contemporary theatre, the performance allows the story to become every bit as important as the melody. The story tears at you. Time and again, I've watched people stop whatever they were doing, turn towards the loudspeakers and listen with complete attention. By the time the performance is over, it's not unusual to see someone standing there with tears in their eyes. That's how completely the story takes hold of the room. Torsten here at Oops Audio actually played the track for me first. Somehow, I had completely missed REN, but I was utterly captivated quickly. REN doesn't so much sing as lay himself bare. He whispers, narrates, snarls, pleads and erupts in one unbroken emotional arc. His voice moves effortlessly between tender vulnerability and raw desperation, every word soundsrooted in lived experience rather than a pursuit of musical perfection. Perhaps that is precisely why it becomes so profoundly musical, it's extraordinary. To my ears, REN is one of the most original and expressive artists of our time. He combines exceptional musicianship with the courage to explore pain, the darker corners of the human condition, compassion and hope in equal measure. If, like me, you've somehow overlooked him, give him an hour of your life. Don't just listen to what he sings—listen to what he's trying to tell you. His music invites us to pause for a moment, to reflect on what truly matters, to hold the people around us a little closer, and perhaps allow our own humanity to guide us just a little more often.
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The The – Soul Mining
Every time I play this record, it's like stepping into a time machine straight back to the mid-eighties. You've probably seen Ratatouille, where the grumpy food critic takes one bite and is instantly transported back to his childhood. That's exactly what this album does to me. Soul Mining was released in 1983. The following year I was doing my military service. I was standing in a record shop in Kristianstad, casually flipping through the vinyl bins, when a complete stranger said: "Have you heard The The?" - "What a ridiculous name for a band," I remember thinking. But the cover caught my eye. I bought it based on nothing more than a recommendation from someone whose face apparently looked trustworthy enough. What a purchase that turned out to be. If you've never heard This Is the Day, do yourself a favour. The strings, the deep, hypnotic bass, and above all the lyrics. The song moves along almost like a lullaby while quietly reminding you that, in the end, our memories are what hold our lives together. Sometimes life can look wonderful from the outside, while inside all you want to do is close the curtains, lie down on that old single bed again, and drift back to a time when—whether it's true or not—you remember yourself as being happier. The strange thing is how timeless the song feels. Today we tend to romanticise the eighties as a colourful decade full of optimism and endless possibilities. But when Soul Mining was released, it wasn't nostalgia—it was simply the present. Nobody knew what was waiting around the corner. As a vinyl record, this album ranks very high on my personal list. If you don't already own it, find a copy. As for me, I'm actually considering buying another copy. The copy I'm listening to right now sounds like frying bacon. But it's been with me for more than forty years, and every crackle reminds me that records are meant to be played, not locked away on a shelf. Long live Matt Johnson.
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The Gun - GUN
The cover of The Gun’s debut album “Gun” from 1968 is truly striking. The intensely red, high-contrast and almost kaleidoscopic, gate of hell-artwork stands out clearly from much of what was released during that period. It feels surprisingly modern, almost reminiscent of graffiti or later graphic design, while not really revealing what to expect musically. When I first came across the record myself, it was the cover immediately caught my attention; it has a visual impact that sparks curiosity. The music then turns out to be just as multifaceted as the artwork suggests. The album is largely built around powerful riffs and an early form of hard rock energy, with Adrian Gurvitz’s guitar playing driving a strong sense of rawness and weight that often places the record in the category of early proto-metal. At the same time, clear psychedelic and experimental elements—including effects, dynamic shifts and sometimes surreal arrangements—break up the direct rock energy. What makes the album particularly interesting is its unusually ambitious production for a power trio. Several tracks feature brass, strings and more theatrical arrangements, giving it an unexpectedly large and almost cinematic feel. The record also moves freely between more pop-oriented songs, psychedelic excursions and heavier proto-metal passages, with tracks such as “Take Off” often highlighted for their more expansive and psychedelic structures. The overall result is a clear blend of British 60s pop sensibility and the emerging hard rock that would go on to dominate the early 1970s. Vocals, melodies and certain arrangements still carry traces of their time, while the guitars and energy point towards something far heavier and more explosive. So yes, definitely a album worthy recommendation.
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