If you’ve been frequenting JOVM over the past couple of weeks, you may recall that I’ve written about the Ahus, Sweden-based electro pop duo Club 8. Comprised of Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård, the Swedish electro pop duo have a long-held reputation for being difficult to pigeonhole sonically or aesthetically. Initially formed in 1995, the duo of Komstedt and Angergård began as a Bossa Nova-inspired guitar pop act with the release of their debut effort, Nouvelle. But with the 1998 release of their sophomore effort, The Friend I Once Had, the duo went through a complete and radical change of sonic direction, as the material on the album was entirely electronic dance music. The duo’s next three albums, released between 2001 and 2003 were comprised of material that leaned towards old-school soul.
Throughout the bulk of Club 8’s discography, Angergård had also taken up production duties — until 2013’s Above The City, which had the band working with an outside producer. However, Angergård returned to the producer role on the duo’s recently released Pleasure, an album that Karolina Komstedt explains is about “love, sex and jealousy.” The album’s previous single “Late Night” was a swooningly wistful and melancholic song that looks at a love affair, viewing it as immediately exciting and passionate — that is until that initial excitement wanes and the bright colors of the relationship gently turn grey. At its very core, the song’s narrator clings to seemingly old-fashioned romantic dreams and notions, and their nostalgia, all while desperately wishing that feeling would come back. It seems to subtly suggest that while love is something that we all desperately desire, relationships with other people can be confusing and hellish — and yet, we want so badly that we’ll do anything for it.
Pleasure‘s latest single “Skin”is a seductive single focusing on decadent pleasures — the feel of skin against skin, the scent of perfume or cologne, of tangled limbs underneath sheets, and of urgent, obsessive lust. And the song does so in a way that channels Giorgio Moroder‘s sensual, decadent and legendary work with Donna Summer — in particular, I thought of and “I Feel Love.”
The recently released video superimposes footage of nighttime traffic over the members of Club 8 broodingly longing about. The video is sensual but subtle — and because of it, the sensual nature of the song seems heightened.