Tag: Club 8 Late Night

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

If you’ve been frequenting JOVM over the past couple of years of its seven year history, you’ve likely come across a handful of posts featuring the work of Stockholm, Sweden-based electronic music producer, electronic music artist and Labrador Records label head Johan Angergård, who’s best known for his work with Karolina Komstedt in Club 8, with Rose Suau in Djutstin and his solo recording project The Legends. Now, Club 8 Angergård’s collaboration with Komstedt has a long-held reputation for a being difficult to pigeonhole sonically or aesthetically.  The duo, which initially formed in 1995 began as a Bossa Nova-inspired act with the release of their debut effort, Nouvelle; however, their 1998 sophomore effort The Friend I Once Had, the duo went through a complete and radical change in sonic direction, with the album’s material being entirely electronic and electronic dance music-leaning. Further cementing a reputation for being musical chameleons, the duo’s next three albums, released between 2001 and 2003 were featured old school soul-leaning material.

Throughout the bulk of Club 8’s catalog, Angergård had been the taken up all production duties — until 2013’s Above the City, which had the band working with an outside producer for the first time. However, Angergård returned to producing the duo’s work with 2015’s Pleasure, an album that Karolina Komstedt explained was about “love, sex and jealousy.” And you may recall that I wrote about album singles, “Late Night” a melancholic look at a love affair that starts off passionate before eventually cooling off; “Skin,” a decadent song that channeled Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”

2017 has been an extremely busy year for Angergård. His solo project The Legends released a solo album earlier this year, Djustin released their long-anticipated full-length debut Voyagers last month and Club 8 released their ninth, full-length effort Lost yesterday.  Lost‘s latest single, the slow-burning and moody album title track “Lost” pairs Komstedt breathily tender vocals with a production featuring chiming percussion and a chopped up and distorted vocal sample. As Komstedt explains in press notes “We’ve tried to step away from standard instrumentation and perhaps sound a little less typically western on ‘Lost.'” In fact, because of its chiming and propulsive percussion, the song possesses a hypnotic and Eastern-inspired quality reminiscent of Wolkoff‘s work with Icarus Moth — but a chilly yet sultry vibe.

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sweden’s Club 8 Specializes in Decadent and Sultry Electro Pop

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 […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård, the Ahus, Sweden-based electro pop duo Club 8 have a long-held reputation for being incredibly difficult to pigeonhole since their formation in 1995. Initially, the Swedish duo 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 that effort had the duo writing electro dance music. The duo’s next three albums, released between 2001 and 2003 had the duo switching things up with material that leaned towards indie soul.

Up until 2010, Angergård had served as produced — until the 2013 release of Above The City; however, Angergård takes up production duties on the duo’s soon-to-be released Pleasure slated for a November 20 release through Labrador Records. And as Komstedt explains in press notes, “Pleasure is an album about love, sex and jealousy. Musically, it is possibly our most focused release to date.” Interestingly, the album’s latest single “Late Night” is 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.

Sonically, the song pairs wistful nostalgia with layers of glistening and undulating synths reminiscent of Stevie Nicks‘ “Stand Back,” and The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me?” and Komstedt’s hushed coos to craft a song that’s a slickly produced pop confection — but from the viewpoint of someone who’s been in a number of love relationships and has seen them repeatedly fail and yet remarkably hasn’t had their hope beaten down.