What music are you listening to?

[marshlander]

just played your tunes marsh - the Hoven Droven spunds like hardcore folk - i kinda liked it , the EST sounded a little like jazz fusion to me - can u give your discriptions of the bands and there musical styles please

I could do, but you seem to have described the music pretty well anyway

The quality of musicianship in Sweden is outstanding. Hoven Droven do indeed play traditional Swedish country dance tunes (lots of polskas, which I find difficult to dance well), but their arrangements are anything but trad. My favourite description of their music of around this time (their mid-90s stuff) said they sound like a cross between Shooglenifty and Metallica. Brilliant. They haven't played in the UK much, but I was lucky enough to see them around this time and what an exciting performance it was. These days any performances tend to be with a paired down band and sound.

EST are, of course, a jazz trio in the traditional sense in terms of instrumentation, but became known early on for their "acoustic drum n bass" sound. They moved away from that, developing beautiful melodies, harmonies and outstanding improvisations, although their last album, Leucocyte, gets very grungey in places! I particularly enjoyed their subtle changes of timbre through both effects and ways of playing the acoustic instruments. ES would often intertwine bits of paper or plastic through the piano strings to give particular effects. On one piece, Did They Ever Tell Cousteau, I could not work out what the drummer was doing to get a particular sound until I saw them play live and he played the whole piece using just hands on the kit. Again I was very lucky to see them perform in Cambridge a few months before their leader died in a diving accident.