Hans Appelqvist — Sifantin Och Mörkret

Sifantin Och Mörkret is a captivating mixture of playful  often child like electronics, folk, rock & quirky sounds collages. Managing to sound cute, dramatic, sorrowful & distressing often in the same song-all making a heady audio adventure where you don’t know what you’ll hear next.

There’ s a great feeling of Appelqvist's as a tunesmith through out the album, sure he throws you weird & quirky sounds and bizarre audio concoctions, but at all times he’s making sure the melodies are clear and their beauty/ dramatic edge  shines through. I guess the
Closest  you’d get to this is early Mum or Fog around  Ether teeth, with the seemly random but always effective placing of samples, but Appelqvist's has very much made this his own distinctive audio adventure.  Sounds that appear include: cute baby talk/sounds, wolf howls, bird song, farm animal sounds, cartoon sounds.  He uses a varied musically pallet too to  build the album: piano, acoustic and electric guitars, bass,  classical string sweeps, electronics and all manner of sampling. Fitting so many ideas, melodies and audio wow-ness into the short 24 minute running time, the album has almost tardis quality seemly a lot longer than it really is, in a good way of course.

The whole of the album is a pure joy, but if forced to choose favourites I’d say Sju I Tre with it’s mix of sad and haunted guitar playing, dog barks, sad child voices- all giving the feel of great emotional loss in  its just over a minutes playing time, or the last track Talkijangnas Akt with it's bassy 80’s soundtrack rock vibe,child chanting and other samples underneath, as it’s weaves it’s memorable and foot taping air.

A mighty fine album crammed to the brim with so many sounds, melodies and ideas, but never sounding Crowded or indulgent. A wonderful concoction falling somewhere between melodic/cinematic soundcaft, electroinca, rock/folk and soundart.