Sweden
Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild, Series 10, Channel 5 review - living off your wits and below the radar in SwedenWednesday, 30 October 2019“I think we all dream of simplifying our lives and reconnecting with nature,” reckons Ben Fogle, and since this was the start of the tenth series of this show, he must have struck a chord with viewers. His first subject was 24-year-old Italian woman... Read more... |
CD: Tonbruket - Masters of FogMonday, 30 September 2019Bassist Dan Berglund was a founding member of the highly influential euro-jazz Esbjörn Svensson Trio (e.s.t.) until the accidental death of Svensson, while diving, in 2008. The first Tonbruket album appeared the following year, with Berglund joined... Read more... |
CD: Tove Lo - Sunshine KittyMonday, 16 September 2019Swedish singer Tove Lo appeared at a time when female physical sexuality was being used as a raw, blunt weapon in pop, when porno chic reached an apex in music videos. Half a decade ago was the time of Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” and Miley Cyrus’s “... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Dalarna: Rhinegold in a Swedish barn by a lakeSaturday, 27 July 2019Anna Larsson's fellow Swedes can count themselves lucky that the worldwide first choice to sing Wagner's Erda and the midnight song in Mahler's Third Symphony has made so much of her Dalarna inheritance. In what's called a "Concert Barn" (... Read more... |
Midsommar review - hell is other peopleThursday, 04 July 2019Who would have thought that Ari Aster could top the satanic delights of Hereditary? Yet with Midsommar, a psychedelic twist on folk horror, he has. Aster abandons the supernatural to show that it’s not things that go bump in the night that scare us... Read more... |
The Captor review - Stockholm syndrome sillinessThursday, 20 June 2019The botched 1973 hostage incident which inspired the term Stockholm syndrome comes to flatly comic life here, the strange psychological phenomenon of captives falling for their captors over time being reduced to an absurd caper. Bringing out the... Read more... |
CD: Avicii - TIMThursday, 06 June 2019Sadness abounds in Avicii's posthumous third album. In context, even the plaintive single syllable of the title is full of pathos. It reminds of the real person, the Swede Tim Bergling who as a teenager discovered he had an unerring ability to hit... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Gothenburg: concert-hall storytelling rivets at the Point Music FestivalThursday, 30 May 2019There was a special celebratory aura to the start of Swedish city Gothenburg's first Point Festival. Earlier in the week its Symphony Orchestra's Chief Conductor, electrifying Finn Santtu-Matias Rouvali, had not only announced a renewed contract... Read more... |
CD: Amon Amarth - BerserkerSunday, 28 April 2019Many groups have based their career focusing almost completely on one thing and evermore honing it. Bands ranging from The Ramones to the Cocteau Twins to the Black Keys to even the Foo Fighters could arguably be said to follow this remit. Swedish... Read more... |
CD: Kornél Kovács - Stockholm MarathonThursday, 25 April 2019On his second album, Swedish star DJ Kornél Kovács has achieved the impossible and made “tropical house” interesting. Somehow, he's taken every cliché of that slow, lilting pop dance sound Drake and lifestyle influencers Instagramming from pristine... Read more... |
Obituary: Bibi Andersson 1935-2019Tuesday, 23 April 2019"One talks, the other doesn’t" is about as crude a description as could be of the Swedish masterpiece, Persona. Profoundly experimental even today, Ingmar Bergman’s film was at base about the intense, vampiric encounter between a mute actress... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Bergman - A Year in a LifeTuesday, 19 March 20191957 was a busy year for a very busy director: Ingmar Bergman made two of his most famous films – The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, several TV dramas, and a number of major stage productions. All the while, he was suffering from painful... Read more... |