Dungen

Given the current invasion of quirky, colorful indie-pop bands from Sweden, you could be forgiven for assuming the only flavors of music from Scandinavia are those produced by sprawling collectives covered in confectioner’s sugar. Not Dungen, the project of prodigious multi-instrumentalist and arranger Gustav Ejstes, a man who has little interest in making music that can be digested in one sitting.

“Maybe we’re alone,” he muses humbly of his band, his eccentricities extending to the near-exclusive aural diet of American hip-hop and Swedish folk music he listens to each day. “I’m a Swedish citizen, and in that sense, I’m a part of that movement,” he continues, sounding unsure of whether he can realistically lump his band in with the far more pop-minded strains of Love is All and I’m From Barcelona. “But, I’m a little bit of a loner,” he says with a laugh. “I’m into my stuff, and I’m not good at following."

That much is obvious from listening to Tio Bitar, his more melodic, focused follow-up to 2004’s breakthrough, Ta Det Lugnt. An uncompromising psych-rock epic, the album made Dungen an unexpected international “It” band. This time around, Ejstes decided the best route was to take small steps forward, retaining most of Ta Det Lugnt’s heady sprawl. As before, Ejstes handles nearly every instrument in the mix, and his mélange of fuzzed-out Hendrix riffs, sun-bleached psych-pop and prog-rock exploration is even more refined and eclectic. Drawing yet another distinction between he and his countrymen, not a note of it is sung in English.

“That’s just the sound of Dungen and has always been. Dungen music is only in Swedish,” he continues emphatically. “I haven’t decided to never sing in English, but the concept is that it’s my lyrics and I want it to be honest. The easiest way for me to express myself isn’t in English, as you can hear,” he says, self-effacingly. “I just create, and I have so many different influences from different times. Today, we have so much. We could get all these records through the Internet, and it’s so easy to listen to different kinds of music. If you just do your own thing, maybe it becomes timeless.”