MIDAIRCONDO
Shopping For Images
Type
Swedish pop trio makes innovative mix of electronica and avant-jazz, again.
Perhaps by now you have grown tired of hearing about Scandinavian women redefining contemporary pop, but (un)fortunately they haven’t yet grown tired of doing it, so here we go again.
Born during a knitting session in 2002, Midaircondo are clearly inspired by the avant-pop scene surrounding them – they use the standard Scandinavian elements of experimental jazz and electronica, but in new textures and structures. The 11 tracks on Shopping for Images contain very few conventional songs, usually preferring to scatter jumbled words and phrases over a drifting soundscape dominated by saxophone and bass.
It’s not as extreme as Sidsel Endresen’s Meriwinkle, as accessible as Susanna & Her Magical Orchestra’s List of Lights & Buoys, as coherent as Amina’s Aminamina or as strangely familiar as Hanne Hukkelberg’s Little Things, four recent regional landmarks. Instead, it has strong conceptual parallels to Bjork’s latest release, Drawing Restraint. Shopping for Images is a little less complex, but it also avoids that album’s slightly contrived exoticisim. And although there is one track ("Perfect Spot") that could have been stolen from Bjork’s Homogenic, another ("Who’s Playing") that might have come from Verspertine, and some that vaguely echo German-based experimental electro-pop group Lali Puna, most find their own ways.
I’m not sure that this will age as well as the best works of Stina Nordenstam or Bjork, but in terms of making a persuasive case for a new approach to pop, this is one of the most exciting debuts of this year.
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