Since a quarter of my CORRESPONDENCE subscribers are from abroad—that is, outside of Sweden—I’m dedicating the newsletter this time to highlight what has for me been the most enjoyable Swedish music released during the first half of 2025. Each title is linked to Bandcamp for your listening pleasure. I hope you’ll find some new sounds that you like!
Collaboration and exploration are strong themes among my musical favourites, and Andreas Tilliander & Goran Kajfeš, with their first joint, impressive, album In Cmin, join the ranks of other genre-bending, cosmopolitan duos in jazz/electronic music history—like Hassell & Eno, Sylvian & Czukay, and Hosono & Sakamoto. Where others sometimes lose their way, Tilliander & Kajfes manage to forge a path with their pulsating, intricate and sensual music.
Another successful musical meeting is that between Civilistjävel! (Tomas Bodén from Uppsala, previously in Differnet) and the Lebanese singer Mayssa Jallad. Marjaa: The Battle of Hotels (Versions) is Civilistjävel!’s reworked version of Jallad’s 2023 record; here silences, deep bass and Jallad’s voice are equally powerful musical elements—think Massive Attack at their most experimental and minimalist. Civilistjävel! has been prolific in 2025, and the previous album this year, Följd (on the FELT label), is also highly recommended.
The music mentioned so far is not explicitly political, in contrast to “Radicalised” by Gothenburg’s Mythologen (from the album Eurovision) featuring Johan Duncanson from The Radio Dept. on vocals. Is there anyone today whose singing voice is so instantly, subtly and pleasantly recognizable as Duncanson’s? Over a New Order-like dance beat, the phrase “get radicalised” is repeated like a mantra—and in these politically disheartening times, that’s about all that needs to be said.
Another collaboration comes from Swedish musician Art Longo and singer Claudia Jones. The music on their debut album Echowah Island (on the French label Cracki Records) brings to mind a rare kind of sensibility found in a few of the bands released by the truly legendary Belgian label Les Disques Du Crépuscule in the early 1980s—post-punk aesthetes like Mikado and Antena; which is a kind of timeless, poppy and exotic escapism that I find hard to resist when done this good.
The kind-of-drum’n’bass played by Uppsala’s World Of Dog (Nils Hollmer and Sandro Colombo) is super-bright; melodic, effortlessly airy and slightly jazzy. Some of you probably remember them from the album Real & Legendary Dogs from 2017. The new single “Chihuahua Sunrise” is a welcome return—it’s their first sign of life in seven (!) years, and yes, it’s an lovely one.
Other recommend Swedish music from the first six months of 2025: Good Vibes Only by Ella Guru, Zeon Light’s Solidaritet med Gazas barn-compilation, “Forever Yung” by Yung Lean, “The Whole World is On Fire” by Penguins & Martingales, “This Stance” by Blessings 2 Go, “Sounds Everywhere” by Sternpost, “Ringer å ringer” by JJULIUS, and Musik för vänskap by Jäverling/von Euler.