Another flower-through-the-concrete from the ever regenerating Gothenburg circle with the debut album from Alyssa, a duo comprised of veterans Irma Krook (Makthaverskan) and man for all seasons, Dan Johansson (Sewer Election, Neutral, Amateur Hour, Enhet For Fri Musik+++). Medea! presents as both product of scene and true collaboration, clearly referencing aspects of each of their solo work whilst stressing their individual qualities and contributions - what they each do elsewhere is what they do here, and yet something quite unique blooms from their connection. There are obvious nods to Krook's Military Arms EP, the greyscale noisepop expanse of Amateur Hour and Johansson's long-expressed interest in decayed tape loops and fried electronics, the result a combination of gothic majesty and purgatorial alien scurry that imagines imperial era 4AD through the gauzy lens of Hanson Records and a European post-industrial hinterland. Krook sings with great conviction, her more extroverted tendencies alongside Johansson's fucked-up-inside production impulses generative of a kind of siren song through psychoactive fog. The songs are mostly split into two contrasting forms, where the unspooling of tape loop hiss and ooze suddenly blooms into powerful crystalline melodies, affecting a submerged dreampop coated in nightmarish gloom. It's a part way brutalist kind of architecture they construct, decayed and austere, yet oddly expressive and, at its conclusion, borderline triumphant. In its way, a very accurate microcosm of the past decade of Gothenburg music. Edition of 300.
FFO: Clan of Xymox, Amateur Hour, Dead Can Dance, Sewer Election
