Song of the day

“Turn Around”, by Dungen & Woods.

Dungen are a band that, over time, have perhaps so perfected their own sound as to have become almost invisible. It seems that they may have recognised this, as their most recent releases have been drawn from some incidental music they did for a 1926 animated film, together with an album’s worth of remixes of same from Prins Thomas (admittedly this turns out to be much more Prins Thomas than Dungen).

Woods, on the other hand, are a band that have perhaps so perfected their own sound as to have become, not invisible, but predictable. Their songs tend to inhabit a clearly defined song structure that by now is so embedded in my brain that whenever a new Woods record comes out, it takes me a while to decide whether I like it (so far, so good) because each new song is, in its own way, the same as some other Woods song.

Neither of these things is intended as criticism. Both bands have much still to offer, and I will be more than happy to keep listening. However, possibly the best news so far to have come out of 2018 is that, in March, an EP is coming out that will showcase the results of a 2017 collaboration between members of Woods and Dungen which took place during Marfa Myths. We now have this taster. From the vocals alone, as well as the overall structure, it is easily identifiable as a Woods song, albeit a Woods song that happens to be backed by a particular Scandinavian melancholic psychedelia that, well, I can't really say “you could only get from Dungen”, but that is definitely the Dungen sound. (What is that sound? Imagine if someone spent a career trying to recreate The Zombies' "Odessey And Oracle", only with their own songs.)

I am, I have to say, pretty excited about this.