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SSwedish producer Olof Dreijer is best known for his projects with his brother Karin: namely the Knife duo, as well as Karin’s solo work. Fever Raywho co-produced four of the best songs on the 2023 album Radical Romantics. For all the hits on these records they often had an African-Caribbean-Latin connection, they also had a dark Scandinavian vibe.
In contrast, his first album seems to rise in the sun like flowers – and each song has the name of a flower. Dance directors will already know some of them (having appeared on EPs since 2023) but together they show what Dreijer’s music is all about: you can tell it’s him sometimes from half a second of a song.
His music vibrates in the air like a beach ball tossed by a strong wind; twisted notes wake up in surprise or cough their heads in distress. The music is reminiscent of cumbia, kuduro, dancehall, techno etc. but it’s complicated with fiendish funk and anti-quantised in detail, and guest singers from Sudan (MaMan), Colombia (Diva Cruz) and South Africa (Toya Delazy) go toe to toe with this beat.
After that, the drums end up on the imaginary lessons of the steel strings and the surrounding voices, and if this is much smaller than the dance music, it still moves with the same interest as the music. Dreijer created his walled garden of psychedelia, which evokes the light and scent of summer’s peak.
