Monday 13 May 2013

POSTILJONEN SUPREME // HOW WILL I KNOW / ALL THAT WE HAD IS LOST

This is such a nice style of music. Floaty, feel-good, fantastic. It's the kind of thing that makes you feel as if you're soaring above the clouds with the whole sky to explore at your leisure. You know that feeling? Well, probably only birds do and even then only birds who can share their feelings; I'm sure these are few and far between. But you get what I mean, right, it's really expansive music and seems to be constructed of just one phrase that's taken up and down and flows really nicely with different synthy parts that are seamlessly joined together.

It's reminiscent of stuff like Electric Youth, College and Desire - hopelessly romantic whilst romanticising hopeless and hopeful romances, all to the steady pulse of a slow house kick, with skyscraper-jumping electro sounds diving around like flecks of flashing film kisses from classic to cult, all dancing in this wind tunnel of feeling provided by the artist - POSTILJONEN (that's 'post-ill-yo-nen' - means 'postman' in Swedish. 'Cause they always deliver...?), a girl-boy-boy trio from Sweden, in this case.

First up we have their quite-recent 'Supreme' that starts with the heart-crushingly touching words: "We are what we are: hopelessly in love".

The song conjures up a wholly private love affair, one where both lovers are kind of entwined permanently with each other - the sound gives off this epic kind of emotion, one of 'supreme' love you could say. It's definitely a lovesong - deathless, timeless, just existing where it is and to its listeners. There's even a guitar solo kinda thing towards the end that is very of-this-style-of-music - 80s electronic-slash-cheese with just enough coolness in it to un-cheese it. If you see what I mean. Beautiful vocals softly sung almost whispered to the engrossing peculiarly persuasive melody.

Then there's this great cover GREAT COVER of Whitney Houston's 'How Will I Know'. There's a video too. It's atmospheric.

Kinda couldn't be more different from the original could it? You can barely hear that famous refrain "How will I know if he really loves me?" which surfaces every now and again now like a half-forgotten past thought. It's interesting in that sense because it seems that POSTILJONEN put the original in the backseat with the intention of striving for an original song inspired by Whitney Houston's rather than a definitive "cover" of it.

In any case, what more can I say? It feels bleakly uncertain yet optimistic, stationary yet dynamic, in-love yet not, a cover but not-a-cover at the same time. Dualistic even. How do you like that?

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