“OK, let’s get these musicians together and see what the fuck happens when the different energies collide.”
So says Simian Ghost‘s Erik Klinga who has assembled Malmö’s finest musicians into one of the most exciting indie supergroups. Joining him in Horse Show (named satirically after the country’s annual Falsterbo horse show) is an energetic post-punk collective that fuses the urgency of FEWS (Frederick Rundqvist and Rasmus Andersson), the understated, shimmering cool of Hater (Caroline Landahl) and YAST‘s solid indie rock foundations (Tobias Widman).
The project had been a long time in the planning, with Klinga intuiting this collaboration could be an exciting prospect that would make the best of their individual influences. He was right. Falsterbo EP is the band’s teasing precursor to a full-length release (hopefully coming next year) that actually sounds like side one of something much more epic.
After a few false starts due to pandemic restrictions and an abandoned gig, the EP was recorded in earnest in a single day at producer-legend Joachim Linberg‘s Sickan Studios. Across the five tracks, the band members’ individual contributions nestle comfortably together, reconfigured into something entirely new and compelling. Opener, ‘Used To’ sets high expectations, its simple hypnotic guitar line cuts through the track’s rumbling bass and drums with a determined sense of chaos and abandon. ‘Memory Chain’ and ‘Closed Eyes’ raise the stakes higher again, respectively with powerful Preoccupations-tinged nihilistic groove and Deerhunter‘s skittering dark pop. Leaving his synths behind, Klinga takes up his place behind the drum kit once more for Horse Show and you can feel his sense of renewed creative freedom on ‘Shame’ in every tightly wound snare fill and cymbal barrage. Lead single ‘Hästskandalen’ rounds things off, with Landahl’s airy vocals and some bubbling arps nudging the band out into the sunshine and slightly toward indie pop.
A commendable clutch of tracks that gets better with every listen, can’t wait to hear how Horse Show’s sound shapes up with more studio time!
‘Falsterbo’ EP is released on PNK SLM on 10th December.