Dungen, Sweden’s Hippest Underground Psych Crew

Musical alchemist Gustav Ejstes got high (with a little help from his friends) on Dungen’s 2004 breakthrough Ta det Lugnt, a masterful homage to the painstaking in-studio experiments of his spiritual heirs. As always, the group’s latest exercise in postmodern psychedelics mainly reinforces the idea that all the young dudes in Dungen were born too late: Tio Bitar is steeped in the sounds of the ’60s and ’70s. But while the sound of Tio Bitar is mellow gold, the group’s approach apparently takes its marching orders from Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War.

“A lot of Dungen’s music is about striking a balance between the ‘attack’ and the ‘release,’” explains Ejstes’ right-hand man, guitarist Reine Fiske. “The ‘attack’ is what transports a song into another dimension. Most of the time, Gustav has a very clear vision in his head of how he wants the different parts to come together. So playing live is more about the ‘release.’ Things just happen—or they don’t. The portions of Tio Bitar where the idea of Dungen as a ‘band’ really come across are the parts where the framework is a little less solid and maybe there’s a little more improvisation.”

It’s worth noting that every third word or so in Fiske’s emailed interview responses appear in scare quotes; at one point, he even emphasizes the words “towards” and “within” to make the distinction between the two that much more indelible. Distance (he’s currently 5,000 miles away in Stockholm and engaged in tour preparations) has a lot to do with his cautious wording, but even the question of how to classify Dungen has the group’s American label Kemado stumped.

As with previous releases, multi-instrumentalist Ejstes wrote all of the lyrics on Tio Bitar and recorded large swaths in collaboration with Fiske. While it takes four guys to realize Dungen’s compositions on stage, songs where all four musicians depicted in the press photos—like Tio Bitar’s “Ett skäl att trivas”—are actually playing together remain rare. It’s no surprise that Fiske has a Utilitarian perspective when it comes to sidestepping individual expression for Dungen’s greater good: “A lot of our relationship is based on admiration. Music is the constant focal point; playing together is what keeps us sane.”

While there’s nothing as immediately infectious as “Panda” on Tio Bitar, the first two tracks pick up directly where Ta det Lugnt left off and the rest of the record is stuffed with sleepy, elaborate songs that alternately test and reward patience. Dungen’s talking points are often as hard to grasp as Ejstes’ lyrics (once again, delivered entirely in Swedish), so you’ll just have to take Fiske’s word for it when he describes the group’s sound as quintessentially Scandinavian. “There’s a certain tone in much of the traditional fiddle tunes and folk music that we grew up with that is very haunting, but free-spirited,” he explains. “It’s light and gloomy at the same time. It’s an influence we can’t shake… maybe it’s really just in our genes.”

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