The Smiley Smile Message Board

Scandinavian music is way underrated. Most people just know the ABBA, and that's it.
But...

Classical:
Carl Nielsen
Edvard Grieg
Johan Sibelius

Jazz:
Jan Garbarek
Terje Rypdal
Jonas Hellborg

Pop/rock:
Bo Hansson
Bjork (ok, Iceland - same origins)
Yngwie Malmsteen

So, this thread if for anyone who has any liking for Scandinavian music (including ABBA!).

I love The Soundtrack of Our Lives, a contemporary rock band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DgyeIm2CQ4

I'm very familiar with Grieg and Sibelius.
Grieg's Peer Gynt suite helped get me through college. Listened to it constantly.
Can't think of many songs more beautiful than Solveig's Song.

Great idea for a topic, Thorgill. There's so much great Scandinavian music out there----I'm discovering it all the time.

Metal is very big in your part of the world. This is the Swedish band Ghost:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_(Swedish_band) [the subsequent link works----something to do with brackets in urls, perhaps]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFhqCXl5jb0

I'm not a major metal fan but this is very tasty...

John, do you know Bo Hansson? Will all respect for Mike (not Love this time!), I think of him as a better Mike Oldfield.

No I don't. Thanks for the tip. I'll check him out later...

I couldn't get into Mr Hansson, But then I couldn't really get into Mr Oldfield either. He came in at the top, and the only way from there is down.

But... one thing led to another and I found this fine orchestral work by Aulis Sallinen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMXlBK1_Yg8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulis_Sallinen

So, all's well that ends well. :=)

I know the late Bo is not for everybody, but it's no wonder I have a soft spot for him: he did a mini-suite titled "Rabbit Music" in his "Attic Thoughts" album, and the album after that was "Music Inspired by Watership Down." :)

However, glad that your research made you find, and like, Sallinen. He had a project for a ballet themed on the "Lord of the Rings", but it never came to fruition.

About Oldfield: I must be one of the few people to prefer Tubular Bells II over the original. Maybe because the master of ceremonies over that killer bass riff is the late Alan Rickman, one of the too many very talented artists who left us this year. At TB3 Mike lost me, however. I still love "Incantations".

The first cassette I bought was Europe's The Final Countdown. This is just a fact, not something of which I'm necessarily proud...

It was Robert Moog's favourite song (just kidding!).

The Hoola Bandoolaband are a lot of fun.

I like this impressionistic piece (Debussy atmosphere) by another Finnish composer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po3gXcMd31M

Yes indeed. See the link below at "my" forum:

http://beachboysforum.freeforums.org/season-by-season-t319-30.html#p24630

I've always been fascinated (and pretty well stunned) by the "ridiculous time signature" of "Dr. Zhivago's Train" as sung by Robert Palmer.

Seems the original was by a Swede, one Nicolai Dunger: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolai_Dunger)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZahtBhl9634

And here is Palmer's cover, plus an attempt by me to decipher the rhythms:

http://beachboysforum.freeforums.org/the-2000s-and-beyond-a-music-odyssey-t623-130.html#p28816

Irene, the band:

Little Things (That Tear Us Apart): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U-u6sv6iFa8
     -Song is 1:55 long, someone tacked over six minutes of silence to the end.

Always On My Mind: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zadsRN-EIqo
     -Not a cover
     -Another of my favorites

Stardust: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YSm-QcypilM

Song by the lead singer's newer band, Azure Blue, called Catcher In The Rye:
     -https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PzzFBjk1g5c

EoL

This is a brilliant 140-minute mix of ambient music from Scandinavia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVRqq947lNo

I'm a big Yngwie Malmsteen fan.  Out of the shredders that came out of the 80s, I find Yngwie's work to be much more accessible. 

Here's Yngwie covering ABBA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zliRIq693iQ

Don't forget The Cardigans, Acid House Kings, The Concretes, Peter Bjorn & John...

Here's another great album by the Swedish band Ghost:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZcW0ougNYI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_(Swedish_band)

And it's only a short step linguistically (and topographically) from Ghost to Goat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOwkQ2MH9aw

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17332-world-music/

 

The Nightwish are a Finnish band doing a metal/folk/symphonic melange that I consider archetypically Finnish. Though not usually a fan of metal, I like them a lot: worthy to check out.

Which one album of theirs would you recommend, Thorgil?

Though the earlier ones aren't bad at all, I'd say that all their four latest albums are, on the whole, better: "Once" (fully symphonic metal, with a prominent role of the London Philharmonic Orchestra) , "Dark Passion Play" (more folk inspired), "Imaginaerum" (the soundtrack to an imaginary fantasy movie, which later became a real movie!), and "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" (inspired by the evolution of life on Earth). My personal favourite is "Dark Passion Play*", but it's wholly subjective.
The three latter albums are Celtic-flavoured by the Uilleann Pipes and tin whistles of Troy Donockley.
"Made in Hong Kong" is a good live.
Though mainly metal, it's the kind of music which works surprisingly well as an alternative soundtrack to "The Lord of the Rings" and the like, and you will find a zillion videos on YouTube based on that. Who knows, maybe even good old Sibelius would have liked it...

* The title sounds like a homage to Jethro Tull, who I think inspired Nightwish a lot.

Thanks! I'll dip into these four....