Dina Ögon – Oas LP Playground Music (Sweden)

Dina Ogon is like a bumblebee — big and fluffy and it should be impossible for it to fly, but it does it anyway — quite simply as well. Anna Ahnlund, Christopher Cantillo, Daniel Ögren, and Love Örsan have had forty fingers involved in an unnumerable amount of Swedish rock, jazz, soul, and pop projects, recordings and tours and all kinds of hush hush. Between themselves they’ve played in different constellations and played back up for each other, assisted even more in one form or another for more than a decade. But now they’ve formed a more remarkable quartet than what transpired from any of all the shenanigans they’ve previously been involved with. When such seasoned musicians themselves get a shot at it, it’s not supposed to be able to fly or cause sensation according to conventional ways of marketing scheming, but this, well for one thing it’s so self-evidently great; secondly, the new album Oas sounds exactly like the sum of what’s lacking in Sweden musically in the 2020s. And for too many decades before that as well one could add, at least in this natural form. Oas is bubbling in a way few albums do, but without bursting. It’s held together by their curiosity, they’re searching through so many musical corners without going astray and the skillful playing welds it together. Dina Ögon are checking all the nutrients from black music and pop but it’s no pretentious show off, only a hella rewarding listen. 180 gram vinyl; printed inner sleeve.