Now it is out

It all started when I had "Carry No Evil" recorded for a car-cassette, 
before the seven-inch itself took off to Växjö, out of my reach. Actually 
it was more of taking a shot, because I was curious how it would sound. 
Since then, the song has been a ever returning favourite of my car-stereo. 
One of those songs you fast-forward to hear over again.Burek V is a trio 
from Stockholm playing what you would refer to as lofi (or lo-fi or Lo-Fi 
or LoFi), A musical style I have tried to embrace several times, but always 
left there, shaking my head. I haven´t quite grasped this thing about lo-fi.
Until now, that is.
This is so good it´s crazy. And it is absolute lo-fi. Even a novice like myse
lf can see that much. (It´s now ok to send merecommendations for five 
records to check out in this genre, now I am wide-open for suggestions…)
As my work-mate said when he entered my room "It sounds like Neil 
Young in the seventies" It also sounds a bit like Pavement or a young 
Loosegoats (before they left for the prairie for good) I could say they have 
a slight trace of alt-country in there, but not in that painful and boring way, 
and more as a spice than in format. The line-up is guitar and vocals 
(Mats Grönmark), bass (Håkan Svensson), and drums (Christian Sandell). 
Sometimes enforced with some good friend doing handclaps, playing 
Mellotron or the tambourine. A thing distinguishable is that everything 
is played gently. It sometimes sounds like the strings and the drum-skins 
aren´t stretched-out quite enough. The guitars are carefully coloured 
with distortion, even though they are electrified and sound sweetly broken. 
There is also a lot of air between the instruments.Sometimes a new 
instrument is added to the mix, a pump-organ, synth-drums, trumpet.
But rarely more than one new instrument per song, and rarely thesame 
instrument on two different songs. You can easily call "Fa Fa Fa" the trumpet-
song or say, "Singled Out Blues" the pump-organ song.
Mats Grönmark sings in a voice that hovers between a whine and someone 
complaining. But in a good way.
Oh, how I like this.
The band has produced the album themselves, but recorded about half the 
album at Pelle Gunnerfeldts studio at Gröndahl. It seems something´s 
attached to the walls of that studio. Because you can trace that hard-to-pin-
down Gröndahl mood again. And after have read about Pelles recording-
techniques, I suspect he has turned the knobs over and harder here and there.
But thing is, it doesn´t quite matter who did what. Burek V stand up on their own.
I would also like to mention some of the songs, so you know where to start 
looking for samples, before you run off to buythe album for yourself. 
"Cover Your Tracks" is super (the bossa-nova beat from the drum-machine is a 
nice bonus) The newly recorded version of "Carry No Evil" is even better than 
the original. The pop-hit "Fa Fa Fa" with a fantastic lyric about how Grönmark 
in his afterlife meet Guided By Voices who tell him he is God. That can easily 
be this yearssummer-hit. (at least at my place).In a couple of weeks I´ve had 
Burek V a bit for myself. I haven´t mentioned them at all for the rest of the 
editorial staff (you know how can be, sometimes you want to have music for 
yourself). All of that is over. I cannot hide the truth anymore, that this is the
album of the year so far.

PATRIK HAMBERG, DAGENSSKVA.COM 2003:04:30