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Ebb - 'Loona' |
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Title: Loona
Artist: Ebb
Label: Gaymonkey Eletronica
Genre: Minimalist Chill Out
Price: £11.99
Buy Online: Click Here
Release Date: 16th April 2007
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Samples: N/A
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Listings: Click Here |
Details: Stockholm-based singer-songwriter Ebb releases his debut album, ‘Loona,’ on April 16 on Gaymonkey Records.
‘Loona’ has already been critically acclaimed in Ebb’s native Sweden, earning him a Manifest Award for ‘Best Electronic Album,’ Sweden’s most prestigious independent music award, and spending the first month of its release in the Swedish iTunes download top 20.
Title track ‘Loona’ is a prelude frosted with fragile clicks and echoes which segues into last year’s debut single ‘I’m All Made of Music,’ a track hooked around shuddering bass pads and haunting vocals. All set to be re-released later this year it shows the kind of emotive-driven, visual atmospherics that percolate the album: “The north of Sweden, is during winter, very cold and snowy, and there are never-ending forests and wide horizons,” explains Ebb. “Having that kind of nature around me has influenced my music a great deal.” Upcoming single ‘Life Is On TV’ punctuates the understated electronica with dusty guitar twangs before the glacial strings and scratchy percussion of ‘Silent Lucy’ swell over Ebb’s tender vocals. ‘Minau’ laces space age bleeps with crunchy bass and ‘Keep Or Nothing’ skims broken beats over a ghostly sonic wave. The LP closes with ‘When Dusk Begins,’ a nine minute epic that builds around gentle shakes and twisting purrs.
Ebb says the album reflects an important part of his life. Growing up in Luleå, a tiny industrial town at the northernmost tip of Sweden, he spent his youth surrounded by wide horizons and forests, which made moving to the city quite daunting. With the noise, traffic and everything else that comes with the city, Ebb struggled with the contrast but found solace in his music: “I discovered a balance, of living in the city and of longing for the nature and landscape of the north.”
Written over two years, with Ebb playing, arranging and singing every song on the album, he admits the process wasn’t easy. “It was a frustrating time and I was really worried I wouldn’t be able to finish the album. Writing it was quite lonely and isolating. When you create every part of the song on your own, you end up questioning yourself and you have to really believe in what you are doing. It was quite a challenge.” Patience, a group of very supportive friends and a record deal pushed everything back on track. “The record company gave me a deadline, which meant I had to focus, get back to my original songs and finish the album. A bit of pressure is good, but not too much.”
And so ‘Loona’ was born – a soundscape of discreet electronica filled with glitchy beats, warm melodies and a gentle pop sensibility akin to the likes of Four Tet, Sigur Rós, Múm or The Broadway Project. Not that Ebb likes to pigeonhole it: “It is a melodic pop/electronica album, but I don’t really like to label it so. It could be so much more, depending on who’s listening to it and what they get from it – it’s up for interpretation.”
Ebb discovered music at an early age when he heard his dad playing the guitar. “He only knew four chords, but he taught them to me and I did the rest.” Even as a child Ebb didn’t copy other people’s songs, always preferring to make up his own. Joining his first band at the age of fifteen, he played in a slew of outfits until he finally left the world of rawk behind four years ago: “I wanted more creative control.”
A friend had a computer with a music-making programme and Ebb, now ensconced in Stockholm, started to experiment with his song writing. It was here that he finally found his sound: “I knew this was the music I wanted to make, it felt right; I felt like I had come home musically.” This pushed him to invest in his own computer, make a studio in his apartment and start to write the songs that would later form his debut album ‘Loona’.
Ebb's material has also proved to be a producer’s dream – mixes for ‘I'm All Made of Music’ included Jori Hulkkonen's electro house classic which smashed into the Music Week Cool Cuts chart and earned praise from tastemaker DJs like Mike Monday and the Trophy Twins. He looks forward to further reworks, citing Röyksopp as a duo he’d really like to collaborate with. “I do get nervous when hearing a remix, but if the result is good it can be very refreshing not being involved in the creative process. A remix by Röyksopp would be great, they’re so melodic and their music feels so Scandinavian – it would make a great combination with my sound.”
As for the moniker… “It was actually something an ex-girlfriend came up with,” laughs Ebb. “It’s short, to the point, works in a lot of languages and I liked it. It was the best thing she ever gave me.”
And beyond all this? Ebb says this album is just the beginning: “I want to reach the conscious, insightful listener who is tired of everything shallow and without substance.”
Ebb releases his debut album, ‘Loona,’ on April 16 through Gaymonkey Records. |
Reviewers Opinion: Loona has won a prestigious prize "Sweden's independent music awards" for BEST ELECTRONIC ALBUM 2007 so the credentials are there for promising future.
From the outset its quite promising with soft vocals building with a back beat into a speedy eletronic sound, first impressions is its, Sigor Ros fairytail vocals playing with future sound of London split beats and minimal clicks in the background. No doubt this Artist takes himself fairly seriously and wouldnt want to be interpreted as being alike anyone else, Ebb Loona would rather you decide.
Emotionally its very contemplative and that mixed with the aurual test of the beats in the background it dragged me down and give me a headache in the end. I suppose with the support of summers days it would get another play and perhaps then I would love it. |
Choice Tracks:
03: Life Is On TV
10:
When Dusk Begins |
| Rating:
5 / 10 – Bronze Award |
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