Cloudberry Jam

Like their countrymen the Cardigans and Komeda, Sweden’s Cloudberry Jam drew from an eclectic pool of influences — the vintage Motown sound, cool jazz, a good hint of Latin American music — to hone their very own distinctive make of elegant, finely-textured lounge-pop. Shaped in the city of Hyperlinköping in 1991, the group comprised vocalist Jennie Medin, guitarist Jörgen Wärnström, bassist Per Valsinger, multi-instrumentalist Henrik Sundqvist and drummer Per Byström; while their 1992 debut EP La La La provided a far more faceless, guitar-driven lo-fi audio, their 1994 follow-up The Artwork of Being Great began shifting towards the new diversity of their finest work. Blank Salary, Cloudberry Jam’s full-length debut, found its way to 1995, and provided an entire integration from the quintet’s myriad affects, yielding a shiny, sophisticated audio topped off by Medin’s beautiful vocals. 1996’s Providing the Atmosphere was better still, adding some Stereolab-styled space-age pop; the record was an enormous success not merely at home but additionally in Japan, where it marketed over 100,000 copies. A singles compilation, Heading Further, preceded the discharge of Cloudberry Jam’s third studio room LP, The Difficult Shuffle, which made an appearance in past due 1997. After Medin after that decided to go back to college or university, the group’s break-up was announced the next year.