Douglas Heart

Something of the oddity — though not entirely incongruous — among Labrador Information’ steady of sun-kissed Swedish indie poppers, Douglas Heart pursue a subtler, more subdued type of beauty and sweetness. Though their design has continuing to progress over many incarnations, their determining audio, as heard on the self-titled debut, marries the glacial, roomy swoon of shoegaze using a relaxed, meditative clarity, soft nation inflections, and an enthusiastic melodic sensibility filtered through Malin Dahlberg’s distinctively limpid vocals, not really unlike Mazzy Superstar or a humbler, rootsier Sigur Rós. They began as an offshoot from the sound pop/shoegaze music group Position Pales, when the group’s two primary songwriters, Dahlberg and guitarist Pontus Wallgren, made a decision to scale back the distortion and concentrate on simpler, quieter music with a far more seductive demonstration. Naming themselves Hal Blaine, following the famous American program drummer, the duo spent almost a year saving tapes in Wallgren’s bedroom, mainly of acoustic guitar, bass, and vocals with synthesized body organ and drums thanks to a little Casio key pad. A demo program in an real studio resulted in the addition of two even more electronically oriented tracks on Labrador’s Kingsize compilation in 2001, where period the group got transformed its name to Douglas Center to avoid misunderstandings (as well as perhaps disgrace by association) with the initial Hal Blaine’s novelty single recordings. As Dahlberg and Wallgren ready to record their 1st full-length recording, they started playing live with three close friends — drummer Utmost Sjöholm, bassist Daniel Brandt, and organist Ramo Spatalovic — who quickly became a member of the lineup completely, adding to the warmer, fuller audio from the self-titled debut (released in 2003) how the music group co-produced with Björn Olsson of Union Carbide Productions, Spain, as well as the Soundtrack of Our Lives. I POSSIBLY COULD Start to see the Smallest Issues, an EP of fresh tracks having a louder, rockier bent, adopted in 2004, and Sjöholm and Wallgren also released a lively fuzz pop solitary on Labrador beneath the moniker Scared of Stairs, however the music group parted ways using the label sometime thereafter, though it continuing working toward another album with this fresh, noisier vein.