Guest post: DIY EUROTRANCE

It is no secret that I can be annoying. Sometimes I even get sick of myself, so I am always thrilled to have guest posts from SYWH readers. Reader Anders sent this one in and WOW... what a lolfactory! Thanks Anders, you have opened our eyes to the world of DIY EUROTRANCE- I am super into the DiscoCrew song below, hopefully you'll find something you like too! -- Sgt D

My name is Anders and first of all I want to thank you! A lot! For years I thought I was the only one my age who liked this kinda stuff. Or “liking” is a huge underestimation for the love I feel for artists like Blood On The Dance Floor and T-Mills and what they represent. Anyway, since I saw that you got at category for eurotrash I figured I would give you a tip about some awesome Swedish stuff. A movement I have dubbed “tongue-in-cheek DIY Eurotrance”.

I don’t know if you’re aware of the artist Basshunter. He’s probably too super-European in both sound and image to ever break through in the US, but he’s a really big deal in Europe. He started as a DIY trance producer popular in the LAN/online gaming-community and got a huge hit with Boten Anna in the summer of 2006, a song written about a chat bot. His follow-up hit DOTA was about playing Warcraft 3.

Basshunter doing his version of blue steel

His first album LOL <(^^,)> is one of my favorite Swedish albums ever. It takes the extremely naive and bitter sweetly romantic small-town teen melancholy of artists like Gyllene Tider and Freestyle (these references says nothing to non-Swedes I know) and combines them with a DIY-take on Dutch/German hands up-trance in the vein of Rob Mayth, Alex Megane and Cascada. The album was of course dismissed and laughed at by the conservative-as-fuck Swedish music journalists (a membership of the no fun club is obligatory if you want to write about music in Sweden) but it managed to create a whole new music genre all by itself: The tongue-in-cheek DIY Eurotrance.

A lot of small-town computer geeks heard it and realized they also had the tools too create similar music. This new wave of bands wrote lyrics that ranged from ordinary love songs to flat-out comedy (Sweden has big tradition of novelty songs becoming really huge hits, especially in the summer). But you could always sense equal parts small-town sentimentality and tongue-in-cheek irony in the songs.

This style of art is so wretched that even the most avant-garde hipsters will never ironically embrace it

For his second album Basshunter changed his style from a small-town computer geek to a super slick DJ. The geeky and naive subject matter from the first album were also changed to English-language love songs. His second and third albums are solid and professional eurotrance, but it’s a totally different thing than LOL <(^^,)>.

But the genre he created lives on. Mainly through the record label 100% Party, distributed through Warner Music. They are quick to sign all the young bands that emerge on Youtube and MySpace and build their brand arranging tours that only visit small towns and “party cruises” (a Nordic classic, you throw a party on a ferry cruising around the Baltic Sea so you can sell tax-free booze). I have yet to attend one of these cruises, but I'm sure that they are fantastic:

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The whole genre has a deep connection to the “svenne” and “fjortis”-style (a Swedish working class/small town-aesthetic that perhaps could be compared to the guido thing). In my opinion this stuff would be lot better representative for Swedish music abroad than pretentious indie pop like Lykke Li and JJ.

Here are some of my favorites in the genre. Holla at me of you want translations of the lyrics:

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Basshunter – DOTA (the originator!)

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Kobojsarna – Sång Om Ingenting (The first big hit in the genre after Basshunter)

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Laser Inc. – När man var liten (I can also recommend their debut album “Roger That!”. A very solid record!)

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Diskocrew – Här kommer Rebecca!

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Secondtunez – Sommaren Är Här Igen

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DJ Tune feat. Orremannen – Bag In Da Box (a tribute to the “bag in box”, a wine container extremely popular in Sweden.)

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Raaban & Recca – Pumpa Rumpa! (A Swedish Brokencyde!)

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Mattiaz – Skandalen (A Swedish Jeffree Star!)

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Basshunter makes a song in 5 minutes (the spark that created the whole movement)

I had to share this awesome stuff since everybody that writes about music in Sweden ignores it.
Hope you enjoy it and keep up the good work!

Anders' blog, Memories From The Pop-cultural War

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Thanks again dude, this shit jams! I especially like DiscoCrew and Raaban & Recca. I could definitely drop to this! What are yr faves?? Why do you think boring Swedish "music journalists" ignore this tight scene? Do you have exhaustive knowledge of an awesome/weird/gay scene like this? Send it to me!