In the Spring of 2006, a seven-year email correspondence culminated in the meeting of Luke Jackson and Magnus Börjeson. Jackson had long been a devoted fan of two of the Swedish musician’s former bands: Beagle and Favorita, and the two songwriters finally met in Paris where Börjeson was mid-tour playing in The Cardigans. By the end of the weekend, Jackson had accepted an invitation to record in Sweden, which he took up in January 2008. He set to work in the studio with Magnus on bass and Christoffer’s Brainpool bandmate Jens Jansson on drums. Upon his return to London, he sent the rough mixes of the songs to renowned London-based string arranger Robert Kirby (who has orchestrated works by Nick Drake, Elvis Costello, and Elton John). Kirby loved the songs and offered to write orchestrations for the album and accompany Jackson to Sweden to conduct the necessary recording sessions with nine players from Malmö’s Opera Orchestra. It is the collision of these two worlds which makes his album, And Then Some, so compelling. Densely layered guitars and vocal harmonies fuse with sweeping string lines, none of which ever draw the ear too far from what lies at the heart of Jackson’s music.

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I almost forgot — metal is really about being drunk, pissed, offensive, and satanic. I have Bestial Mockery to thank for this. Their no-frills black thrash is barebones and snarling without being too dead-pan serious. These guys from Sweden are clearly having a blast worshiping the Dark One in the tradition of old-school bands like Venom, early Bathory, and Sodom. Nothing too original here, but it’s fun as hell.

Metal icon Peter Tägtgren has produced the harshest and most underground music of the European metal scene — Immortal, Dimmu Borgir, Celtic Frost, among many others. His own band, Hypocrisy, is one of the most revered melodic death metal bands in the world. Lately, however, Tägtgren has been creeping into the mainstream with his solo project, Pain, a pop-rock, industrial metal outfit that specializes in radio-friendly, tongue-in-cheek anthems that still retain the dark edginess of the Nordic metal god’s earlier work.

Diablo Swing Orchestra are a Swedish band straight out of a Tom Waits nightmare. They sound exactly like their name suggests, making dirty, raucous swing, updated with some punky power chords, but the operatic Swedish vocals and nearly death-metal growls separate the band from the swing revivalists of the late ’90s. Definitely not the kind of band one would expect coming out of a Scandinavian country. But hell, there’s no rule that says creepers and fuzzy dice don’t go well with Viking helmets.

Anyone who thinks black metal is too rigid and narrow a genre to have room for innovation would do well to check out Lifelover, a Swedish band that defies every convention of black metal while still remaining miraculously kvlt. The sextet wafts between languid, hallucinatory grooves that channel Iggy Pop and latter-day Cure to unhinged freak-outs that sound as if they’re emanating from the deepest, coldest forests of Norway.

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We wrote about hot Swedish electro duo The Tough Alliance a little while back, so we thought it was time we had a chat with Eric Berglund, one half of the group. There’s a distinctive early UK rave sound coming through in some of New Chance. Was there much of that in Sweden when you were growing up ‘What’s UK rave? We don’t know much about genres and those kind of things’. You talk a lot about your shows being an interaction with the audience rather than you versus the crowd. Is there a tendency for bands to distance themselves whilst playing live? ‘Not as much as they’re controlling the situation and acting. We want a TTA performance to be a unique situation and something real, not a scripted show that’s the same wherever or whenever, whoever is there and whatever happens. We want it to be a part of reality’. You say you’ve never worked with anyone who isn’t a friend. What part of the friend dynamic are you reliant on to make music? ‘Love’. Would you consider working with other artists if an offer came in from someone whose work you respect, but who you don’t necessarily have a relationship with? ‘Dr Dre maybe, it feels like we had some relationship in a former life’. What were the reasons for breaking with Service and starting your own label? ‘We felt we had to be able to stand for everything about Service and when we didn’t feel like we could do that anymore we simply had to leave. Then after a while Sincerely Yours just happened by itself and we just played along’.

Listen to The Tough Alliance track, Something Special.

Peter Morén, one third of the Swedish group — Peter, Bjorn and John — that gave us some of 2006′s catchiest moments with their collection of eminently whistlable tunes, has a wonderful debut solo album out called The Last Tycoon.We asked him about his knack for writing music that plays on constant rotation in the inner-ear iPod’s of every indie-rock fan: Where does a song usually start for you: the words, the melody or the chord progression? ‘It used to always be a riff, chords or a melody. But now, just as often, it can be the words. So it’s really different from time to time. It might start with something I read or see, and then your mind start to wander in different directions’. You’ve always had a close association with art and illustration. Who are some of your favourite artists and do you draw or paint yourself? ‘I don’t really draw, but I like making small cartoon drawings. I used to do that a lot as a kid, but my style hasn’t really changed at all since that. My girlfriend is a great amateur painter and made the artwork for my album. I do like going to art museums, especially on tours, it makes you feel normal and it’s also very inspirational. As a kid I loved the French impressionists and related artists like Tolouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh. After that, I went in to more and more modern stuff, as you usually do I guess. But the funny thing is that recently I’ve been enjoying older and older stuff, like the old Flemish masters and the romantic painters. I see metaphors and codes I didn’t get as a kid and it’s also funny to see how the idealistic view of beauty has changed radically between different eras. They all wanted to paint realistically, but it all ended up looking very different’.

Lykke Li is Swedish, 21 years-old, and has 2008 written all over her. There’s a huge bidding war underway for her now, not surprising given that her sound is a cross between Concretes, Robyn, Royksopp and a dash of M.I.A — all done with a lo-fi girly pop electronic twist. Her debut album — Youth Novels — will be released at the end of this month. [more about Lykke Li]

In an over-saturated Swedish music scene, The Tough Alliance have delivered glistening electronic dance pop on their new album, A New Chance. They’ve been brought to the forefront by indie darling Jens Lekman who has claimed that they are his new favourite band. The album only lasts for half an hour, but what it lacks in time, it makes up for in sheer exuberance, with whistles, whoops, bongo basslines and frantic guitars all meshing seamlessly.

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