Nordic Music Central

We receive many pitches from artists and their representatives promoting songs and albums that are ‘cinematic yet organic and acoustic’.

I’ve been almost apologetic about how often Terje Gravdal appears in NMC but have to reiterate again that his assorted philosophies deserve all the attention they can get.

Pernille Karlsen is the artist behind Penny Flows, originally from the small town of Hadsund in northern Denmark and now based in Aarhus.

We welcome an external contributor, Calogero Nicosia, of Mythic Harmonies, to NMC with a fascinating short dive into the very old texts referred to by many contemporary Nordic artists in their work.

There’s quite a lot to unpack with this single, which is the debut collaborative one by Swedish alternative folk/pop artist Ester Idalia (Ester Widstam), who has previously featured in NMC through her membership of atmospheric Swedish duo CHIVVY, and the…

It sounds like an order barked out by US Secretary for War Pete Hegseth but is in fact this year’s Christmas song from Northern Assembly, an indie/folk quartet from Aarhus.

Weekend Intermission is our regular feature where we look at an artist or band not from the Nordic countries, just to mix things up a bit.

28-minute album ‘Imagine Life’ from Finland’s Detalji enters the gates with its heart on its sleeve, pulsating electronica and muscular vocals almost providing a confrontation with the listener.

Emma Pilgaard’s smooth and succulent tones, all delivered in precise, impressive English, at times bring to mind Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and other well-known figures.

I don’t think we’ve ever had a song with a smoky New Orleans flavour to it, something that has jumped out of a bar somewhere on Bourbon Street and straight onto streaming services piped directly into your living room.

And now for something completely different, as they used to say on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, before shifting on to a sketch that was pretty much the same as the previous one.

I was thinking only the other day that we hadn’t reviewed an Icelandic artist for ages.

Gabriel Jemsten is a 23-year old musician from Lund, an old university town near Malmö in southern Sweden although he is promoted by an agency in Copenhagen.

Want to loosen up for the weekend?

In the celebrated Nightwish song ‘Seven days to the Wolves’, ‘heroes’ and ‘cowards’ “part ways”.

Mi von Ahn is a new name to us as a solo performer but she has paid us a visit in the past, in August of last year in fact, as one half of Aery, alongside Joel Gabrielsson, two indie/alt electronic specialists with a love for soundscapes, strangely doing…

That must be the longest review title I’ve ever posted.

Siri Neel has appeared several times before in NMC but not for a while.

Nina Vina.

Weekend Intermission is our regular feature where we look at an artist or band not from the Nordic countries, just to mix things up a bit.

Finnish electronic alt-pop artist Conchis, who last appeared in NMC a couple of years ago, kindly sent us a press release concerning her second album, ‘Gravity’.

Jacob Faurholt has visited us a couple of times in the past, under various guises (he is also known as and records as Statisk Støjwhich).

“I take after my mother, I fall in love with stupid men” is a starkly candid admission from Denmark’s Theresa Rex and in the very first line of ‘Fall in Love (To fall apart)’.

Weekend Intermission is our regular feature where we look at an artist or band not from the Nordic countries, just to mix things up a bit.

Amongst all the numerous categories, classifications and genres of music – rock, pop, country, rap, metal and so on – there is one category that doesn’t yet exist.

Yep, NMC was five years old on 1st October (where did that time go?)

Weekend Intermission is our regular feature where we look at an artist or band not from the Nordic countries, just to mix things up a bit.

Over the years we’ve reviewed so many songs by young artists that found the courage to speak up about toxic relationships that we had to draw the conclusion that the degree of toxicity must have gotten far worse than it was when we were young and (relativ…

We get such a wide variety of work sent to us requesting review that sometimes it makes for a pleasant change just to sit and listen to something indecipherable and to try to put yourself in the position of a listener in the country it comes from.

There are cinematic anthems and there are cinematic anthems.

There’s a well-known British Rom-Com film from 1985, ‘Letter to Brezhnev’, in which two young women from Liverpool head out for a night on the town and meet two visiting Soviet sailors on shore leave.

There’s a seriously annoying advert on British TV right now that has a ruggedly handsome young dude working out down the gym.

‘The Meaning of Flowers’, a colourful bouquet of an offering from the world of Berlin-based Dane Agnes Obel, is much to contemplate.

We reviewed Jörgen Gustafsson’s album ‘A Darkened Harbour’ early in 2024, or more correctly the sample track ‘Disperse’.

Carmie has always offered us slightly off-the-wall yet inspiring songs, dealing with subjects like chronicling her move back to her parents’ home as an adult, having broken up with her partner, and bemoaning the collective failure of Danish youths to wean…

STENLUND has appeared once before in NMC, with a song about cycling, or at least that’s how we interpreted ‘Cyclism’.

Lowly paid us a visit once before, back in November 2022, almost four years ago and I’m more than pleased to welcome back a quintet which last time out beguiled us with a song about “a loving and inclusive story about loving a person despite their less ad…

We’re late with this one by a month but at least it escaped a cull of singles, EPs and albums which regrettably we can’t cover with limited resources presently.

Theinimitable Slagger Lund returns with his third and final single, ‘Flixbus ud’ (FlixBus out’), prior to the release of his album ‘Noias Ark’ on 24thSeptember.

Weekend Intermission is our regular feature where we look at an artist or band not from the Nordic countries, just to mix things up a bit.

Astrid Swan has learned to live in the moment.

You have to be brave to release a single called ‘Faded’ in Scandinavia.

I’ve never visited Berlin; Hamburg yes, many times, but Berlin always seemed to be a tad too Eastern Block for me despite what happened in November 1989.

Feel like some jazz?

Klas Österman and Josefin Blomberg together form a Swedish duo from Rimbo and Ljusterö, which are municipalities to the northeast of Stockholm.

‘RESCAPE’ by RESCAPE.

Doing this job presents you with more variety than you could ever imagine.

There are several artists that we have followed closely in NMC, sometimes over years as they have released singles, which finally found their way, sometimes via one or more EPs, onto an album.

It sounds like a keynote speech at an annual CEO conference but is in fact a new single from Finland’s Stinako and ‘Visions of Future’ is also the title track from a forthcoming LP out on 30th October.

While they have only once before appeared in NMC I well remember The Northern Belle.