One of the many lies in the music industry is immediacy, the notion that your art has a window of time in which it must exist in the public forum in order to have impact. It’s also a lie that musicians feed to themselves, casting songs off as old and therefore decreased in value. Sweden’s Most Valuable Players have hardly written a song in this decade, but its Audio Anyways series is alive with sonic textures that would feel apropos in 2020.
On The Flying Balcony is the second installment in the Audio Anyways series. Recorded in a basement in Nacka from 2003-2005, The MVPs were only teenagers when they wrote the collection, which lends insight into the wanderlust of their instrumental transmissions. The lo-fi pop of The MVPs has that signature Swedish charm that makes Jens Lekman a luminous export, but MVPs sound is warped by the outsider inclination towards tape distortion and bleep-bloop effects. The experimental interludes create this radio dial effect of seeking, which is satisfied by tuning to the discovery of five vocal tracks aired for the lonely hearts of the AM band.
On The Flying Balcony is out on cassette via Zeon Light Kassett. The first edition of Audio Anyways, entitled A table of crippled units, is also available. Audio Anyways 3 is coming soon.
