Copenhagen’s Halasan Bazar, known for their lush and dreamy psych pop, have just released a new video for a track on their 2012 debut record, How to Be Ever Happy. The video for “Tin Foiled” features footage of a yogi cycling through poses while animal-masked companions—played by singer Fredrik Rollum Eckhoff—dart around in the background, breaststroking in greenish water and hoisting keyboards through the woods. Sun-drenched and dizzy, it feels like a relic of the 60s. Meanwhile, the song layers synth organ, tambourine, and jangly guitar with Eckhoff’s reverberant vocals—stirring oohs and ahs—to evoke a muted sense of longing.
The video anticipates the vinyl reissue of How to Be Ever Happy, which was released exclusively on cassette in 2012 on Moon Glyph. After Eckhoff moved to Norway from Denmark, he spent two years singlehandedly writing and recording 60 demos that amounted to three CD-R albums and an EP of kitchen recordings. Then he gathered some friends to record the studio album in a single week—which may come as a surprise given the intricacy of the final product. Drawing on the folk and AM psych of the 60s, How to Be Ever Happy is an exploration of “themes of alienation, love, & the inner-battle,” according to Steve Rosborough of Moon Glyph. The songs slip in and out of lucidity with tangled layers of instrumentation and harmony, and the result is an album that plays like a dreamscape.
The remastered LP will be released by Moon Glyph and French label Requiem Pour Un Twister on September 22. Until then, you can stream the album on Bandcamp.
