Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation
Taking their moniker from the notion of ‘Liberation Upon Hearing In The Between’ from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead, ‘Jose n Öhrn + The Liberation’ took little time to make their mark on the wider world, brandishing a radiant sound that stands effortlessly apart from the increasingly staid and often paradoxically predictable world of modern psychedelia. Having already been nominated for a Swedish Grammy with their debut EP, Diamond Waves, their full-length 2015 debut on Rocket Recordings, Horse Dance marked out a territory in which beguiling repetition could sashay with sweet pop suss, melodic ourishes with experimental intensity, and it was summarily rapturously received on arrival, making new fans like 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne and earning them appearances at Roskilde Festival and Eindhoven Psych Lab.
Yet clearly this was only the beginning of a journey of discovery ,and few would have guessed how the band’s sound would quickly evolve into still more enchanting and enlightening strains. Their second effort Mirage, which follows a mere year after its predecessor, sees the band sculpting sprawling, hypnotic jams into elegant nocturnal serenades with such serendipity that their actual creation remains a little hazy even to themselves. “We agree on not remembering very much about how these tracks came about, that all of them were written on the road and that most of them came fully formed” note the band. “Most were really long to begin with, but we found it relieving to break away a bit from the mandatory psych jams a little bit. We also just realised that none of them were written in daylight, which might be why memory is so elusive.”