Swedish troupe Simian Ghost are the intelligent pop brainchild of gifted songwriter Sebastian Arnström. At first a solo project, Sebastian’s debut album under this moniker, Infinite Traffic Everywhere, was released on Playground Music in Sweden during the winter of 2010 to great enthusiasm and critical acclaim.It topped the critics chart in their home country and was voted record of the year by the readers at Dagensskiva.se. Shortly after the release of the debut, a live trio with Sebastian’s little brother Erik Klinga and his high school friend Mathias Zachrisson joining the band. This trio, tight musically and personally, spent the early part of the year touring Sweden and sharing stages with the likes of Mount Kimbie, SBTRKT and Niki and the Dove amongst others. Simian Ghost’s third album is indeed a full-length one, comprising of no less than 18 beautiful tracks. The two singles released before the album, “A Million SHining Colours” and Echoes of Songs (For Trish Keenean) got raving reviews and loads of blog love.

Singer Sebastian Arnström about the album: “The main difference between the last album we did and this one is the amount of time and effort we put into it. The last album we did during a couple of summer months, taking breaks to go swimming and so on. This time we really isolated ourselves, sitting in our cellar room with a couple of cheap microphones and lot’s of instruments. We’ve continued working with focus on the album format. We like great songs, but we love great records. It’s a bit longer and more ambitious. Thematically the records deals a lot with alienation; from a society who’s ideals we have less and less in common with and ultimately from the popular idea of real reality. At the same time much of it is very naive and direct, and the lyrics keeps getting a lot simpler and more personal.

These last years have been very weird, lots of stuff has happened, both good and very bad. What we do is pretty self-aware and we like to toy around with genres and genre bound expectations. We love to balance what we do on that fine point between irony and total gravity. We’re inspired by great musicians like Brian Wilson, Gershwin and Debussy, but also by a lot of modern popular and alternative music, like The Flaming Lips, Deerhunter and Broadcast. We’re very much into ambient music and noise, as well as sweet 70’s funk and soul. We try to find a path somewhere in the middle of it all.”