Bleep

Olof Dreijer has been everywhere since we last heard of him as Oni Ayhun, which is perhaps why the debut album under his given name contains everything in it. From working with his sibling Fever Ray after the disbandment of The Knife, which they founded together, to remixing Björk and Rosalía, and his deep concern with the state of the world fuelling community outreach and social justice projects combined with his musical practice, his career has been just as restless as his signature zipping, jumping melodies. Loud Bloom is therefore an incredibly generous offering, the scintillating product of biding one’s time through worldly travels.

And where club culture has increasingly shifted its ears to sounds from across the globe over the years, Dreijer’s desire to hear from outside the Western sphere has driven him not only to deliver on the global heartbeat powering his 2020s EPs, but to give us an hour and a half of visions of what radically human dance music can be. Amapiano log drums pass the baton to slamming kuduro and gqom inspired techno, MC Toya DeLazy’s clicking Zulu consonants are splattered into a percussive popping club weapon, and sharp strings swipe through Middle Eastern tinged microtonal scales. High energy crosscultural bangers are interspersed with explorative electroacoustic and ambient pieces, recontextualising the rhythms and what a dance record can contain.

All these seemingly disparate parts come together for an invigorating listen, glued together by fizzy whizzing synths and a highly kinetic assortment of hand drums. Jubilant melodies constantly sway as drums tumble in the breeze, sparked up by Diva Cruz’s imperative raps on ‘Acuyuye’ over raw fiery buzzes, trilling and slippery with Sudanese singer MaMan’s melismatic vocals over the fierce house crashes of ‘Echoed Dafnino’. The record’s second half solos Dreijer’s compositional capabilities, eluding timbre as he contemplates fuzzy synth palettes, complex claps and drum sequences, and the muted piano plucks of ‘Fern Valley’, spreading the previous tracks’ wildness into a balm of negative space where the dancefloor fervor hangs in resonating reverb between the notes.

It’s been a long time coming, but Olof Dreijer has given us everything and more on his debut album Loud Bloom.