Dungen

by James Christopher MongerScandinavian "folkrockpsych" collective Dungen is the brainchild of Gustav Ejstes. Raised in the small village of Lanna in Vastergotland, Sweden, Ejstes was weaned on regional folk music and '60s rock at a young age by his violinist/music teacher father. He discovered the world of hip-hop while in his teens. An obsession with the science of sampling followed, and through his own experiments with the genre he was exposed to a wealth of '60s and '70s Swedish underground music. The organic nature of the recordings stirred something in Ejstes. He wanted to prove that he was capable of playing all of the instruments he had been sampling himself, so he packed up and moved to his mother's farm in the woods of nearby Smaland to hone his craft in a studio in his grandmother's basement. The ambitious Dungen was released on friend Stefan Kéry's Subliminal Sounds label in 2001. The record received enough attention from the underground community to attract the Dolores/Virgin label, and soon Dungen were back in the studio for a series of three singles, one of which appeared on the soundtrack for The Jungle Book 2. Dungen's breakthrough international album, Ta Det Lugnt, was released by Subliminal Sounds in 2004 and re-released (with a bonus disc) by American label Kemado in July 2005. The follow-up, Tio Bitar, arrived in 2007.