03/04 - Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY
03/05 - Black Cat, Washington DC
03/06 - Lincoln Hall, Chicago, IL
03/07 - Independent, San Francisco, CA
03/08 - Echoplex, Los Angeles, CA

Folk/Ballad:
Marin/Marin – Småfolket (Dimma Sweden)
Merit Hemmingson – EQ (Amigo/Cosmos)
Navarra – Nya fönster (Kakafon Records)
Siri Karlsson – Gran Fuego (Flora & Fauna)

Dance:
Skudge – Samlad årsproduktion (Skudge Records)
Jonsson/Alter – Samlad årsproduktion (Kontra-Musik)
The Field – Looping State of mind (Kompakt)
Pallers – The Sea Of Memories (Labrador)

Punk:
Sju Svåra År – Storma varje hjärta (Not Enough)
Obnoxious Youth – The Eternal Void (Adult Crash)
Vånna Inget – Allvar (Heptown Records)
Black Feet – Black Feet (Dirty Faces)

Hip-Hop:
Mofeta & Jerre – Briljanter & Smaragder (Pumpa Records)
Ison & Fille – För evigt (Hemmalaget)
Mohammed Ali – Vi (Bad Taste Records)
Roffe Ruff – Barrabas (Olofsson Management/Swingkids)

Experimental:
Hans Appelqvist – Sjunga slutet nu (Häpna)
Hanna Hartman – H ^ 2 (Komplott)
Ophir – Opus Operatum (Komplott/Callithrix Records)
Midaircondo feat. Michala Østergaard-Nielsen – Reports on the Horizon (Twin Seed Recordings)

Hardrock:
In Solitude – The World. The Flesh. The Devil (Metal Blade)
Opeth – Heritage (Roadrunner)
Terra Tenebrosa – The Tunnels (Trust No One Recordings)
The Haunted – Unseen (Century Media Records)

Rhythm:
Syster Sol – Kichinga! (Swing kids)
Simone Moreno – Planetas (Soul Dog Records)
Kapten Röd – Fläcken Som Aldrig Går Bort (SwingKids)
OK Star Orchestra – The Beat and the Melody (Rootsy.nu)

Pop:
Azure Blue – Rule of thirds (Hybris)
Jonathan Johansson – Klagomuren (Hybris)
Korallreven – An album by Korallreven (Hybris)
Loney Dear – Hall Music (Dear John)

Rock:
Pascal/Mattias Alkberg – Allt det här (Novoton)
Kajsa Grytt – En kvinna under påverkan (Playground Music)
Bob Hund - Det överexponerade gömstället (bob hunds förlag)
Tramp – Indigo (Killer Cobra Records)

Synth:
Henric de la Cour – Henric de la Cour (Progress Productions)
Necro Facility – Wintermute (Progress Productions)
Mr Jones Machine – Monokrom (Progress Productions)
Covenant – Modern Ruin (Progress Productions)

Jazz:
Jonas Holgersson – Snick Snack (Moserobie)
Parti & Minut – Från klart till halvklart (El Dingo Records)
Priming Orchestra – Deep Blue (GAC)
The Splendor – Delphian Palace (HOOB Records)

Best Unsigned:
Death By Armborst
Storskogen
Schizo and the Personalities
Farsta

Singer/Songwriter/Country/Americana:
Brothers of End – Mount Inside (Konjaga)
Ane Brun – It All Start With One (Balloon Ranger Recordings)
Promise & the Monster – Red Tide (Imperial Recordings)
Lars Bygdén – Songs I Wrote (Massproduktion)

Best live act:
Kriget (Kriget)
This is Head (Adrian Recordings)
Graveyard (Nuclear Blast)
Mattias Alkberg (Teg Publishing)

Interesting to see Hybris and Progress Productions dominating their respective niches. Winners will be announced on February 3 at a ceremony at Nalen in Stockholm. Read more: http://manifestgalan.se/manifestgalan-2012/nominerade/

Top albums of 2011
Your Headlights Are On - "s/t"
Juv - "s/t"
Jenny Hval - "Viscera"
Dark Times - "Talk Too Much" from Dark Times tape
Next Life - "Artificial Divinity"
Kurt Vile - "Smoke Ring for my Halo"
PJ Harvey - "Let England Shake"
Gillian Welch - "The Harrow & The Harvest"
Oneohtrix Point Never - "Replica"
Thurston Moore - "Demolished Thoughts"

Top Concerts of 2011
Grant Lee Buffalo @ Øya 2011
Ghost @ Øya 2011
Pantha du Prince @ Øya 2011
Fenriz & Club Knulldröm DJ-sets @ Revolver
K-X-P @ Cafe Mono, May 6
Bad Brains, Shelter @ West Coast Riot Festival, Sweden
SWANS @ Rockefeller, May (a birthday present from my best friend:))

Top Books of 2011
Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre
The Angel's Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
Life, Keith Richards
Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart

John Norby

Top 10 for 2011

It has been such a great year for metal -- old and new -- that I'm concentrating on it for this year's top 10. Let's call it top 10 'thinking outside the box' metal. Pretty much in order but it's also a bit loose.

Textures - Dualism
What can I say about this album? A combination of expert songwriting, flawless musicianship and simply astounding vocals makes this the band's best work to date -- and metal album of the year!

Pyrrhon - An excellent slave but a terrible master
Alongside Sweden's Ghamorean, these New Yorkers confirmed my theory that of the six million or so technical death metal bands doing the rounds there must be at least one that can actually write decent tunes. I haven't heard the likes of this since the Gorguts days. Mental shit indeed!

Ghamorean - Terra firma
Off-kilter, technical blackened death played with unwavering passion. It's not often that the two go hand-in-hand but Ghamorean have it nailed on "Terra firma"..

Unholy - From the shadows
This was so ahead of its time back in '93 that most people just didn't understand it. Finnish doom of the most unsettling order played with seven-string guitars long before they were hijacked by nu-metallers and, in later years, djent-freaks. Re-released in 2011 by Peaceville.

Manilla Road - Playground of the damned
Old dudes of metal do it with absolute style. Retro doom is order of the day on this, their fifteenth album. Have you heard of them before? Probably not. Should you check out this album? Damn right! You do need to give the production time to bed in but once it does...

Ulcerate - The destroyers of all
Another technical death metal album of the askew variety, this time from New Zealand. I suppose this could be classed as post-metal with actual metal in it. If Isis was possessed by Pazuzu.

Unholy - The second ring of power
Another Peaceville reissue. The follow-up to "From the shadows" is a different beast than its predecessor but the atmosphere is just oozing out of it. Another one that suffered at the hands of its own inventiveness, this time back in 1994. Essential!

Burzum - Fallen
Regardless of the man's politics Varg knows how to write great black metal. The fact that this stuff -- like "Belus" -- is a sonic continuation of the "Filosofem" album makes listening to this an oddly nostalgic experience.

Septicflesh - The great mass
The Greeks have been getting better and better with the release of each album and this -- surprisingly -- bettered the hell out of "Communion". Beautiful and brutal rolled into one.

Opeth - Heritage
This is really only metal by association. Some loathe it for its lack of the heavy stuff. I totally know where they're coming from. But this is still a killer album.

Laura Studarus

A list -- wherein I avoid mentioning my continuing obsession with söder tea. (But seriously Sweden, can you just start exporting the stuff already?)

1. Acid House Kings: Music sounds better with you -- Not just one of my favorite Scandinavian albums of the year, but one of my favorite albums of the year. Period. The perfect pop balance of ennui and joy -- i.e. what my diary would sound like when set to music in a perfect world.

2. Trentemøller live in Los Angeles at the Henry Fonda: Badass.

3. Pallers: The sea of memories -- I didn't realize how obsessed I was with this electro/ambient/pop album until I couldn't stop listening to it. Popping it on in the morning, soundtracking my walk through the darkened streets off LA (okay that only happened once), falling asleep to their unique, sun-streaked sorrow -- it's never enough, is it? Sneaky stuff.

4. Niki and the Dove: Somewhere deep in the heart of Stockholm, a big-voiced singer turned to an electronics wizard and said, "Let's make music that combines the slick production of 1980s Madonna with the darkness of Fever Ray." The much-hyped duo has put out several EPs this year. Seeing as how my name is not Sophie, and I hate to choose, I request you listen to them all. (I'm also giving them a journalistic gold star for being among some of the most charming interview subjects I've ever had the pleasure of speaking with.)

5. I Break Horses: Hearts -- Heartfelt shoegazy bliss. Sofia Coppola, please take note.

6. Amanda Mair: "House"/"Doubt" -- At sixteen Mair is a near-music genius. At sixteen I was....er...sorry, self-preservation prevents me from completing that sentence. (An extra gold star for production by Philip Ekström of The Mary Onettes.)

7. Det Vackra Livet: Det Vackra Livet - I'm not a Labrador Records publicist. Nor do I speak Swedish. But I totally "get" this, and I suspect if you're a child of the 80s you might too.

8. Sóley: We sink -- How does an album of sparse guitar and piano compositions sound so beautifully creepy? And why can't I stop listening to it?

9. Korallreven: "As young as yesterday" (ft. Victoria Bergsman) -- The best track on an already fantastic album. Victoria Bergsman takes everything to the next level. Dreamy!

10. Sin Fang: Summer echos -- While I reject the comparisons to Beck (I mean, really?), I love that Sindri Már Sigfússon has turned folk into something sprawling and completely unpredictable.

A new video from Korallreven, directed by Marcus Söderlund.

It's that time of year when we all begin clinging to "summer music," rejecting the changing of the seasons with a breezy pop tune. When viewed in that light, Korallreven self-titled debut is just about perfect -- an album packed with summer breezes, with just a hint of the wistfulness of autumn.

For Marcus Joons the act of making music begin with as a bid to recapture the ephemeral feeling of a vacation in the South Pacific. Enlisting The Radio Dept.'s Daniel Tjäder (who became an equal collaborator), Joons infused tropical percussion and wind instruments with synths, guitars and a pervasive sense of melancholy. The result, as Joons describes it, is an album that takes the listener, "from the highest high to the lowest low." It's a Trap! caught up with the Stockholm-based musician to talk seasons, Swedish translations, and Taken By Trees.

How did your project come to be named Korallreven? I assume there aren't many coral reefs in Sweden.

There's actually some coral reefs on the Swedish west coast, for real. They will, as everywhere else in the world I'm afraid, die pretty soon. Anyway, I named it Korallreven because it's easily one of the most beautiful words in the Swedish language. Also because it's pretty close to the Samoan word for spirituality.

As you seem to know, Korallreven all started in my mind when I was in Samoa three years ago. And though I wanted us, Korallreven, to make pop songs that were spiritual like the local Samoan Catholic church choirs, hypnotic like the breathtaking tropical nature and above all a feeling of finally reaching the other side, it felt kinda natural to call it like this. I know that it might be hard to learn to pronounce for you outside of Scandinavia, but since you all learned how to say smorgasbord I guess that you at least could give it a try, right?

It seems like you knew Daniel Tjäder (who is also a member of The Radio Dept.) for a while before collaborating. At what point did you realize you were musical kindred spirits?

Yeah, we've been close friends since like seven or eight years back or so. I think that I told Daniel about my vision just when I came back from Samoa and we had both moved to the same city, Stockholm. I told Daniel and he understood exactly what I meant and took it even to a higher level than I ever could have dreamt of.

Are you a vivid dreamer -- as suggested by "Keep your eyes shut"? Has dream imagery ever been a part of the songwriting process for you?

Yeah, I guess that I am a vivid dreamer. Or, it's not really dreams that you have when you are asleep but daydreams. I mean, when we recorded the album both of us were yearning, not just for another place, but also another state of mind. We just wanted to go somewhere, you know.

Is there a spiritual element to making music? Do you think music has the power to contain universal or bigger truths?

I believe so, for sure. It cleanses me better than any run, soap, or pill. Even though I feel that it more than anything else helps you to escape and forget about universal big truths.

Other than her appearances on tracks, "Honey mine" and "As young as yesterday" what do you consider to be collaborator Victoria Bergsman's finest musical moment(s)?

I think that "Watch the waves" from her last album "East of Eden" is one of the most beautiful songs that has been recorded here in Sweden. It's so yearning, my favorite feeling when it comes to music.

Have you been back to the South Pacific Island that inspired this album? If so, does it hold the same fascination for you since you've emotionally explored it in your music?

I haven't. It's just sooo far away. It took like 24 hours to go to Australia and then some 8 more to get there. But as I said before, Samoa just opened up my mind. The record is more about this mindset than the island itself. South Pacific countries are often in the top when it comes to lists on "The World's Most Happy People." I can understand why and I just wanted to fill the music with that carefree feeling.

What do you think it is about the Balearic pop sound that makes it appealing to so many Scandinavian bands? I'm hard pressed to think of any U.S. band that's successfully adopted the sub-genre.

I don't have a clue, sorry.

How would you describe the emotional content of your music to someone who was deaf? Is there some kind of visual you would use to help get the idea across?

A fresh but spiked smoothie perhaps? Like a hyper-organic treat meets a hyper-artificial trippy trip; from the highest high to the lowest low and leaves you speechless.

Does any other form of art speak to you the way music does?

No, but movies can definitely take me on some serious rides. I have an extremely good memory when it comes to music but a really lousy one when it comes to movies, and always have a really hard remembering movie titles and actors. The only ones that stick are the ones from the series I watched when I was eleven.

Do you consider yourself to be a nostalgic person? Is there an era of your life you'd like to revisit?

No, I even have a friend who used to remind me of how shamelessly historyless I am. Historyless in the sense that I don't have any respect for the history and that I live here and now. I don't know if it's true, but it might be.

Since you've created the ultimate summer soundtrack, let's pretend the weather is still warm for a moment: what is your favorite summer memory?

As said I'm not that nostalgic, but I truly loved the summers that I had in the small beachside village Varberg on the Swedish west coast. I don't remember so much of what I use to do more than playing football (soccer), catching butterflies, and daydreaming about one day windsurfing like the young cool windsurfers with the most beautiful girls hanging around them in the bay. Everything felt so endless back then. The beach felt like it was as endless as the (as I remember it) endless summer.

Your remix of Britney Spears' "Till the world ends" has gotten a lot of blog attention. Was the project a guilty pleasure, or based on a legitimate appreciate of the song writing? Do you believe in the idea of guilty pleasures?

It was out of deep respect. We liked the song but thought that it could be a little more like how Britney's life seems to have been recently. It seems so chaotic. Maybe she should try to come down with our album, don't you think? Or does she feel better now? Anyhow... we just wanted to show how we would indulge in Britney's voice if we'd ever get a chance to produce a song for her.

Who would win in a fight: Korallreven or The Tough Alliance?

I guess that we would win on walk over since The Alliance does not exist anymore.

Interview by Laura Studarus

01. Champagne Riot - A friend of a friend
02. TALK 1
03. Hur Högt - Hur högt
04. Karl X Johan - Flames
05. Nils Bech & Krazy Fiesta Arkestra - Drunk love
06. TALK 2
07. Håkan Lidbo - Zuzuvela
08. Jasmine Kara - Try my love again
09. Kaka - Below this sun
10. Viola - Neon lightning
11. TALK 3
12. Supersci - Snap out of it
13. Haleiwa - Vibraandaman
14. Korallreven - The truest faith
15. TALK 4
16. Robyn - Dancehall queen
17. Hunt - Ashes of a secret heart
18. Rasmus Kellerman - Where do you go at night
19. TALK 5
20. Tutankamon - Have you ever been in love?

Reminder: my show airs every week on Sundays and Mondays at 11pm ET on Sirius XMU. That's channel 26 on Sirius, 43 on XM and 831 for DirecTV subscribers.