Ludvig Moon
Ludvig Moon is an indie pop/dream pop quintet from Oslo. They’re one of the new additions to the lineup over at the incredible indie/shoegaze/dream pop label Riot Factory. It’s a great Norwegian label with a very small roster of about 14 bands. I think I’ve written about 12 of them. As I’ve said before, that label is doing a lot of things to dispel stereotypes about Norwegians. You know the ones about how everybody is in a black metal band or a folk group.
I actually didn’t know about this band until I got something in the mail bag the other day. All the email said was “Hi from Norway. What do you think about this?”, followed by a link to the band’s soundcloud page, a link to their page on the Riot Factory site, and the EP’s artwork. Normally I expect emails to have reference points or key words that help me decide how interested I am in even listening to whatever it is they’re promoting. Once I saw the relationship to Riot Factory, I didn’t need any other information. However, because of this, I went in with high expectations. I wasn’t let down.
Tonight’s song is the first of theirs that I listened to, and it’s probably my favorite.
“Swim Dream” by Ludvig Moon
One of the things that I like so much about this song is how it gets really big in the choruses. Something about that makes me think of the big chorus in “The Men Who Live Upstairs” by The Most Serene Republic. Or really anything by that band.
It’s pretty obvious that this band draws some influence from Elliot Smith. I’m reminded a lot of him and also of Matt Pond PA. They don’t list Matt Pond as an influence, but they certainly do list Elliot Smith. I also get a little bit of …Illinoise-era Sufjan Stevens.
The band is also heavily influenced by The Magnetic Fields, and they do a very nice cover of “Strange Powers” (1994, from the Magentic Fields album Holiday). The cover version is unreleased, but they’ve released a video of it here:
You can buy a digital copy of Ludvig Moon through the Riot Factory bandcamp page.
this is that song 
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