Bewildered Mind is the debut album by Stockholm based dream/Chamber pop duo Astral Brain who are Einar Ekstrom and Siri Af Buren who used to be in Le Futur Pompiste and Testbild respectively.
The album opens with Five Thousand Miles a song of travel and desire that's very slight organ and percussion with gauzy vocals that feels a bit like Belle And Sebastian.
Behind Our House has quite a French gauzy feel to it a bit like Popincourt, with lush pulsating melody lines and the almost whispered in your ear vocals, this is quite infectious sounding as they discuss exactly what they found Behind Our House in Stockholm and no it isn't like a scene from a Martin Beck novel.
A Dream has a bass and string part that sounds like it's about 500 years old being updated into this very subtle piece of chamber pop that's reflective and hopeful that they really do share the same Dream.
Treasures sounds like it's re-working one of the Silver Apples old analog synth patterns adding some swooshing sounds and gauzy vocals to come up with a delicious new song that's rather relaxing.
Goodbye sounds like it's somewhere between The New Seekers and Belle And Sebastian in terms of how it sounds almost like your floating away in a hot air balloon.
In The Mayweed Fields sounds like a song to walk in those fields and sip some good Aquavit as you stare at the blue sky above and take in the surroundings that are hopefully as lush as this song sounds.
Midsummer's Lullaby sadly doesn't re-use the tune from Sup En Till or Heilengor, being far more laid back than most of the songs I normally hear at Swedish Midsummers parties, you could walk round the maypole to this, but this wouldn't be great for jumping along like a rabbit too.
The Field Trip sounds like it's taking us to the outskirts of Boras to have a picnic and take in nature and go foraging for mushrooms accompanied by the birdsong and vocals that suddenly sound like a bashful Bjork.
From Above feels rather floaty with a steady bass drum beat and keyboards that have an almost Celeste style feel to them.
The album closes with Windmills that takes us deep into the Swedish countryside for some bucolic dreampop to lay back and watch the windmill going round too.
Find out more at https://astralbrain.bandcamp.com/album/the-bewildered-mind https://www.facebook.com/astralbrainband/
