Olof Dreijer: Loud Bloom review – the Knife star’s debut solo album is a garden of earthly delights

(DH2)
On a floral-themed LP, squiggling melodies and quizzical distortion banish the winter gloom Dreijer brought to the Knife and his tracks with Fever Ray

Swedish producer Olof Dreijer is best known for projects with his sibling Karin: namely their duo the Knife, plus Karin’s solo act Fever Ray, with whom he created four brilliant tracks on 2023 album Radical Romantics. For all that his beats on these records often had African-Caribbean-Latin syncopation, they also had a Scandinavian winter gloom.

Conversely, his debut solo album seems to crane upwards towards sunlight like flowers – and each of the tracks has a floral name. Dance heads will already be familiar with some of them (having appeared on EPs stretching back to 2023) but together they show quite how distinctive Dreijer’s own musical accent is: you can tell it’s him sometimes from just half a second of music.