Alvar

Alvar (short for Alvarets Fyra Ryttare), the project of married Swedish couple Johanna Backman and Jonas Fredriksson, straddled the border between techno and dance industrial music of the 1980s (Cabaret Voltaire, New Order, etc) on the cassettes Deceivers (2015), Resurrection Of The Sinner (2016), with the tribal Knuckle Duster, and I Cut Out All The Stars (2016), as well as on the better produced four-song EP Gold Ritual II (2016), with the hypnotic polyrhythms of Inside of Me and the festive gamelan-like minimalism of Jhonn B, before the mediocre album Guilt Kollektion (2016).

With the addition of Jimmy Svensson (aka Yabibo Hazurfa) and Fredrik Djurfeldt, Alvar released the cassette Mutiny For You (Cloister, 2017) and the album I Sew a Blanket of All the Broken Clouds (Daft, 2018). The album contains derivative gothic synth-pop songs like The Fluid that hark back to the generation of Joy Division, Alien Sex Fiend and Sisters Of Mercy of the 1980s, with cute rhythmic effects in Horsemen and little else of note. Mostly derivative, it sounds like the album of a cover band.

One Dies Like That (2019) collects leftovers like the stomping standard techno of Improvement Proposals, the magniloquent gothic melody of Dismal Figure and the synth-poppy Histories And Humanities. If that was their "commercial" demo, The Self-Contempt Of Isolationism Volume One (2020) was the experimental one, with more atmospheric and angst-filled songs (unfortunately the singing doesn't add, it detracts from the music).