What about the 8th bride for the 8th brother?

I'm sure that my misconceptions about Scandinavia, having only ever been to Oslo. and for ~1 day at that, are many. But through their music, their cinema, their painters and writers, even their often higher-standard television, I feel I have gained an affinity for the essence and landscape of these cold-climated, majestic countries.

I imagine myself living out my later years like police detective Wallander, contemplating the volume of both the universe and the human soul; as the waves lap at the shore I can hear them, see them  from my front deck. My faithful dog murmurs in sleep, at my side ... I answer the call to action when it comes, but have learned to step lightly and with measure.

It goes almost without saying that "wherever you go, there you are," but perhaps I can convince someone to scatter my ashes near a location from Summer With Monika. ...

Perhaps we expanded (and in some cases, perhaps reduced) our listening audience for the evening, but an exploration of my favorite Scandianvian progressive rock has been on my mind to do for some time. Notes were made. Legendary record labels like Love and Silence, and bands like Alrune Rod deserve as much airtime and deep listening as one can give.

We did touch on the electronic / experimental / avant-garde voices of Scandinavia, somewhat, in our last set, with selections from The Sperm, Neptune Towers, and Anna Själv Tredje, but to fully explore that area, and the great work of artists like Folke Rabe, Bo Anders Persson, Arne Nordheim, Pekka Airaksinen, Supersilent, modern Swedish and Finnish noise, and the likes of Circle et al., would undoubtedly require a minimum of another three hours.

Playlist hails went out to Jukka Hauru | Fläsket Brinner | ...and the whole program in general, a departure from our weekly blast of heavy darkness for sure, though in my mind, as with the special programming I've done in the past, the Kraut-Outs 1-2-3, UK Blues Special, and The Sonics of Terror, among others, these excursions more than pass the "Castle filter."

Link to stream the show in full, by clicking on the comedians above, spreading merriment in the time of plague, from Ingmar Bergman's classic The Seventh Seal.

Thanks for listening and for your comments on the playlist. In truth, and with all possible modesty, I think I "outdid myself," and that this will prove to be an oft-visited Castle archive.