Stockholm’s Oscar – Soul Experience is headed up by Oscar Ögren and is very much a live band, with tours of Europe and China completed and over 200 shows under their collective belt. Now the focus is on a debut album, and this is the first single from it.
They class themselves as “a modern soul band” with a vision to “invite the audience into the soul of a live concert.”
It was in January 2017 that Oscar Ögren recruited four talented young musicians that “live for live music” to play in the ‘Oscar Soul Experience’, which is actually the name of the live show.
Oscar’s ambition is to be an ambassador for the Swedish soul community and his mantra is that “Music has always had soul, something that can’t be explained, and something you can only experience through really good music”.
And they truly are a soul band, not something you come across too often these days in Scandinavia or anywhere else. I make that observation simply from the fact this is the only one I know of. I need to get out more. Chance would be a fine thing.
‘Consuming’ opens like a volcanic eruption to the sound of Adam Ant-style percussion (think ‘Stand and deliver’), and a wailing siren, the hi-hat, snare and bass forming a potent unholy trinity. All members of the band have their individual opportunity to shine and towards the end the guitarist, Niklas Krantz, goes off into a Hendrix-like solo.
But the high point is actually when they all come together from around 3:20 into a wall of complex, co-ordinated sound that doesn’t need any engineering input from Phil Spector or Trevor Horn. That’s when you really get a flavour of what they are like, live.
I wonder if they could be persuaded to kick-start a Northern Soul revival in Sweden?
Oscar – Soul experience is:
Oscar Ögren - Vocals & Guitar
Lucas Johansson - Keys
Niklas Krantz - Guitar
Oliver Löwenham - Bass
Noa Svensson - Drums