Album Review: Singapore Sling – ‘The Tower Of Foronicity’

‘The Tower Of Foronicity’ is Henrik Björnsson’s latest Long Player and follow up to the 2011 release ‘Never Forever’.

Henrik has in the past described Singapore Sling’s sound as “dance to my dropping tears”, it comes as no surprise then that on ‘The Tower Of Foronicity’, once more the chiaroscuro has been liberally applied.

Singapore Sling was formed in Reykjavik in 2000, to fill the void in music that Henrik was not hearing at that time.

‘The Tower Of Foronicity’ is the seventh album ostensibly written and recorded by Henrik under the Singapore Sling banner.

When not working directly on Singapore Sling material, Henrik can be found collaborating in The Go-Go Darkness and Dead Skeletons – all of whom share a connection and are united, among others, under the Vebeth artist and musician logo / label.

‘The Tower Of Foronicity’ opener, ‘You Drive Me Insane’ has enough bouncing punk psychabilly swagger to out-Cramp The Cramps.

Track two of twelve ‘All Your Sins’ is a soulful ballad with the tempo of molasses in winter.

These two tracks pretty much establish the blueprint for the album in terms of either outright bright skippiness or mournful melancholic wail.

All tracks, with titles like ‘Kill Baby Kill’, ‘Nuthin’s Real’, ‘Absolute Garbage’ and ‘I Hate Myself’, however share a playful lyrical content with a tongue firmly in someone’s cheek.

In other words another Singapore Sling LP that ticks all the boxes and further showcases Henrik’s musical and lyrical dexterity.

In attempting to unravel the meaning of ‘Foronicity’ in the album title, the best I can come up with is either a play on the word forlorn, which is probably one of the many adjectives to have been applied to Singapore Sling’s sound over the years; or an obscure classical music reference to Jacopo Foroni, an Italian composer and conductor who spent most of his working life in Sweden – I expect both my guesses are wrong…

‘The Tower Of Foronicity’ is due to be released by Fuzz Club Records on November 15th and is available now for pre-order, the LP comes as a limited edition of 750 copies on 180 delicious grams of transparent red vinyl.

The video for ‘You Drive Me Insane’ will be released on Friday 31st October, meanwhile here is the video for ‘My Obsessive Love’…

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