Emil Svanängen (aka Loney dear)
Swedish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emil Svanängen makes records and plays shows under the enigmatic name of Loney dear. In the early 2000s, in his Stockholm apartment studio, Svanängen made a name for himself by creating homemade CDrs with a minidisk microphone and a home computer, self-releasing albums which by 2007 had pricked Sub Pop's ears and they released Loney Noir. Two more albums - Dear John and Hall Music - followed, as did glowing reviews in The Guardian, BBC, Drowned in Sound, Pitchfork and earlier this year the Line of Best Fit went as far as calling him a "brilliant genius”.

Loney dear has consistently crafted elegant, deeply stirring music, described by The Quietus as "…the obsessive work of one man, albeit one that can sing with the vulnerable delicacy of an angel and makes bedroom recordings that sound like God's own orchestra”.

Multi-layered with instrumentation and Svanängen's fragile yet irrepressible vocals, Loney dear's songs bloom with a sense of both intimacy and openness, at once uplifting and heartbreaking, tenacious yet tender.

In 2017 Svanängen finds himself at something of a crossroads. His career, in many ways, has been as unique as his music. "I've been taking some strange roads. Basically, I have a really strange career and I have no idea where it's going. Everything is always random because my career is so small and slow. I have had to learn to enjoy all the randomness of what I'm doing.”

After all these years in the music industry, Svanängen has reached a stage in which he is not striving to be loved, to be big, to be recognised or feels that he is deserving of more than he has. Above all, he feels emboldened and powerful simply by the new music he is making, as featured on his latest album. "I'm moving into a more bold state, I'm confident, powerful, I became a singer, I learned my darkness and discovered my magnetism”.

Since his 2017 album, live concerts in unique spaces have become a primary forum for creative exploration, and his next recordings will mirror this. Emil says, “It’s such an interesting evolution... these possibilities for subtracting rather than adding. Intricate music written for just one instrument and a voice is, for me now, a way of merging worlds.”