Jelly Crystal - New Album

JELLY CRYSTAL / DEBUT ALBUM FREAK SHOW

Jelly Crystal has released his debut album Freak Show via Smuggler Music/PIAS. Freak Show is an astounding record drawing inspiration from the timeless influential sounds of the 60s and 70s yet is also injected with bold, experimental moments only 2021 could produce.

Regarding the album Jelly Crystal says, “This album has been with me for a long time, not that the songs have taken long to write, but they’re built on collected fragments from my life. It wasn’t planned but in the end the songs inspired each other in a way. It’s a slow and tedious record, it might sound boring but it’s just like me - slow and tedious!”

Freak Show includes highly acclaimed singles such as the woozy and dreamy jazz-infused ‘Someone’s Dog’, the transfixing world music infused psychedelic trip ‘Never Met a Cloud That I Didn’t Like’ featuring Off The Meds frontman Kamohelo, and the upbeat glam-pop jaunt ‘I Don’t Like Dancing’.

Elsewhere on the album ‘Sweet Lime’ is a curious post-punk, psych and world music concoction, while Jelly Crystal also enlists some of Sweden’s most exciting new music talents to guest on the record, including lo-fi indie pop singer Esther on the swooning title track, while Stella Explorer duets with Jelly Crystal on the grand ‘Bloody Mary’ which closes the album to the effect of attending a prom night on acid.

Jelly Crystal is the moniker of the Stockholm-based artist Filip Johnson. As Jelly Crystal he is the left-field glam rock street entertainer on the Sunset Strip, singing his heart out for nickels and dimes. It is the music of the worn-out organ grinder on Yellow Brick Road and a wide-eyed kid in Wonderland. Innocence and decadence are never far from each other in his dazzling presence and Freak Show is the introductory tale in his extraordinary character’s odyssey.