Gunnar Jonsson: "Tempelhof Zwo"

Henrik Jonsson is a busy man: Porn Sword Tobacco by day, Jonsson/Alter by night, and now this extremely lazy alias for his latest project, Gunnar Jonsson. Essentially an outlet for any surplus ideas he tried to bring to DJ Jor-El, it’s a place to deposit all that sunny techno that didn’t make the cut of their joint album, Mod. Two EPs strong already, Gunnar Jonsson is a place where hazy, retro electronica—so gorgeous on the Porn Sword Tobacco albums—overlaps uncompromised with bobbing beats, long enough to keep a super-club jiving. By the artist’s standards, it’s a very big gamble. This is the man you usually go to to add twinkles to your American Beauty-style broadsheet campaign.

Jonsson’s latest EP, Relationer, offers up more deep house rejected from Mod, presumably for being too colourful. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a “I Wanna Funk With You Tonite” mashup, and B-side “Tempelhof Zwo” comes off like a hypnosis tape written in ’90s house: luscious pads and warm bass; the kind of headstate you get into if you fall asleep to Underworld. Behind it a drum line thuds on like clockwork, refusing to be derailed by Jonsson’s strange burbling or his crackling, sporadic pyrotechnics. That’s pretty much it for the next nine minutes—some static might flare up, or theremins come and go, but by and large this is a long, cosy and amniotic retreat, perfect for wiling away whole weeks if put on repeat while stoned. Jonsson’s next flow of ideas will take him where, I wonder. Henrik J, freestyle battler?