Today, psych rock duo Drakkar Nowhere (Daniel Collas and Morgan Phalen previously of the Phenomenal Handclap Band) are streaming their debut s/t album, ahead of it’s September 23rd via Brooklyn’s Beyond Beyond is Beyond.

That Drakkar Nowhere ended up somewhere at all is itself more a result of circumstance than careful course-charting. The history of the album traces back to the summer of 2012, when Daniel Collás (Phenomenal Handclap Band) and Morgan Phalen (Favored Nations, Diamond Nights) found themselves creating new music in the kitchen of a rented apartment in Stockholm, Sweden. Their new project caught the ears of nearby musicians, including members of Dungen and The Amazing, and before long, this extended family of international musicians were recording the songs that would firmly put them on the path to nowhere – Drakkar Nowhere, that is.

Both Collás and Phalen took inspiration from their Swedish surroundings – in particular, the enchanted forests that surround the neighborhoods of Bagarmossen and Midsommarkransen. And given the talents and histories of the collaborating musicians, it’s no surprise that the ever-evolving shadow of what we might broadly call Swedish psychedelia should perfume the proceedings as well. Collás and Phelan also took the recordings to New York and Los Angeles, where new surroundings and influences could intertwine into the musical flora and fauna. When in LA, the band even got a hero of theirs, unsung 70s singer-songwriter Ned Doheny, on board for “Higher Now.” Some light was recently shed on Doheny’s music from the 70s when Numero Group released the Doheny compilation Separate Oceans a couple years back. To those who have discovered his fantastic body of work, his warm, breezy Malibu vocals are instantly recognizable on “Higher Now.”

Drakkar Nowhere present a combination of influences – cosmic jazz, syrupy soul and mutated prog among them – in such an effortless manner that they don’t really feel like “influences” at all. As a result, Drakkar Nowhere have built an album that may have listeners ears recalling the crystalline harmonies of the Brothers Gibb more often than it does Träd, Gräs and Stenar.

Bio by by Ryan Muldoon