All Songs Considered New Mix: Daniel Norgren, Amanda Palmer and more

[NPR]

This week’s show is made possible by a generous amount of existential anxiety. This includes the ego-destroying rock anthem “I Don’t Matter At All,” from the Toronto band Pkew Pkew Pkew, and an epic life manifesto from Amanda Palmer called “The Ride” – a ten-minute oration about the crippling effects of unbridled and rampant fear.

But we’ve also got some horn-powered instrumental rock from New York’s Afro-soul group The Budos Band, and a beautiful, blood-slowing song from the Swedish singer Daniel Norgren, an artist who takes inspiration from the sounds of a creaking floor in an old flour mill.The Flow

Daniel Norgren ‘The Flow’

Haven’t experienced the lush forests of the Swedish countryside? Allow the multi-instrumentalist Daniel Norgren to paint you a picture. “The Flow” is a nearly seven-minute long arrangement that creates a transportive soundscape, combining field recordings (notably, creaking sounds from the floor boards of a flour mill), analog instrumentation, and more.

Wooh Dang is available April 19 on Superpuma.

Amanda Palmer ‘The Ride’

Describing existence in simple metaphor is no easy feat. The late American stand-up comedian Bill Hicks put it this way: “The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are — and we can change it any time we want. It’s only a choice.” Such is the source of inspiration for the singer Amanda Palmer on her new song “The Ride,” a sprawling lullaby for the ups and downs of human experience.