Hailing from Sweden, Pink Milk is a dark wave/post-punk band drenched in reverb, making occult music inspired by the 80s. The feedback-loving duo started out releasing an acclaimed interpretation of the classic ballad ”I Want to Know What Love Is” in 2015 that quickly grew a reputation online for its originality and sound. Wonderland Magazine stated that ”their interpretation of the track is, luckily, incomparable. A languid and blurred melody soundtracks Maria’s moody moans. It’s a fluid, loose, almost drunken drawl that you can imagine playing in the background of one of those misty bar scenes in Twin Peaks.” and Far Out Magazine said that ”We loved the original but fuck me, Pink Milk have managed to make Foreigner’s seminal ballad even better”.
In 2016, they released their first original single ’Detroit’. It gained praise in the UK and Scandinavia by magazines, blogs and radio – including Kerrang! Radio, Virgin Radio, BBC6 Radio, Swedish National Radio P3, DIY, The Line of Best Fit, Clash Magazine, Shortlist, London on the inside and many more, being described by DIY as ” An almighty, fucked up pop song” while Kerrang! Radio said that ’It sounds absolutely incredible” and Shortlist stated that ”If this wasn’t recorded in an aircraft hangar then we’ll be amazed. It’s suitably huge and dreamy but underneath the dense fog is a quality song.”
Later that year, Pink Milk did their first tour and played some of the biggest club stages in Sweden, performing live as a duo with lead singer and standing drummer Maria blasting away at the front of the stage together with Edward’s shimmering guitars and howling feedback, being described on the air by one Swedish radio presenter who saw the band live as ”incomprehensible loud” and ”I love this!”.
In the end of 2016, the band released ‘Drömmens skepp’ (Ship Of Dreams) – a torturously dark take on a traditional Swedish folk song. Originally commissioned by Swedish Television, Pink Milk’s natural interpretation was deemed too subversive for primetime consumption and thus was banished to the realm of the underground before the band decided to release the song themselves. Pink Milks characteristic sound continued to receive credit and The Line Of Best Fit called the song ”gloomy and delicious in equal measure” while Swedish National Radio described it as ”so dark, etherial, wonderful”.
In the fall of 2017, the band played at the Øyafestival in Norway and released their debut album ”Purple”. It was given the highest rating in Swedish music magazine Gaffa who called it ”a dazzling display of alternative rock music” and ”the best album in many years” while British magazine The Indiependent called it ”one of the most consistently great post-punk albums of the year.”
Purple displays the atmospheric gloomy sound and addictive melodies that have become trademarks for Pink Milk and is filled with cinematic unnerving soundscapes that remind of a forgotten movie soundtrack from the 80s. The songs are recorded in a dark place isolated on the Swedish island of Gotland, produced and mixed by the band itself with a few exceptions.
”Shoegaze guitars, beats that shake the foundation of time, howling, windswept drones, and vocals laced with barbed wire. It's unfathomably dark in places, but Pink Milk have an innate knack for pop hooks - it's wildly addictive, stuffed to the brim with melodies to make you sing and rhythms to make you move.”
- The Line Of Best Fit
”‘Purple’ as an album is a heady mix of everything that was right about shoegaze and stoner- rock.” – Hear Me Raw
”Pink Milk have created a completely unique and refreshing sound that reminisces long forgotten 80s movies but the band are unlikely to find themselves as easily forgettable any time soon.” – Sonic News
”A magical, haunting collection of songs that takes the listener on a journey through a world they could never even think to exist.”– Music News Today
”it's a glimmer of a different world, and we'd expect their album to offer something very different to anything we've heard this year” - Nordic Music Review
”The album encapsulates the art-rock format and the avant-garde that is noise music and keeps it original, Purple does not follow a formula, and that’s what makes it appealing on first listen, just like the first listen of Psychocandy – it offers something different yet attractive.” – Songwriting Spotlight
”Purple is seductively beautiful in all its simplicity. No fuss here – Pink Milk have focused their efforts on creating a compact shoegaze pearl. Had Angelo Badalamenti begun to hang out with depressed Brits, this could have been the result” – Sonic Tundra
”Pink Milk strike a balance somewhere between harsh, metallic noise and My Bloody Valentine-esque hazy sweetness; between the burnished glamour of Merchandise and the clanging, gothic industrialism of the Cure’s “Pornography”” – Snack A Track
"The opening track" River Phoenix "sets the standard and shows that reverb works as well in 2017 as 1986" – HYMN
”Cocteau Twins, The Cure and Joy Division as modern shoegaze. The duo Pink Milk creates a perfect soundscape with echoes, thundering drums and wailing guitars. The framing is as dark as Ingmar Bergman's "Trilogy of Faith", but in a strange way it produces a hopeful salvation in the bleak and gloomy.” – Borås Tidning
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