Magnus Öström Group - A Room For Travellers (2023) LP

Magnus Öström and his band are finally back with a new album, his fourth to date.

The album, A Room For Travellers, is both about the traveller’s journey through the world but equally about a journey inward, the journey within. In addition, the record is about the great importance of water, the ocean, to us.

The album, which clocks in at 40 minutes on vinyl, contains only 6 tracks, but with a couple of tracks that are more like suites than a single song. With titles such as On The High In My Life and All Those Years, the album is mindful of both the present and the past. And in titles such as FlowFly, Pasific, Oceans and Safe And Sound, Magnus pays tribute to, and points towards, the most important thing we have on our planet, the water, the oceans, which unfortunately we are slowly destroying and poisoning with our excessive consumerist lifestyles.

But above all, the album is about being present in the present and seeing nature, the oceans and our surroundings as part of ourselves and thereby hopefully becoming humbler and more careful with what we have, and aware of what we can lose.

Magnus’s hope is that for the listener the album can become a space to travel to, and to travel in, an infinite space. Both a little escapism from all the terrible things happening in the world right now, but also a journey inward to understand oneself and one's surroundings on a deeper level.