“I don’t believe I was raised religious,” says Swedish musician Gustaf Dicksson aka Blod, speaking to Louis Pattison in The Wire 459. “But I would visit church around Christmas and Easter with my mother and grandmother. There was always a prayer before bedtime. We sang psalms and hymns in school, and spoke about Jesus. You don’t teach kids those things these days, and that’s probably for the best. But those religious memories from childhood are some of the happiest and warmest that I’ve got.”

Dicksson's upcoming album Pilgrimssånger – inspired by 1970s Christian folk and church ambience, with musings on the psychology of cults – was originally destined to be recorded in a church, though the session ended up taking place in the more casual setting of a garage in Mölndal, Gothenburg. Here Dicksson shares three tracks from the album ahead of its release on Discreet Music, including “Du kan sjunga fritt” which features vocals and percussion from Anna Johannesson and Elin Engström.

Read more about Dicksson and his Blod project, plus his work with the Swedish experimental folk collective Enhet För Fri Musik and more inside The Wire 459. Wire subscribers can also read the interview via the digital magazine archive.