At first, Payment Records existed solely for Barbarisms. When En Skugga’s Livet mellan träden later needed a label name, Payment was already there, at least as an email address. Putting out someone else’s music wasn’t a particularly momentous decision.

“Fuck it, let’s do it.”

A recurring meeting place is Kvastis by Kvastmakartrappan in Stockholm: an eighteenth-century property with two small recording cottages. Simon Stålhamre has his Studio Kvastis in one and has recorded and collaborated with many artists there. In the other, Barbarisms recorded their records among old Casiotones, odd percussion instruments, guitars, reel-to-reel machines and microphones of varying quality.

Many of the Barbarisms recordings are first takes; others come together on the second or third. Audio is rarely edited. Mistakes stay in. Not everything sounds wonderful, but there’s pleasure in catching a song before it becomes too rehearsed. Sometimes the recordings grow on you with a little distance. Sometimes all you hear is what should have been done differently. Then someone records something new.

Despite the different languages, there’s a kinship between the songs of Barbarisms and En Skugga. Nicholas Faraone and Nathan Dufva Carlén both write with room for the mundane and the profound, humour and darkness, without becoming solemn. Other collaborations have grown around the music. Baptiste W. Hamon has also recorded at Kvastis, where his French interpretations of American country classics took shape with Tom Skantze.

Payment Records holds part of this little world together and gets the music out. Ideally, that leaves more time to play, drink a few low-strength beers and keep recording. The hope is that listeners hear the people in the music: the words, the melodies, the mistakes and what might still become of it.