Philemon Arthur and the Dung is a mysterious music group from Scania, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, consisting of two members known only by their pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

s Philemon Arthur and the Dung. The band formed in the early 1960s under the name The Popbeams, which they changed before the release of their first album. The duo's true identities are most likely known only to a few individuals at Silence Records

Silence Records

Silence , is a Swedish record company located outside Koppom, Värmland in Sweden.Silence was started in 1970 in Stockholm and released records by, amongst others: Bo Hansson, Philemon Arthur and the Dung, Samla Mammas Manna, and other progressive rock acts...

, the record label that the band has worked with since 1971. Philemon Arthur and the Dung do not want their identities to be known, lest those who live in their small village find out who they are.

The band's music is recorded on reel-to-reel tape decks with crackling microphone

Microphone

A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...

s and is played on untuned guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

s, drums

Drum kit

A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

, and accordion

Accordion

The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

s, with the occasional accompaniment of household objects such as saucepans, chair

Chair

A chair is a stable, raised surface used to sit on, commonly for use by one person. Chairs are most often supported by four legs and have a back; however, a chair can have three legs or could have a different shape depending on the criteria of the chair specifications. A chair without a back or...

s, and radiator

Radiator

Radiators are heat exchangers used to transfer thermal energy from one medium to another for the purpose of cooling and heating. The majority of radiators are constructed to function in automobiles, buildings, and electronics...

s. The lyrics vary from utter nonsense

Nonsense

Nonsense is a communication, via speech, writing, or any other symbolic system, that lacks any coherent meaning. Sometimes in ordinary usage, nonsense is synonymous with absurdity or the ridiculous...

, such as profoundly whimsical observations about everyday life, to satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 concerning social phenomena such as homelessness

Homelessness

Homelessness describes the condition of people without a regular dwelling. People who are homeless are unable or unwilling to acquire and maintain regular, safe, and adequate housing, or lack "fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence." The legal definition of "homeless" varies from country...

, pollution

Pollution

Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...

, and hunting

Hunting

Hunting is the practice of pursuing any living thing, usually wildlife, for food, recreation, or trade. In present-day use, the term refers to lawful hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species contrary to applicable law...

.

Despite their outsider

Outsider music

Outsider music, a term coined by Irwin Chusid in the mid-1990s, are songs and compositions by musicians who are not part of the commercial music industry who write songs that ignore standard musical or lyrical conventions, either because they have no formal training or because they disagree with...

-persona, the band has received much notice across Sweden. Their surrealistic self-titled debut won a Swedish Grammy

Grammis

The Grammis Awards are the Swedish equivalent of the Grammy Awards. The awards ceremony is generally held each year in February in Stockholm.The awards were established in 1969 and awarded until 1972 when they were cancelled....

 for the best Swedish LP

Gramophone record

A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

 of 1971, which came to the dismay of many.

Modern Swedish bands like their fellow Scanians bob hund

Bob hund

bob hund is a seven-piece indie rock band from Sweden. Their music, hard to classify, has been described as "what you might expect if you managed to merge Pere Ubu and Pixies with a touch of Kraftwerk"....

 have been greatly inspired by Philemon Arthur and the Dung, and it was this eccentric duo who discovered and forwarded bob hund's demo tape

Demo (music)

A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...

 to Silence Records.

Discography

• Philemon Arthur and the Dung (1971)
• Skisser över 1914 års badmössor (Eng.
  English language
  English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
  
  Sketches of the bathing caps of 1914) (1987)
• Musikens historia del 1 och 2 (Eng. The history of music part 1 & 2) compilation disc, (1992)
• Får jag spy i ditt paraply? (Eng. May I vomit in your umbrella?) (2002)