(some) Favourite bands and inspirations.

Whenever you do an interview you are always asked this question. What other bands inspire you and this is obviously one of the tough ones to answer because it always changes….but there will always be a couple of bands that have inspired me and albums that I go back to for inspiration. I thought I might use this little space to try to get at least some of them down. So if you think my music is crap or sounds weird or maybe even both you might find some of the reasons below. We’ll see how it goes…(I know I am going to miss some of them but here goes…)

Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express

Hypnotic, strong and simple…and without question my favourite Kraftwerk album. I bought this after reading an interview with Beck where he stated Kraftwerk as one of his biggest influences due to the fact that they were one of the few bands that dared to be funny…A German band that are playing with everyone’s preconceptions of Germans as being strict, harsh and ever so metric. And the music is great. The sounds are impeccable. Transeurope express was also my first encounter with the Orchestron and it was without a doubt a big revelation. It sort of sounds like a Mellotron but it isn’t and the sound just goes on and on beyond eight seconds…What is that thing? A couple of years later I had one in my living room, I was very pleased…

American Music Club - Mercury
When I started playing with Pineforest Crunch Me and Olle Söderström lended each other a couple of favourite albums. He got probably the Lamb Lies down on Broadway and I got a whole bunch of R.E.M Discs and this gem…American Music Clubs Mercury. I love everything about this album…except the title track. Also this was one of my first encounters of being really floored by an albums production. Sure the songs and lyrics are great, the lead vocalist Mark Eitzel is amazing but the sound….oh that sweet sound. And who did it ? Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake. So it came as no surprise when I flipped the cover of…

Elvis Costello – Brutal Youth
…and realized that they had done this one as well...Reinventing the rock’n’roll wheel and doing it better the second time around…this is a true masterpiece. Me and Andreas used to have this as a standing joke. Naming your favourite track on Brutal youth until there were none left. Once again amazing production…Pete Thomas on drums is god. Nothing I couldn’t play drumming wise…He just makes it sound so much better than I ever could.

King Crimson – Larks tongues in aspic / Starless and bibleblack / Red

When I was 16 I gave my old scout friend Christer Lindh two cassettes (remember those ?) and asked him to record four albums that would change my life. He taped Neil Youngs Harvest, The Freewheeling Bob Dylan, David Bowies Ziggy Stardust and then…King Crimsons Red. The first three albums I understood immediately, recognized the songs and could understand their mass appeal but the fourth album was like being punched in the face by something that looked like a fist tasted like a fist but definitely wasn’t a fist. When I listened to it the first time I remember sitting at my desk at my parents house and then when the track Starless came on I just froze and just started staring out into the open air…still holding my pen. As the song built into it´s climax the hypnosis was abruptly broken by my Mother who violently opened my door and asked…What are you listening to ? The cool thing is that I didn’t really know. I was just completely run over by it. It wasn’t inviting, it sounded different and harder than anything I had heard before. Amazing drumming unlike anything I’d heard before. I had been awoken, and I had been asleep for far too long.

Needless to say I was hooked for life.  I wanted to be punched again. These three albums are essential for anyone who is even remotely interested in music. Experimental, aggressive, beautiful and poetic. Sometimes all at the same time. I used to have a tape with Larks Tongues in aspic on one side and Starless and bible black on the other. I remembered leaving an Änglagård meeting at Tords and getting on the subway to go home with it in my walkman. I fell asleep on the subway with Crimson in my headphones and woke with a sudden urge to punch or harm someone randomly on the subway…Interesting, that has never happened to me when I have fallen asleep to Simon & Garfunkel…

Sigur Rós – ( )

Really early on in the life of Pineforest Crunch me and Olle had a discussion about music and he talked about how important R.E.M had been to him and one of the reasons was that he heard them at a very vulnerable time in his life where he was an emotional sponge. He heard Losing my religion on the radio and was a fan…forever.
I heard this Sigur Ros album when Änglagård were in Trenton, NJ to play at Nearfest. I was slightly hungover and took a bubblebath at the Hotel. I sunk down into the warm, bubbly water, put my headphones on, pressed play and almost immediately started crying. Something about the albums sound and the harmonies were just overpowering. When it the album was finished, I woke Thomas up and forced my moist headphones and his head. I don’t know if he was as impressed as I was though…Easily one of my top ten albums of all times.

Genesis – The lamb lies down on Broadway
Whenever someone is badmouthing Progrock (well..that could be me on any given day) or saying that it is all terrible you can usually change their mind with some tasty cuts from this double concept album about a proto punk Puerto Rican kid called Rael. When I was about 16-17 I had this more or less glued into my Walkman and I listened to it daily. Love the lyrics and the sounds. It is a lot harder sounding than Selling England by the pound. The fun thing is that it is arrangement wise simpler than a lot of their other stuff but texturally more challenging and interesting. As usual with double albums it could quite easily lose about 20 minutes of musics without suffering too heavily…A really weird album actually…

Joseph Arthur – Come to where I’m from
I bought this album somewhere when Andreas & jag started collaborating with “manager” Charlie Dilks and this was the kind of album that had a lot of the elements that I wanted to explore. Great song writing but the production was done with such detail (without being slick) that you could always listen to the album in different ways and find different layers. I was also completely blown away when I heard his approach on how to do an acoustic live gig by himself. He used a couple of loop pedals and did live loops with his acoustic guitar and vocals and built the arrangements with these simple tools. Truly remarkable and very inventive. I still haven’t heard too many bands who could come close to him...Sadly enough the next album was a lot safer and a bit boring.

Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones
When I heard this album the first time I was really annoyed…Why hadn’t anyone told me earlier about this amazing album ? It really filled a hole in my musical imagination. The textures and rhythms, the lyrics and vocals all gelled perfectly into something that is a big sonic mess of flea market horns and junkyard Marimbas. A truly inspired album and of course very inspiring…Brings a new meaning to the words tight and in tune…