Gösta Berlings Saga

Yesterday we made our first visit to the studio where we will record the foundations for the album. The studio is located in central Stockholm and will serve as our second home for some time to come. The first recording session is scheduled to November 7-9 and we hope that we will manage to get most of the basic things on tape during that weekend.

All mixing and mastering will also be carried out in this studio, however almost all overdubs will be recorded in Studio Pelikaan where we recorded Tid är Ljud, whereas the more intricate ones will be recorded in a studio run by a guy who played a big part in one of Sweden’s biggest modern prog acts to date. Curious? Well, we will reveal more on this later.

The number of visitiors to this blog is increasing slowly but as a user, keeping track of blogs and websites of interest can be both time consuming and somewhat of a pain. Therefore we would like to recommend all of you to use an RSS reader if you are not already doing it as it will save you tons of time browsing all these sites by simply giving you an alert when there is a new post to read. For instance, expecting at least one post per week from this newly-born-and-within-seven-months-to-be-gone blog is not asking too much, but with such a slow pace it might fall into oblivion anyway.

So, the solution is easy: For Firefox users: download Sage, the most popular and lightweight RSS reader extension. For PC and Mac users using Gmail: start using Google Reader or iGoogle. And the general tip of the day: start using Opera as your default web browser as it has a built in RSS reader and a lot more.

Playing prog is difficult.

Not necessarily as in technically challenging but rather as in where to draw the line. I mean, dealing whith a genre that has accepted almost all kind of outrageously pretentious outbursts for about 40 years, it is not self-explanatory when to stop and when not to.

Being a four piece band however limits your possibilities, at least when playing live  - something which from time to time has been a pretty hot topic in our band since the basic arguments for limiting what we do on album is that we still have a responsibility to play good and interesting music when performing live in front of an audience. Whereas some of us has been rigid puritans in this matter, others has been let loose Yahoos of bombastic prog and not always have all of us been satisfied with the current order.

Finally we have however come to a collective conclusion that we should have a no holds barred approach on our upcoming album when it comes to instruments and harmonies that we like! Let it be 8 simultaneously played Glockenspiels, twice as many Mellotrons or three one armed drummers; this time, expressing human limitations will not be on the agenda.

One should mind though that our humble view on good taste and what defines good music still is as present as before, so the chance is pretty big that we will go for something similiar as we (and you) are used to.

What this also means is that what you will hear on the album and what you will hear when watching us play live most definitely will differ. Pretty much probably. Why? Because we still have only 8 arms and no Mellotrons. But our love for the music remains the same, so expect a classic rock set with vibrant harmonies and unexpected turns the next time you catch us live.

This fall Gösta Berlings Saga will start recording the follow up to our debut album Tid är Ljud, an album which not only meant a lot to us in terms of setting standards of what we want to express with our music, but also made it easier for us to put the finger on what mistakes to avoid in the future.

Some important changes have been made since then – most recognizable the departure of Mathias Danielsson on guitars and the arrival of Einar Baldursson. We have also had the great honour of making friends all over the world, who in a very flattering way have acted as ambassadors which has led to even more contacts and friends.

This blog will be our second (perhaps more likely our 3rd as we will spend a lot of our time in the studio…) home during fall, winter and early spring until the album is released in late March 2009. We hope that you check in every now and then to catch the updates and ask questions, which we will do our very best to answer.

All the best,
Gösta Berlings Saga