Gösta Berlings Saga

Whilst waiting for the first mix previews, Einar Baldursson has an important message to all of you:

In February the new release of Simon Steensland’s Kamikaze United will be out on Altrock Records. It’s called Fat Again and (most probably) features the same musicians as the previous live album: Simon Steensland – bass guitar, Morgan Ågren – drums, Arvid Pettersson – keyboards & Robert Elovsson – keyboards. With the addition of Einar Baldursson on guitar.

Einar got considered for the job after having responded positively to the question: “Can you play like a mixture between Bill Frisell and Yngwie Malmsteen?” and even though this sounds a little more cocky than we are used to with Einar, we believe that we will get to hear some pretty mad shredding within the next month. The previous album can be ordered via CD Universe, but we’ll get back with some more stores once the album is out. Below are some reviews from the past:

All who love dark heavy progressive will get all you need and a little more from this body of work. It´s time to take the hard way up the mountain!
Gerome Francis, Cranium Music, New Zeeland

Oh, my god! It´s a masterpiece!!
Rafa Dorado. Margen Magazine, Spanien

This is serious work and that´s not so common these days.
Chris Cutler, Rer Megacorp, UK

This album is a superlative. Dringende Empfehlung (jolly good)!!!
Volkmar, Ragazzi, Germany

Here´s a bolt out of the blue!!!
Eurock, USA

It´s like being in someone else´s dream.
Bernard Law, Wonderous Stories, UK

Simon Steenslands musik är rik och detaljerad.
Johannes Cornell, DN

Det är mörkt och tungt, innerligt och djupt befriande.
Gert-Ove Fridlund

Bästa albumet just nu –The Zombie Hunter.
Jon Jefferson Klingberg, Nöjesguiden

For the past two or three weeks we have spent almost every night in our studio to make it in time before handing everything over to mixing. And so Friday arrived, perhaps one of the most important days for this album of ours – an evening we had planned on listening through absolutely everything we have recorded since November and decide what to choose and what to throw away.

Though it was no surprise to us, the initial 16 tracks that we recorded had by now increased to around 60-70 tracks per song, mostly because we have been lucky enough to have all the necessary equipment at our place during most of the time so we have had sort of a no holds barred approach to recording overdubs. Which in the end put us to a real challenge. A planned evening’s work turned into a whole night in good company of salt & vinegar crisps and a healthy amount of well-hopped ales. Eventually we got in bed around 6.30 in the morning (no we don’t share beds, not yet).

For the time being it seems like there will be 8 songs on the album with a total running time of about 55 minutes (wasn’t Tid är Ljud almost exactly that long??). One of the songs however need some more thinking when we will get to hear it mixed in a few weeks, not because it’s not good enough but mostly because it has some pretty odd instrumentation and was recorded in one take (I believe) at Roth-Händle. We’ll see about that later.

This album will definitely be more varied than the previous one – in all aspects. We have had a great time recording it with almost no arguments or what so ever and hopefully that will be audible in the end. It ranges from dark to light, psyched out to pretty easy accessible, melancholic to victorious but still bears our our trademarks. There’s even a song you and your friends can dance to if you like, how progressive isn’t that?

So for a few weeks now the musical progress will not lie within our hands. Apart from working with the cover art and discussing some track names, perhaps it is about time we try to get back to everyone we have forsaken during our almost one year long creative process? Myspace, here we come.

Yes! We are still alive. Yes! Everything is going just fine. No! We haven’t really managed to take care of this blog as expected, but YES, we are however back on track again! Since the last post we have done quite a lot. To start with something sad, we will not participate on the Rökstenen tribute album. The reason for this is simply lack of time. We were planning on recording Esso Motor Hotel at the same time as we recorded the basic tracks for the album, but due to some technical problems we didn’t quite make it. A little dissapointing but on the other hand this means that we have been able to fully concentrate on the album and at least that is something really good.

Remember when we wrote that we were planning on recording the overdubs in a studio run by some kind of influential prog dude? Well, for two and a half days we have been in the studio Roth-Händle, run by Mattias Olsson of Änglagård. A few of us in the band have listened to Änglagård for a long time and after having checked out the equipment list on Mattias’ website it felt like a good idea to make some of our dreams come true at his place. The funny thing though is that none of the instruments that we found most tempting to record, such as the full-scaled pipe organ, the Yamaha GX-1 etc. ended up on tape during these three days. Maybe next time, who knows?

We knew that we had solid songs for this album but had no idea what could be done to give them that extra touch. Luckily Mattias knows these kind of things perfectly and during the last two weeks the songs have really started to take shape. We have about 3h of unedited video from the overdub sessions but since we probably won’t be able to edit this in time we recommend that you check out Mattias’ videos on Youtube. We had a total blast recording mellotrons, piano, organs, mini moog, and loads of other fun electronics and it was great fun working with Mattias – hopefully we will be able to work more with him on the next album pretty soon as we have about 5 finished songs for it already. So, to round things up quickly; on Saturday we will hand everything over to the guy who will mix the album, meaning that we have a really busy week to look forward to. Still to do is to lay down additional percussion parts and some lengthy discussions on which overdubs to choose and which to throw away. Horrible.

Until next time, take care!