Great new review: 6/6 in ProgressoR

New reviews are still coming in and the latest one we found out about is from the old-timer ProgressoR. 6 out of 6 stars and with quotes like the one below we are obviously very happy about it all.

Stellar instrumental performances and high quality compositions combine beautifully [...] The end result is a brilliant piece of work, one of the best efforts of 2009, and a CD I suspect will be regarded as a classic production in the future.

READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE

PS. Stay tuned… in the next few days we will reveal something exciting happening next Thursday, March 18th.

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Zzzpotify vs. Grooveshark

Most of us in the band use Spotify every day to listen to music we like, both old and new albums. One of the newer albums that we perhaps would not listen to daily but really would like to see there is of course Detta Har Hänt.  More than 6 months after its release it is still not online, making some people confused, asking us if Tid är Ljud is the one that has generated some buzz lately.

We are not really sure whether you need to have a contact on the inside or not to get an album on Spotify in connection with a cd release, but what we do know is that Detta Har Hänt can be found on Grooveshark meanwhile. Below is a widget with all the songs, so if you haven’t got the album yet – check out our webshop in a new window while listening and get inspired to $CONSUME$.

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P3 Guld – over and out + webshop

The P3 Guld cermony was held this Tuesday and no, we did unfortunately not win. But we are of course happy and proud to have been nominated at all. And the winners, Switch Opens, are both good and using mellotrons. And that is a good thing as well! Congratulations!

We have had a small problem with our webshop for some time, a problem that seems to have been bigger than we realized as quite a few people have been bailing out from ordering in the last minute according to our weblogs. No wonder when it was only possible to enter  Sweden as the shipping country.  This is hopefully fixed now, but please let us know if you run into any other problems.

We have also put up two “value packs” if you like the idea of saving some money. In short, you will either get all or most of the shipping for free, depending on where you live. And some good merchandise as well. We (and the record company) seem to have about 15 copies left of Tid är Ljud in digipack and if it ever gets a new pressing it will probably be in jewel case. So if you don’t have it yet, make sure you get one of the last copies now. The same goes for the canvas bags. We have about 30 of them left.

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Last week’s shows + P3 Guld

With last weekend in fresh memory, it’s about time we share our thoughts with you.  All in all we had a great time and we will definitely not forget it.

Our first destination was Malmö, where we picked  up Johnny, the head honcho for Transubstans Records. On our way down there we quickly realized that we had a decent  sound system but nothing to listen to except for a Greatest Reggae Hits cd that was left  to die in our rental car. One more reggae for the road, you know. Luckily, we got a FM radio transmitter, which made the trip far more enjoyable music wise. Packed together in that mini bus we drove through Denmark and Germany in 6 hours and finally reached Groningen in good time before the show. Our first mistake, and let this be a lesson to you, was to use one of our iPhones for navigating to the city centre and the venue, Vera. After  having tried every single road for about one hour, we finally made it to the city centre, only to find out that the police were driving behind us, asking for an explanation to our desperate driving. Luckily, they set the standards for what to expect from the Dutchmen and offered escort all the way to the venue.

Once there, everything went terrific and the organization was the best we have ever worked with. We knew in forehand that the show was to be recorded for broadcasting by European radio stations but somehow we managed to ignore this while playing. We don’t remember much from the show itself other than that the audience was psyched at the end, especially after having played Västerbron and Svenska  Hjärtan. Five minutes after the show a sound tech came up to us with a recording of it all and let us tell you this: we have never sounded this good live before, perhaps not even on album. We will just have to wait and see if it is broadcasted sometime in the future, otherwise we will look into it if we can release it ourselves in some way. Unfortunately we did not have the time to listen to any other bands playing, even though it would have been fun to hear Jenny Wilson play.

Day 2 was a releaxed day with only a few hours ride down to Nijmegen.  There we met even more friendly Dutchmen and especially the stage manager and the opening act, Do Not Run We Are Your Friends, who’s playing inspired us in many aspects. Thank you guys for having us and for making our stay very pleasant! The show itself could have been better and the strongest memories are probably from what happened before and after.

Day 3 started  only three hours after we had gone to bed as we had to take an eleven hour drive back home for our last show in Malmö. There was not much sleep in the car which made the conditions for the show pretty special. People told us afterwards that we looked more relaxed than usual, but we were probably more  mentally hammered than relaxed. This show went really well also and our friend Scott from Öresund Space Collective made a recording of it which we hope to hear (and put up on the internet) soon! The night ended pretty quietly at two after not have being let in by the bouncers at Malmö’s perhaps biggest nightclub, KB (they also said that Alex was a cunt, which we still do not know if it is true or not). Quite a contrast to what we experienced in the Netherlands.

However.  All in all a very special weekend. Right now we are sitting on the train to Gothenburg for the prize ceremony of the Swedish national radio’s award P3 Guld. We have no real expectations to win but it would be a nice bonus and a confirmation of that what we do is appreciated. And of course, it would help us getting more shows and all that. Don’t miss out if you live in Sweden; broadcasted live on P3 at 20.00 and on SVT1 at 21.30.

Btw, check out this clip from the show in Malmö. Pretty good.

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Some more reviews

When we released our debut album we had no idea of what people would think about it. As a matter of fact, it was somewhat of a surprise to us that people were actually having thoughts about it at all. Luckily, it got very good press and for that reason we were pretty curious about how the new one would be received. We have probably read most of the reviews for DHH by now (new ones are still coming in every week from all kinds of expected and unexpected places) and we are doing our best to understand them all, or at least Google Translate is helping us with that in a not always very trustworthy way.

We have been a little lazy with quoting the reviews this time but we thought that it might be a good idea bringing a few of the English reviews together, so here we go:

“Someone once said that if Samla Mammas Manna started their life in the 00s, they might have sounded somewhat like this, and that’s a pretty good reference point. Excellent.“
- Wayside Music

“The music is a powerful rolling machine trading off gorgeous melodies played up against startlingly dissonant passages…If you are a fan of Scandinavian prog Gosta Berlings Saga will find a very comfortable place in your music listening. That said the music crafted on Detta Har Hant really should find a much wider audience of prog music fans given its exceptional crossover potential. For my ears, this is wonderful stuff, upbeat and yet retaining that precious melancholy approach we’ve come to love about the Scandinavian prog bands. All in all I’d say this is a real winner“
- Jerry Lucky

“This is another album that left me in awe. I kid you not. No chance I am exaggerating. Detta Har Hänt, is the astonishing second album of Swedish quartet Gösta Berlings Saga. After listening to this beautiful piece of work, I had only one question, where do they breed this people? Is this much talent a matter of luck, hard work, or the results of arts friendly governments? I read somewhere that in Sweden, the government offers a great deal of support to musicians. If so, these may just be the results. But this is not only what happens when sweat and practice meet, but of musicians exercising their right to express themselves freely. No boundaries, no strings attached. Laissez-faire-muthafuckas! In occasions, while listening to it, I thought of Radiohead and how for the past ten years or so, they’ve been trying to make music as bold as this. Transubstans says, ‘the songs range from full-blown epic soundscapes via dissonant darkness to minimalistic powerful grooves without compromising when it comes to the strong melodies’. Ok, that was a bit convoluted, but is right on. This is hypnotic, robotic, thankfully long and yet somehow, so damn soulful. Also, I haven’t heard a Fender Rhodes being played like this since like forever. I volunteer this album for album of the decade. It doesn’t get better than this.“
- Deaf Sparrow

The melodies have a way of creeping into your subconscious and remaining there long after you’ve listened to the last notes. The darker, bleaker elements merely act as a contrast to the band’s more uplifting passages. One of my top 5 releases from 2009. Highly recommended. (4,5 / 5)
- Sea Of Tranquility

I was tired that day, annoyed at everything that didn’t work. A long period of frustration this has been and few things have managed to comfort me. Staying late at work, I put on my headphones and started to scroll through my music player to see what can I possibly listen to. I then stopped at Gosta Berlings Saga. I had just gotten their new album a week before and have only listened to it once and did not remember it well enough. So I decided to play it again, thinking to myself that it might help me engage my brain for the tasks ahead.

I was wrong.

Not wrong about engaging my mind, but wrong about being productive.

Wrong, because for some reason, the moment I put the music on, I was hooked.

Wrong because I did not devote another minute of my time that night for work anymore and only concentrated on the music.

I have since listened to it many times, and it is still as captivating and magical as it was the first time, only now with the advantage of knowing the pieces. So it was not just my special mood that night that has permitted my impressionable mind to be that affected by this album. This is genuine love of this album.

What is it that has such a spell on me in their music? Is it the richness of sound? Is it the wonderful musicianship? Is it the beautiful melodies? Is it the wonderful way they develop their themes? Is it their way to make instrumental music that seem to not require words? Could it be their mingling of elements and styles into a sound of their own? Their crafting of a varied, dynamic and flowing album that sounds subdued and mellow one minute and then fiery and fierce the next?

Before answering these,

Listen to the bass lines such as those that hook you like a fish on a hook in Sorterargatan 3; to the magnificent drum work in each song that hit you at times softly and at others hammer you to your place; to the wonderful keyboards work (and there are plenty of keyboards used here, it’s a real heaven) that like a magic wand, adds marvelous majestic streaks of beauty and bliss; to the guitar work that shift between a raunchy sound to a delicate sweep of fingers. This album, aside from the music on it, is a delight to listen to in this aspect. But then, without gripping music, it would end just there. And here I find myself at odds to describe it: there are elements of fusion as well as occasional use of electronic effects; there are pieces which have repetitive instrumental patterns, developed with added layers of instrumentation and additional musical lines, epic in nature. The pieces differ in quite a lot in rhythm and style even, yet there is a binding spirit to them all, a unifying character. It is hard for me to translate the music and its magic to words here, but I can say this is progressive rock that runs through several emotional fields and manages to use its influences as a stepping board and not as a leaning board. Go listen to them on their website and myspace, at least give it a try. A truly wonderful album! A gem that I personally cherish and highly recommend. (4 / 5)- Prog Archives

“Detta Har Hänt” is one of those albums that were needed in progressive rock (9 / 10)
- Manticornio

The album is (thankfully) not an ironed smooth Retroprog album off the shelf, but edgy and authentic in every second of the good 50 minutes running time. (4 / 5)
- Schallplattenmann

After the confrontation with nature on the first album, this applies to a multi-faceted approach to the state of cities, industrialization, and to love. Endless questions, many answers. For example, on the question of whether progressive rock after 40 years still can be innovative. And only one possible answer: Yes, yes, yes, many times, yes!
- Nordische Musik

This album is full of beautiful atmosphere and is very accurate in the construction of the sound mixture that never appear glossy nor ostentatious, with incursions of psychedelia, space rock, folk and even electronics, with many new details that emerge on which linger listen after listen.
- Arlequins

While allowing some small excursus in experimental electronica, this album succeeds in offering exciting instrumental rock from end to end. (8 / 10)
- Progressia

Detta Har Hant is brave, exciting, dynamic, imaginative, and individual. All of that is topped off with some excellent musicianship.
- Eurorock

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