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  • The Xiao Fang EP

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    Artist: Hans Appelqvist

    Label: Komplott

    The Xiao Fang EP was originally released on Mjäll a few months before Appelqvist's debut album Tonefilm in 2001. On this EP Appelqvist works with field-recordings from China done during his stay there the summer of 2000. This beautiful 10" vinyl EP was pressed in a limited edition of 500 copies and the few copies we had available at our mailorder sold out rapidly. The Mjäll label's initiator Bo-Stefan Lundkvist decided to finish his business short after the record was released and we thought that this record sold out. But apparently a few copies was actually returned to Mjäll and they have collected dust in the attic since then.

    We are now glad to announce that we have a few more copies available so there's a new chance to pick up this rare and stunning release by Appelqvist.

  • Bremort

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    Artist: Hans Appelqvist

    Label: Komplott

    On his new album Bremort, Hans Appelqvist seeks an alternative technique of musical story telling, a search which seems to be founded in a sort of restlessness or maybe a mise en cause of those simple and solidly established parameters which have been established in instrumental and conventional popular music. Appelqvist mainly derives his particular form of musical story telling from feature film, where the music is paralleling the story so as to amplify it or comment it. It is in this form, where sound and image converge, that Appelqvist is conducting his search for unexpected emotional expressions.

    Bremort is the name of a fictitious city where the listener takes part in scenes in the lives of the people of this average Swedish town. The album has no comprehensive theme but is rather built up around several small episodes, which have nothing in common other than the fact that they all take place in this same fictitious city during a limited period of time. The depictions are accompanied by different musical themes in which the beige existence of some of the inhabitants of Bremort are portrayed and linked together in recurrent intermezzos. As such Bremort is in a way a place of refuge, a sanctuary for the commonplace.

    Appelqvist?s music infuses the debate on the musical qualities of music. The newness of his acoustic image, where the choice of sounds are not always evident or natural in there context, makes the listener react, certain musical nuances might generate strong emotions while others leaves the listener indifferent. The same is true for Appelqvist?s scheme of using untrained, hand-picked voices, a device which by many might be construed as provocative. It raises the question of whether we are actually listening to music and/or taking part in a staging. The crude voices are intimately interlinked through the underlying narrative and bring a dimension of agitation on top of the melancholy and suggestive coulisse of sound.

  • Tonefilm

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    Artist: Hans Appelqvist

    Label: Komplott

    Making use of various devices such as outmoded film equipment and an old-fashioned portable gramophone, Appelquist's inventive stage performances has been the subject of much attention. Here fragmented video clips and film sequences carefully synchronized with the music turns into an unconventional musical and cinematic experience combined. Finding any musical references to the work of this young Swede is tricky indeed. The Tonefilm project and its creator truly defies all comparison. Interweaving acoustic instruments - such as the recurrent resonance of a melancholic guitar or a slightly agitated piano - with electronic beats and sound samples from movies, Appelqvist creates his own distinctive sonic landscape where the ambience swiftly shifts from evocative and mellow to a state of subtle agitation. "Tonefilm" is a thrilling hybrid between moving pictures and music. Each composition has its own story to tell at the same time as the distant humming of a film projector suggest the interrelated cinematic theme of this meditative and melodious compilation.