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Lisa Isaksson grew up in a small town on the outskirts of Stockholm where she spent most of her time in horse stables dreaming of becoming a riding teacher and owning her own stables. When she wasn’t with the horses she was drawing and spending time on her own in the garden and fantasized about the future. As Lisa grew older and discovered music the drawings and horses soon turned into song lyrics and it wasn’t long before Lisa had rescued her mother’s old guitar from a life in the attic and began experimenting with her voice and songs and began exploring recording techniques with a 4-track recorder. Through the years her love of music continued to grow and she started performing with friends and eventually forming the band Piu together with her school buddies, Lisa’s debut record was a single released in Scotland in 2007. The single got a lot of good reviews and Lisa & Piu gave a couple of concert on the British Isles as well as home in Stockholm. They also came to perform with the British folk musician Roger Wootton who led the legendary acid folk band Comus during the early 1970s. The performances went so well that they were released as a live album. As summer came and turned Sweden into a green and pleasant place again the core of Piu; Lisa, David, Joel and Anders went to a small cottage in the beautiful archipelago north of Stockholm. They arranged and rehearsed the music and also had a lot of fun on the cliffs enjoying the endless sunsets of midsummer. So started the making of what was to become the debut album: “When this was the future”. The album is filled with delicious and bewitching woodland folk hymnals, eloquent yet eerie, and led by Lisa’s gossamer vocals, as delicate as a candle flame. The album is produced by Mattias Gustavsson (Life on Earth! / Dungen).
- When I heard Lisa o Piu it was if someone opened the portals to the secret world where from the greatest get their divine inspiration; Linda Perhacs, Bridget St. John, Joni Mitchell, Sandy Denny, Vashti Bunyan has all been there. And now Lisa Isaksson has apparently been there too. So I hereby warmly recommend you all to seat yourselves in a comfortable position and sink in to the most beautiful music this world can offer. Far away from any genres and trends.
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Just in time for Träd Gräs och Stenar (Trees Grass and Stones) 40-year anniversary the Swedish psychedelic trance-rock pioneers releases a new album - Hemlösa Katter (Homeless Cats). The first one in seven years and the seventh since the singing start in 1969. Eleven new boundless tracks with organic music for open minds. A 40-year anniversary is actually rather on the small. Back in 1967 the guitarist BoAnders Persson had already started his Terry Riley-inspired underground band Pärson Sound with the bass player Torbjörn Abelli and drummer Thomas Mera Gartz, amongst others. They evolved into International Harvester, then Harvester, and finally striking root as Träd Gräs och Stenar in 1969. The following year they arranged, end performed at, the legendary Swedish Gärdes-festivals that pioneered the Swedish alternative music movement. Träd Gräs och Stenar creates their own contemporary music, even if they have been compared to Krautrockers like Can and Faust internationally. Rhythmic heart pumping and sound streaming, sure – but at the same time peculiarly Swedish, with their roots in the mould and with branches that reaches high up in to the clear air. The new album, “Homeless Cats”, has also been able to develop in its own tempo. It was recorded by the band themselves during the period 2002-2007, mostly under jam-like forms in the bands rehearsal house and studio in Viksund - Sweden, but also live at gigs. During this period they also toured Europe, USA, Russia and Japan. In the meaty album booklet they give us a couple of personal travelogues. Träd Gräs och Stenar have evolved a clear and mature sound with space enough for both suggestive heaviness and mind-expanded searching. The eleven new tracks bubbles and seethe. The band members build soundscapes all together where the music is allowed to grow forth freely in compositions like “The Railway Engine of the People in Irresistible Motion”, “Don't Fear the Northern Lights” and “The Unexpected Encounter in the Mushroom Forest”. Sometimes the mostly instrumental tracks are irresistibly captivating, like in the trance dancing “Summer Disco”. As well as evolving seemingly weightless, like when the loop-like “The Most Beautiful Moment of the Dream” breathtakingly floats in to “Thorns of Solitude”. It could be a movie soundtrack. Or earthy space rock. The song “Wedding Reel” diverges from traditional ways of playing Swedish folk music. The rhythm and melody is racked almost brutally in a hard duel. Like a plow in turbo tractor pace wrenches deep furrows in the stone field. Homeless Cats makes its mark. Heavy, at the same time vertiginous. Timeless.
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The follow-up to the acclaimed debut ”Look!! There is Life on Earth!”. The first album was something of a journey past summer green hills and skipping lambs; a celebration of the imperishable eternal beauty and a romantic observation of the world around us. On “A Space Water Loop” the telescope is turned inside out. The focus is on the captain of the project, Mattias Gustavsson's own world. Confusion and contradiction are found in the front stalls, visions of ecstacy next to battles with demons and defunct relationships. The drums are given more space, and a Hammond organ has found its way along the layered vocals and languorous string arrangements. But even though the sound has grown both harder and bigger, the album is a natural follow-up with equal parts sound experimentation, folk and classic psychedelic pop, based on an acoustic guitar. Besides Life on Earth!, Mattias Gustavsson, among other things, plays the bass in Dungen and is currently producing a coming album with Lisa & Piu. Other members of Life on Earth! are Martin Fogelström, Alexis Benson, Erik Lundin and Johan Holmegard (Dungen). On the album yet another ten or so guests help out as well.
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The highest band in Sweden flies again – Kebnekajse have releases a new album! They have been extremely influential and their sound can be hard echoing in most Swedish psych/prog bands.There’s a rumble in the mountain, the forest swings and sings, the wind grabs tones that meanders high up amongst the clouds. It is time for the troll-dance again. They may be the highest mountain in Sweden but they are known as the highest band in the land. They were pioneers with their instrumental, electrified Swedish folk (fiddler) music. When they unleash their heavy version of Horgalåten at a festival the ring dancing spins around so that the hippie-hair flutter and the knee-tassle starts smoking. Kebnekajse, with Kenny Håkansson, Göran Lagerberg, Mats Glenngård, Thomas Netzler, Hassan Bah and Pelle Ekman, are back on stage and record. Six men loaded with eight new songs recorded in the woods , in the legendary Silence Studio with Anders Lind and Reine Fiske (lead guitaris in Dungen) behind the controls, and mixed in the city; amazing electric folk-rock with psychedelic overtones.
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New and heavily mind-bending album from the legendary Swedish psychedelic one-man-band + heavy friends Fredrik Bjorling and Reine Fiske (of Dungen). Get high and try it! S.T. Mikael spearheaded the DIY psychedelic rock/folk movement of the late 1980s-mid-90s, with a collection of albums that now are highly sought after by psychedelic record collectors worldwide. During his long absence S.T Mikael grew more secretive and reclusive, but all the while he was still writing music. Now that he’s finally back here’s at last a chance for the world to join in to his psychedelic world again.
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Dungen's fourth studio album extends the acclaimed Swedish outfit's sound past psychedelia into something far more rare. Moving beyond mere stylistic concerns, 4 finds Gustav Ejstes' focus on the extremes of Dungen's sound separating into two entities. Blazing, raw guitar workouts have their own time and place, but now, so do stirringly orchestrated, jazz-cooled compositions with cinematic undertones. Bandleader Gustav Ejstes has made many allusions to his creative process as it likens to that of a hip-hop
producer. On 4, that process is more evident than ever, both in the feel of each piece, and in the sense of intuition and control within the members of the group. New drummer Johan Holmegard joins guitarist Reine Fiske and bassist Mattias Gustavsson, while Ejstes steps away from guitar for the entire album, focusing on the piano as his lead instrument. Together, they have honed a classic and seamless sound, constructed with lavish studio flourishes and moving, narrative arrangements, and yet able to toughen up
to tear veins of fierce blues-psych instrumentals up from the surface. The ten tracks on 4 comprise Dungen's most concentrated effort to date, beats surging forth and atmosphere changing as their sound continues to evolve. Every song here runs under five minutes, pushing the group to introduce confident melodies and arresting ambiance in tighter frameworks. Gauging from the results, this challenge has done them well. With a penchant for lush pop portraits, and laced with orange sunshine guitar flash, 4 turns
a page in Dungen's sound and story.
