by Jeff Penczak

An arsenal of instruments ranging from violins, rebecs, zithers, flutes, and cellos to guitars, sitars, organs, zinks, tablas, and Moog synthesizers (the first one that ever reached the shores of Sweden according to guitarist, Dan Söderqvist) moved into Studio Decibel in Sweden in 1971, along with a scruffy band of psych heads (the band name translates roughly as Garden of the Elk) to record their debut album (the cotton-mouthful, “The Future is a Hovering Ship Anchored in the Past”), originally released in 1972 and previously reissued in 1995 by Silence. This CD version adds a couple of live bonus tracks, recorded in 1972 at the Museum of Art in Göteburg, that are among the better tracks on the album! “5/4” is a late night waltz for scarecrows and marshmen, featuring a haunting melody that suggests something spooky is crawling over yonder hills and heading this way. “The Mirrors of Gabriel” is a minimalist keyboard concoction that’s as quiet as the falling snow on the Swedish countryside, with synths peering around distant corners. It cements Söderqvist’s comments regarding the influence of Terry Riley on their work and is an addition to their canon that is more enjoyable than the actual tracks that made the final cut.

About those tracks: the album opens with a songtitle that reads more like the opening sentence in some classic novel, “Two Hours Over Two Blue Mountains With A Cuckoo On Each Side, Of The Hours… That Is,” so you’ve got to figure that you’re going to be dealing with some smartass, intellectual university types or a bunch of potheaded pixies who have no concern for formal conventions like song titles. The somber chiming bells call our musicians to arms for a slow funeral march across the room with gongs competing with faucet-dripping synths (Moogs and VC3’s) until Andreas Brandt’s gypsy violin strokings awaken our sleepy-eyed participants and jumpstarts a psychedelic maelstrom which ultimately yields to Sebastian Öberg’s basso profundo, swirling cello whirlpooling down to the depths of despair. Whew!

Add some horrowshow chanting and 13 minutes later, you don’t know what the fuck just happened, but you want to hear more. A playful pennywhistle arcade opens “There Is A Time For Everything, There Is A Time When Time Will Meet” (I don’t know what they’re smoking over there, but order me a carton!), which features the obligatory chiming clock and scurrying sound effects reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With a Pict.” It’s quickly becoming apparent that we are not going to hear songs in the traditional structure, but a myriad of about-faces and left turns that will continually turn your brain into scrambled eggs.

Sitars and tablas seem to be swatting at buzzing bees as your eyelids slowly lose their will to live. Lilting vocals from Margaretha Söderberg waft into the room, rendering “Children of Possibilities” (in Swedish), supplemented by the sound of ancient shortwave radio broadcasts reaching across the ocean to sleepy-headed Svensk-o-philes like myself huddled under the blankets, calculating imaginary translations of the lyrics into English. “La Rotta” is a swirling, whirling dervish of gypsy dance led by Brandt’s violin, and “Viriditas” is another chanted, creepy bad trip, comprised of Jan Ternald’s ominous, tinkling piano, Brandt’s distorted violin shrieks, and assorted percussive devices. It’s all a challenging amalgam of influences, ranging from Captain Beefheart to Perotinus’ 13th century choirs, from Messien’s orchestral works to the minimalist compositions of Terry Riley, from the acoustic folk of Third Ear Band to the more rock oriented expressionism of King Crimson and Pink Floyd’s underground psychedelia. Recommended to folks with a healthy headful of medicated goo who are fans of unstructured, chaotic leaps of musical imagination from the likes of krautrockers, Amon Düül and Can, or early Dutch psych-o’s, Group 1850. Fans of the more traditional 70’s psych will have to limit themselves to the somewhat structured guitar driven jams (featuring the nimble-fingered Söderqvist) of tracks llike “Rings of Saturn” or the nebulous space whisper of the title track.

Following the release of “Rose-Marie,” Persson and company turned in a more traditional folk direction, evidenced first and foremost by dropping the “International” from their name and trading some of their vitriolic political diatribes for old fashioned Swedish folk tunes. Considering its predecessor, opener “När Lingonen Mognar” (“When The Lingonberries Ripen”) is positively sedate, a soft folk number rejoicing at nature’s ability to strengthen and create life. But that’s not to say that Harvester are ready for the old folks home. The traditional folk tune, “Kristallen Den Fina” (“Beautiful Crystal”) marches into the room on the sturm-und-drang drumming of former Mecki Mark Man, Thomas Mera Gartz, with shrieking flutes competing with chanting, moaning, shouting shenanigans weaving around the repetitive, mantric melody.

“Kuk-Olska” (“Cock-Polska”) is a slightly renamed rendition of hurdy gurdy player Joel Jansson’s melody, played in the Swedish ¾ polska rhythm. It’s a vaudevillian, Bonzo Dog-ish dance tune that’s guaranteed to fill the dancefloors at Swedish wedding receptions! “Nepal Boogie” is another live improv with large music hall acoustics that suggests it might have gone down wonders at open air festivals. It’s all loosey-goosey, somewhat sloppy and totally free form radical chaos. Fading after about eight minutes, tehre’s a suggestion that there may be hours more lieing on the cutting room floor or tucked safely away in Persson’s vault of unreleased music somewhere.

Solomon Burke’s hippie anthem, “Everybody (Needs Somebody To Love)” is another stalker – a stoned to the max dirgy drone, with Gartz’ marching drums dueting with Persson’s incessant, looping guitar riff. Next, we get another live-sounding track, “Bacon Tomorrow,” which sounds like an excerpt from the corwd’s rain chant at Woodstock (except the crowd had better recording quality) and the title track (“Homeward”), which was strangely not part of the original album is included here as a bonus track. It’s a mellow, slow-building, droney mantra which put images of weary warriors trudging home from the battlefield into my head, and is one of the album’s more listenable, hence enjoyable tracks.

Three decades after their debut hit the streets, TGS reunited over the course of five years (1998-2001) in the workshop of second guitarist Jakob Sjöholm on the island of Färingsö to record their sixth album. A funny thing has happened in the ensuing thirty years: while they’re still somber and melancholic, the music is more structured and much more accessible. The harrowing, cinematic opener, “Alla Sover” (“Everyone’s Sleeping”) sounds like an excerpt from the Masked Ball sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” with Persson’s solo’s as sharp and mesmerizing as ever. The sludgy, molasses flow of “Elden är lös” (“Fire Out of Control”) is a slow-motion rendition of the band’s original sound…on downers, and it’s clear by the sleepy, heavy-lidded “Under korkeken” (“Under the Cork Oak”) that these Sixtysomethings have decided to slow matters down to a glacial crawl and the album is all the better for it! Gone are the political sloganeerings, documentary soundbytes, stage banter, and silly, moaning, groaning and grunting vocals…well, almost. I could have done without the covers of two Tuli Kupferberg flights of lunacy, fittingly titled “Inget 1” and “Inget 2” (“Nothing 1 & 2”), but for the most part these outdated hippie holdovers are replaced with a mellow, floating vibe that actually invites favorable comparisons with modern day Swedish psychsters, Soundtrack of Our Lives and Spacious Mind (in all their glorious permutations).

A swampy, vibrattoed, wah-wah guitar opens “Duvan” (“The Dove”), a straightforward(!) pop rocker that should both win new fans and appease old timers like myself who were so frustrated with their earlier sloppy, free form lack of discipline (admitting, of course, that that was the whole point of those early 70s releases!) The sound quality is a thousandfold better and the harmonies are in fine form. There’s even a hint that the boys may have been listening to old Neil Young & Crazy Horse albums on the gloriously delerious “Blixthalka” (“Treacherously Icy”).

“En enfaldig mans klagan” (“Lament of a Simple Man”) adds a bluesy, boogie-down funk side to the sound and old time fans will still find tracks to appreciate, such as the rambling, omnidirectional jam “De förtrycklas återkomst (en kärlekshistoria)” (“The Return of the Oppressed (a Love Story)”), which is not unlike those extended freeform space explorations that crop up in the middle of a Grateful Dead concert. Gartz’ maniacal drumming is the best I’ve ever heard him play, easily outclassing kids one-third his age. This track alone is worth the price of admission to what is easily the best album in the band’s discography. The curious are encouraged to start their exploration here.

Originally released on the Finnish Love label in 1968, this was the debut album from International Harvester, Bo Anders Persson’s retitled version of Pärson Sound. This time around, there is more of a politcal nature to the recordings (for example, “Ho Chi Minh” plays the band’s political card over a dark, percussive backing), which could almost serve as the soundtrack to the contemporary films of French New Wave filmmaker, Jean-Luc Godard. Just as Godard incorporated the industrial makeover of Paris into films like “Deux ou Trois Choses que Je Sais d'Elle” (“Two or Three Things I Know About Her”), Persson and company attack the “politicians’ and the building trades’ destruction of Stockholm in the middle of the 60s, which transformed the inner city into one big building site. Demolished houses, the city trying to adjust itself to the technological ideals of glass and concrete, a feeling of devastation amidst all the utopian dreaming.” (From Magnus Haglund’s liner notes.) So the album begins with the Latin death him, “Dies Irae,” signalling once and for all the death of the idyllic city and its transformation into one huge, ugly pile of steel and glass. Flickering birdcalls drift into “I Villande Skogen” (“In the Boundless Wood”), as if the troupe are hoping to find solace by retreating into the countryside away from the noise and destruciton of their city.

After these perfunctory announcements, the band get down to the headpounding throb of “There Is No Other Place,” with a snarling vocal from Persson coming across like Alice Cooper backed by the cacophanous din of Hawkwind and suggesting that they will not be forced out of their homes by uncaring politicians. Persson calms down for his “Runcorn Report on Western Progress,” adopting a sinewy, Jim Morrison pose to recite the horror tale of his 1959 visit (as part of his internship program at the technological university in Stockholm) to the Runcorn suburb of Liverpool, where he worked as an assistant at the town’s power station. Swarmed by polluted, yellow skies, Persson felt overwhelmed by the inhuman atmosphere that swallowed him up and caused him to “question the whole technological persepctive or turning the society into industrial war zones.” (Haglund)

The title track (“Sleep Tight, Rose-Marie”) is a dirgy, funeral march (sung in Swedish) that reminds me of Black Sabbath conducting some kind of Satanic ritual; or, simply a reassurance to the listener that Stockholm and Sweden will survive the current onslought and rape of its cities – that the people are more powerful than the politicians they elect to run their lives. With eleven tracks squeezed onto side one of the original album, the band stretch out on side two with the eleven-minute improvisational jam “I Mourn You,” recorded live during the band’s September 23, 1968 Good Luck Show, a Monday night residency at the experimental theater Pistolteatern during the autumn of 1968. Fans of Ya Ho Wa 13 and Hawkwind and more modern experimentalists like Tower Recordings, Sun City Girls, No Neck Blues Band, etc. will find comfort in these primitive recordings, but others may wonder what all the fuss is about, particularly since you are dealing with a political situation in Sweden from nearly 40 years ago.

Like a Swedish version of communal krautrockers, Amon Düül [I], the ominous music saunters around the room, occasionally breaking into political slogans or stage play recitations, not unlike The Mothers of Invention or the improv scenes by The Committee in “Billy Jack.” You may also hear the seeds of the more avant garde, psych/folk bands emerging from Scandinavia today, such as Finland’s Kemialliset Ystävät and Avarus or Norway’s Origami Republik. In either event, it’s certainly not “musical” and it’s a very antagonistic listen combining sloganeering, stage plays, Scandinavian folk melodies, documentary-styled sound bytes and a totally wigged-out, 60s’ political vibe not unlike Ya Ho Wa 13, with Persson assuming the mantle of Father Yod. Nevertheless, it is a key artefact from the formative Swedish psychedelic scene – just be prepared to have your brain pulled in 40 different directions at once!

Persson’s fourth group in as many years delivered their fourth album on Decibel in 1970. Taking his music in a more traditional rock direction, Persson & Co. open their self-titled debut with two sleepy-eyed, druggy covers: fuzz-filled rendition of Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower” and the Stones’ “Satisfaction.” The former features a rip-snorting, finger-bleeding solo from Persson. The latter may be punkier and snottier than Mick & Co., but the 2-track recording quality is pretty shoddy – the verses are nearly unintelligible under the extended soloing and fuzz riffage. As you should have guessed by now, subtlety is not one of their strong suits. Unfortunately, this all becomes a bit monotonous after 6 minutes, dreadfully dull after 8 and just completely self-indulgent after 11!

The monotonic, good time drone-cum jam, “”Sanningens Silverflod” (“The Silverriver of Truth”) fares much better, but the next two live recordings, “Tegengorgsvalsen” (“The Waltz from Tegenborg”) and “All Makt Åt Folket” (“All Power To The People”) would have been best left on the cutting room floor. Both seem to have been recorded with some antiquated spit and chewing gum. The former features Gartz’s sloppy, garagey assault on his drum kit while Persson wrings as much distortion as possible out of his fuzz pedals and the latter is little more than shrieking whistles, with the bandmembers whooping it up like drunken frat boys on a three-keg bender. It’s ear-piercingly shrill, totally anarchic and absolutely unnecessary. After four minutes, it became painful to listen to and I had to hit the skip button. If you have the patience to sit through the rest of it, don’t bother to write and tell us how long this nonsense goes on. By comparison, Ya Ho Wa 13 is starting to sound pretty good right about now.