Songwriting on the West Coast

Last week, me and the rest of Tiny Union rented a car and drove out to the west coast of Sweden. We stayed at Bella’s parents’ place on the island of Orust, and used her dad’s newly built studio as our base. We had a great time there and wrote five or six new songs in three days. Bella unfortunately had a terribly cold the whole time there, which eventually spread to Gustav and myself…so I’m trying to recover from that as I write this.

Next week I will wrap up the process of producing music for the Nobel Creations exhibition at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm. The music is pretty much finished by now, so what I have left to do now is to cut it up into smaller chunks of audio, sort of disassembling the puzzle if you will, export those files and then focus on getting the programming right so that everything plays the way it’s supposed to. My teacher and super hero programmer Hans Lindetorp at KMH has put in a lot of work creating the framework and the code that controls the music, and he will help me get the last bit right. As I’ve mentioned before, the exhibition will open for the public on the 5th of December.

There will be a release party and concert for the debut Jean and the Mean machine album (mixed and mastered by me) on Tuesday in Stockholm. Check out the Facebook event for more info.

Nobel Creations

I’m currently composing and producing music for a new exhibition at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm called Nobel Creations. The exhibition opens 5 December 2014 and will be on display until 1 March 2015. My contribution to the exhibition is 14 channels of interactive music routed to 16 speakers in the exhibition hall. The composition draws its inspiration from the Nobel Prize and from the 2014 laureates. My fellow master students in music production from KMH are also contributing to the exhibition, as well as students from the jazz institution and students from Beckmans Designhögskola.

Read the press release from KMH here (in Swedish.)

Recording jazz & Brazilian folk music

Last week I had another visit from Vitor Celestino and Neto Oliveira in KMH’s Studio 2. This time they brought along singer/guitarist Rafa Brasileiro, and together they played two Brazilian songs that we recorded live. For the first song, Vitor played a cavaquinho, a small four string guitar, and Neto played percussion. For the second song, Vitor played his seven string acoustic guitar, and Neto played drums, so I had Rafa sing with me in the control room instead in order not to get any spill from the drums into the vocal mic.

Last Thursday I recorded to jazz groups, a trio and a quartet. The trio consisted of guitarist Alf ‘Affe’ Carlsson, bassist Samuel Löfdahl and drummer Hannes Sigfridsson. I’ve recorded Alf before with a different trio, so this was a new constellation. The quartet that I recorded on the same day was also a new constellation, consisting of saxophonist David Bennet, pianist Filipe Raposo, bassist Eirik Lund and drummer Simon Andersson. This group was quite experimental, and Filipe did a really cool thing on the last song where he held his phone up against one of the piano mics and played a recording of the same song. So the song started with an old recording of the song, played through a phone, and after a few bars Filipe just faded out that old recording by moving his phone away from the mic slightly, and the rest of the band picked it up from there. This was a last minute recording, and I had no idea he would try this beforehand, so it was a fun surprise to sit in the control room and hear all of this happening in real time!

Here’s a clip featuring some music I recorded in the studio in September: Daniel Angebrand Trio @ Boulebar Surbrunn

JMM master & jazz trio recording

Today I sent the finished master of Jean and the Mean Machine‘s debut album to the pressing plant. The release date for the album is November 18th, and the duo will go on a short tour in support of the album, starting a couple of weeks before the release.

Last week I recorded Daniel Angebrand Trio in KMH’s Studio 2. The trio features Daniel Angebrand (trumpet), Alexander Brott (guitar) and Jonas Grumstedt (bass). Here’s a track from last week’s session: Daniel Angebrand Trio – It Could Happen To You.

Kvasivärld now streaming

“Kvasivärld”, off the upcoming debut album by Sagan Om Alltings Förträfflighet, is now streaming on Spotify. The album, featuring six more songs, will be made available through digital services, such as Spotify and iTunes, later this fall.

Weekly round-up

The gig with Tiny Union last Wednesday night went really well! The venue (Landet) was pretty much packed with people and we got a lot of nice comments from the audience post-gig, which was nice! The band that played after us, Brödet, were really good, so it was nice to catch their gig as well. At the moment we’re looking for a new rehearsal space, and once that is sorted, we’ll get on with the songwriting and hopefully book a few more gigs!

I recorded guitarist Vitor Celestino and drummer/percussionist Neto Oliveira again last Thursday in KMH’s Studio 2. This time around they brought Guto Lucena, who played flute and soprano saxophone. We recorded live takes of two Brazilian songs with everyone playing in the same room together.

Last night I went to see Jonatan Larson, who plays drums on the upcoming Sagan Om Alltings Förträfflighet album, play with The Royal Concept at Debaser Medis. They played an absolute killer show, I was actually quite blown away by their energy, this being the first time I saw them live.

Studio work & Tiny Union debut gig

I engineered two drum recording sessions this week in KMH‘s Studio 2. The first one was with drummer Jonathan Lundberg for two ballads off jazz/fusion bassist Johannes Zetterberg‘s upcoming third solo album. The second one was with Brazilian drummer Neto Oliveira, who played with guitar virtuoso Vitor Celestino. I had Vitor playing his seven string acoustic guitar right next to me in the control room, which was a pretty amazing experience for an old failed classical guitarist as myself.

Tiny Union will play our first gig next week on Wednesday, 17 September. The venue is Landet, Telefonplan (Stockholm). There’s a Facebook event for the gig, and there will be another band, Brödet, playing as well as a couple of DJ’s from Heaven Up Here spinning records!