Swedish vocals, English vocals
International relevance: ***
Sweden has always been a nation of hard
rock fans and musicians. From the early days of Cream inspired power
trios, through appreciated acts like Neon Rose and even Christian
band Jerusalem, up to the current triumphs of Opeth, hard rock and
metal in all shapes and colours have been vastly popular here. Bands
like November and Life are heralded among collectors, but the heavy
genre also had a widespread undergrowth, with acts such as Cement, White and the NWOBHM inspired Rhapsody.
Among those, White were one of the most
original outfits. Frequently crossing the border between progressive
rock and hard rock, they played a rather unique kind of music as
documented on ”I denna samling”. Major label Polydor recognized
their talent, signed them, but obviously failed to grant them a less
amateurish producer to make the album sound good enough. The sound is
a bit murky and stiff, and I assume that a better represention of
their songs would have given them a greater impact. Perhaps that's
the reason why I can't quite get into ”I denna samling”. It's
obviously a good album with imaginative songwriting, but this kind of
music needs a more powerful sound to really make sense and leave a
proper impression.
White hailed from Malmö and started
out already in the late 60's. An apocryphical tidbit of information
is that successful singer Dan Hylander were member of a band called
White 1970-1972. Could it possibly be the same band that put out ”I
denna samling” almost a decade later? In any case, White disbanded
in 1981, and one of the members went on to play with curious rock
singer Kal P. Dal. Drummer Göran Olsson can now be found in
spacerock band Drahk Von Trip who released a couple of albums in the
00's.
Some trivia: ”I denna samling” was
recorded in three different versions, one with Swedish lyrics, one
with English lyrics, and the third with Danish (?!) lyrics. Only the
Swedish version saw the light of day. Whatever happened to the
international versions?
All in all, ”I denna samling” is a
better album than the production suggests. For fans of obscure hard
rock, this is a mandatory listen, but for others, it's far from essential.
Full album playlist
Full album playlist
Hi,
ReplyDeletethanks for featuring this good album. Do you have the missing track 'Intensivt' in any format to share?
I got it.
DeleteMail me and i´ll dropbox it for you.