Thursday, July 5, 2018

KARL GUSTAV KARLSSON & VÄNNER – Själens natt (Kalles Music Production, 1980) / En poet (Kalles Music Production, 1981)


Swedish lyrics, instrumental
International relevance: */*
 
A completely unknown artist – I find no traces of his two (presumably only) albums on the Internet, at the time of writing not even on Discogs. So I assume they're very rare and only released locally in what I assume from the record label's address is Karlsson's native town Ulricehamn on the Swedish west coast.

”Själens natt” (”night of the soul”) is largely instrumental, with only a couple of vocal tracks sung by the annoying Ingrid Jonsson who sounds like Christian singer, if you get my drift. She's still better than Karlsson himself, who sings so out of tune and out of breath to a dreary church organ on closing track ”Tre skopor mull” that it's bordering on the laughable. The remainder of the album is either moody psuedo-classical piano music, or tracks with equal traces of Parisian café music and Swedish folk thanks to the addition of accordeon and violin. A promo insert quotes from reviews published in the local Ulricehamn press but for all I know that could just as well be fake...

The title of the second album means ”a poet” in English so you could tell that Karl Gustav Karlsson raised the level of ambition after his debut. That's code for 'now even more pretentious'. With Ingrid Jonsson out of the way, Karlsson now feels compelled to take care of all the vocals himself. That includes melodramatic recitation...

The album drags on endlessly and is even harder to sit through than ”Själens natt”. While nowhere as bad as say, John-Erik Axelsson, it's still a genuine endurance test.
 
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