BENGT-ARNE WALLIN – Wallin/Wallin (Dux, 1971)

 
Swedish vocals
International relevance: **

Bengt-Arne Wallin was noted jazz musician and composer (he died in 2015) with a special love for Swedish folk music, and played with everybody from hugely popular easy listening icon Lill Lindfors to Polish jazz maverick Tomasz Stańko. His 1971 effort ”Wallin/Wallin” is centered around old Swedish chorales and psalms with words by poet and lyricist Johan Olov Wallin. The selected psalms make for a song cycle of sorts that straddles the lines between prog, fusion, third stream jazz, and progressive big band. Such an ambitious venture surely demands skill to pull through, and Wallin indeed managed to drum up a plethora of seasoned and in-demand players. Names such as the two Jans, Schaffer and Bandel are – needless to say – featured, as are Okay Temiz, Ola Brunkert, Stefan Brolund to name but a few. For the vocals, Wallin approached Ann-Kristin Hedmark and Tommy Körberg, Körberg then a member of newly formed genre-defying battleship Solar Plexus.

The ambition level is dazzling, but the ideas and efforts often get in the way of the music itself. Everyone involved do their best and you can hear they're pretty thrilled by the whole project, but in the end, the music gets too unwieldy and sometimes a bit too cerebrally sluggish to take off. It's interesting as a period piece, but the album's sheer abundance is too fatiguing for an unadulterated listening pleasure. Simply put, a little too eager for its own good.

Att bedja (Gud han skälv oss bjöd)
Så går en dag än från vår tid

SKROTBANDET – Afrocarib (Nacksving, 1980)

 
Swedish vocals, other languages

International relevance: *

For their second album, Skrotbandet recruited previous members of Göteborgs Visgrupp and GöteborgsBrechtensemble and changed their direction from a once avantgarde constellation (as represented on various artists compilation ”LIM – Levande improviserad musik från Göteborg”) to a band taking most of their cues from afro-Caribbean music. The album title alone gives away the stylistic switch.

”Afrocarib” almost plays like a catalogue of styles from the region. We get Cuban rhythms, a couple of reggae tracks, a little touch of calypso and several dashes of fashionable salsa – everything bereft of the respective styles' original weight and meaning. This is a textbook example of when putting style before content. It's all mathematically precise, well-studied and competently executed but the most important thing, the one you've got to have within you, is conspicuously lacking: the passion that comes with the circumstances the music is rooted in.

Ignore this album and check out Skrotbandet's sources instead for the real McCoy - the list of recommended albums printed on the album's lyric sheet provides suggestions for more fulfilling listening experiences than the album itself (even though my personal recommendations probably would have looked different). Nacksving's label honcho and album producer Tommy Rander probably loved it though, given his penchant for dogmatically correct but soulless statements.

Their first album is reviewed here.

No links found.

VARIOUS ARTISTS – Gatumusik från Stockholm sommaren 76 (Caprice, 1977)

Instrumental, Swedish vocals, English vocals

International relevance: *

While not a progg album proper, this one fits hand in glove with the progg zeitgeist and ethos. The title means ”street music from Stockholm, summer '76”, and that's exactly what it is, street musicians performing in their natural environment on the streets of Stockholm to unsuspecting passers-by. Few of them got beyond obscurity with the exception of Don Partridge who already had several albums under his belt, and even a 1968 hit song in ”Rosie” and another one, ”Blue Eyes” from the same year. He was a drifter, touring the streets of Europe and settled in Sweden where he lived for years in the 70s. He was a well known and colourful character with his one-man-band act that even I caught as a kid in those days when visiting Stockholm with my parents.

The music on the album ranges from The Salvation Army and old-timey to traditional fiddle tunes and organ grinders. None of it is very good; the best track being Andrés Daniel Spatola's fluent but redundant performance of old Neil Young chestnut ”Heart of Gold”, followed by Patridge's stomping take on ”Kansas City”. It's not an album you'd put on for musical enjoyment but it's fun as an aural snapshot of times gone by.

No links found.

BJÖRN EHRLING – Frihetens legender (YTF, 1978)

 
Swedish vocals

International relevance: *

Björn Ehrling was a 'visa' singer, that particular Swedish brand of singer/songwriters that was widely popular in the 60s and 70s. Ehrling released only a few albums during his recording career, two of them on the YTF imprint. This is his second LP, and with a title like ”Frihetens legender” (”the legends of freedom”) you might expect politically inclined songs with a possible Spanish or Latin flair. If so, you're almost right – the material is chosen entirely from the Portugal's rich fado tradition and then translated to Swedish.

Ehrling's got a decent voice used in the same slightly over-zealous style that often comes with the visa genre. It's a largely forgettable album included here only as a favour to the Turid completists out there as she adds backing vocals to the track ”Nu är vi fria”. Bear in mind though that her effort is of minimal proportions, and unless you knew it's actually her, you could mistake her for just about any angel-voiced chanteuse.

Nu har vi fest