Instrumental
International relevance: ***
This is such a beauty of a record! Beautiful for so many reasons. A unique document of a candid process reserved for the involved musicians only, secret to outsiders. A truthful representation of the naked creativity and mental interplay between a few select performers.
The select performers in question are
three close friends that all have (or had, with two of them now sadly
gone) a thorough track record. If you want to oversimplify it, you
could conveniently express it as: Arbete & Fritid.
Drummer/percussionist Bengt Berger, reed player Roland Keijser and
multi-instrumentalist Kjell Westling were all part of the line-up for
the first two Arbete & Fritid albums. It's fair to see them as a
crucial co-founders of Swedish progg even in its narrowest sense.
The recordings on ”The Vedbod Tapes”
were never made with an official release in mind. They were more of a
memento for the three longtime buddies, a documentation of a friendly
get-together in Roland Keijser woodshed. ”Vedbod” means
”woodshed” in English, and apart from the literal meaning,
”woodshedding” is an old jazz term for jamming. Keijser sheds
(some) light on the origins of the recordings in his liner notes: ”We
usually refer to this unique document as 'the Vedbod tapes'. The
circumstances are not crystal clear, but the fact is that all of the
music was recorded in a woodshed in south-west Dalarna in 1977. /.../
The 'archaeological digs' for the Vedbod tapes recently acquired a
new urgency, and were further intensified after the sudden – too,
too soon! – death in the autumn of 2010 of Kjell Westling. /.../
The music, in general, sounded good. a little sound-technique
polishing but no real editing was done to these findings, we kept the
documentary approach preferring to keep too much rather than too
little. Ah, this is how it could sound, once upon a time, in certain
Swedish realities. /.../ What do we play? Apparently free from the
heart, memory and imagination. Mostly collective improvisations. But
also a couple of Ornette Coleman tunes, some popular songs, the odd
polska, waltz and halling, a few tango bars… But, above all, sundry
lengthy chunks of unidentifiable inventions, the names of which are
known only to the woodshed.”
Key words: ”free from the heart”. The trio had no rules to follow; it's like a free-flowing heart-to-heart conversation that needed no restrictions but relied on perfect equality. That's part of what makes these tapes so fascinating and rare. It's free music but on even deeper levels than as in for example ”free jazz” because it refers to more than just musical characteristics. It's the unfettered sound of a deep friendship.
Although all three of these master musicians contribute democratically to the process, the greatest triumphs belong to Kjell Westling. Although he was always happy to adapt to the prerequisites of circumstances known to the studio musician and did so with ease, here he really threw himself into the open-ended expression. If it came out as a folk fiddle or a wide open jazz jam didn't matter; he was free to follow his fancies without narrow considerations, and it's wonderful to hear. In many ways, I find this to be his grandest moments on tape because you can really hear him for all that he was – and that was a lot.
The CD features 70 minutes selected from hours of tapes, but Country & Eastern released another half an hour of digital extras in conjunction with the CD. The main portion of ”More Vedbod Tapes” is made up by the 26 minute jam ”Woodshedding 3” which in many ways is the distillate of everything that was going on during those days in Keijser's secret garden shed. Without a pre-set plan, Keijser, Westling and Berger move effortlessly between jazz, folk melodies and unprejudiced jamming, led only by their hearts, souls and deep understanding for each other. Like I said before: this is what a true friendship sounds like.
The Vedbod Tapes full album playlist
More Vedbod Tapes full album playlist
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