RALPH LUNDSTEN & THE ANDROMEDA ALL STARS – Complete albums 1977-1982

A curious character, this Ralph Lundsten guy. His career somehow parallels that of Ragnar Grippe, as Lundsten started out as an electro-acoustic composer and then gradually moved towards more commercially accessible music. A wider attention came in the mid 70's with his series of so called nature symphonies taking inspiration from Swedish nature and folklore. Lundsten became something of a new age music pioneer, recording many of his albums in his Andromeda studio in a house painted pink. He was on a massive ego trip, seemingly only liking his own music. Most of his many many albums are cheesy and aimed at the crystal healers market. To be fair, a lot of his un-commercial early stuff (from the late 60's and early 70's) is quite superficial too but at least somewhat more interesting to listen to.

With the 70's drawing to a close, Lundsten assembled an amorphous band called The Andromeda All Stars and rarely has the term ”all stars” been more to the point. Plenty of name performers passed through, too numerous to mention in all, but a few would be Bernt Rosengren, Ahmadu Jarr, Tommy Körberg, Jojje Wadenius, Monica Dominique, Wlodek Gulgowski, Björn Inge (November et al), Björn J:son Lindh, Janne Schaffer, Tomas Ledin, and renaissance music flag-bearer Sven Berger. This massive lot of people helps the four Andromeda All Stars albums into the progg realm.

Universe (Harvest, 1977)
Instrumental, wordless vocals
International relevance: **

The first All Stars album (housed in a truly eye-catching cover) is one of Lundsten's best, although I hesitate to use superlatives when talking about Lundsten's albums, no matter what line-up they flash. It's uneven and still very cheesy, but it has some entertaining moments of gurgling and bubbling sounds where Lundsten probably just fools around with the crazy sound effects because he enjoys it. As typical to his post-EAM albums, there are plenty of synth washes. The best tracks are those that have a rhythmic structure, like ”Harvest In Heaven”, ”Space Funeral”, and the space rock sounding ”The Planet Of Winds”.

Discophrenia (Harvest, 1978)
Instrumental
International relevance: **

With the disco wave sweeping the world in the late 70's, plenty of musicians jumped the danceable bandwagon. Even the self-loving Ralph Lundsten got bit by the bug, but his interpretation of disco is of course different to others. He either mess with it deliberatly, or he misunderstands everything. The title track is in fact rather interesting as Lundsten seems to predict the synth pop still a few years away from public recognition. It actually reminds me a bit of the early Human League albums (those before the girls joined the group and they became MTV darlings with ”Don't You Want Me”) and they hadn't been released yet when ”Discophrenia” came out. The album even spawned a single (with an extended remix of the title track), a rather rare thing in Lundsten's discography.

Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (Harvest, 1979)
Instrumental, English vocals
International relevance: **

The third Andromeda All Stars album falls somewhere between the first two, with characteristics spilling over from both. ”Rendezvous With A Washing-Machine”, ”Ego Love Song” (appropriate title for Lundsten!) and ”Horrorscope” are still discophrenic, while other chunks stick to the wishy-washy synth layers. The album is very inconsistent, and it sounds as if it's cooked up from leftovers from the previous two discs. The all stars concept is beginning to wear thin.

The New Age (Harvest, 1982)
Instrumental
International relevance: **

After a couple of electronic/symphonic works in the beginning of the 80's, Lundsten returned in 1982 with the final album credited to The Andromeda All Stars. Largely new-agey as the title lets you know, but a more coherent work than ”Alpha Ralpha Boulevard”. But it does sound as if the steam had run out altogether of the All Stars project. It's less colourful and crazy than the initial trio, there's no real push to it.

From "Universe"
Universe Calling / The Space Sneaker / In The Shade Of The Purple Moon / The Hot Andromedary / The Blue Planet / Harvest In Heaven / In The Erotosphere / The Celestial Pilgrim / Rhapzodiac / The Planet Of Winds / Lunatic Safari / Space Funeral / Cosmic Song

From "Discophrenia"
Andromedan Nights / Discophrenia / Luna Lolita / Robot Amoroso

From "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard"
Alpha Ralpha Boulevard / Rendezvous With A Washing-Machine / Space Flower Dance / Ego Love Song / Happy Earthday / Horrorscope / Computerful Love / Dancing In A Dream / Lifetide

From "The New Age"
Morning Of Creation / Time Storm / Future Carnival / Trance-Action / The Remembering Castle / Garden Of Delight

OKAY TEMIZ TRIO – Turkish Folk Jazz (Sonet, 1975) / ORIENTAL WIND – Zikir (Sun, 1979) ORIENTAL WIND – Live In Bremen (JARO, 1982) / OKAY TEMIZ'S ORIENTAL WIND – Live At Montreux Jazz Festival 1982 (Caz Plak, 2022)

Okay Temiz's albums are sprinkled all over this blog, but this post fills in the gaps in his discography up to 1982. It's a rather voluminous body of work, and if you count the albums with him only as a sideman, it becomes unfathomable. But I always take a closer look on an album with his name on it. His name is a stamp of approval. If he's there, it can't be all that bad.

OKAY TEMIZ TRIO – Turkish Folk Jazz (Sonet, 1975)
Instrumental
International relevance: ***

What could possibly go wrong with a title like that? Nothing, and nothing does either. It's recorded as a trio with Swedish jazz legend Björn Alke on bass and Temiz's fellow countryman Saffet Gündeger on clarinet (plus multiple arrangements signed Maffy Falay although he doesn't appear on the album in person). Temiz's Turkish roots have an even stronger emphasis here than on several of his other albums, and the melodies and harmonies get to fly high and free within the smaller trio format. It also means there's more room for Temiz's drumming, and he's really going for it here. He plays in all directions at once, wide and deep, high and low, and right at you. Truly musical drumming, and Gündeger finds his way around the drummer's thunderous tumble. He blows his instrument so hard as if his life depended on it, making wild runs like the clarinet's Coltrane. Even Björn Alke, anything but a bass bungler, gets overshadowed by the Turkish typhoon of sound. It's as if he knows he better stay out of the way and keep the pulse going elaborately but without trying to show off. A one hundred percent stunning album.

ORIENTAL WIND – Zikir (Sun, 1979)
Instrumental
International relevance: ***

The release history of ”Zikir” is a bit complicated and I'm not going to get all tangled up in trying to explain which release is which and what songs are on which edition, as the CD reissue on Ada Müzik sets everything straight in terms of songs included. The picture above shows the album cover used for most early European releases.

This is a very different beast to ”Turkish Folk Jazz”. With more musicians involved, the arrangements are more rigid. There are still room for improvisation of course, but there's nothing here that can match the fury of ”Turkish Folk Jazz”. There's also something about the sound that breathes jazz fusion air, a sort of smoothness that I think is too much out of place for this music. I can just imagine what a smaller band and a more sympathetic production would have done to the outcome. Still there are entertaining moments, such as the wacky ”Kabak Tatlısı” which sounds as if they played a jew's harp through a wah-wah and then added drunken ducks on top of it. But as a whole, ”Zikir” stands as one of the weaker Temiz efforts.

ORIENTAL WIND – Live In Bremen (JARO, 1982)
Instrumental
International relevance: ***

This 1981 recording from the Packhaus Theater in Bremen opens with ”Batum”, a throwback to Temiz's Sevda days although Lelle Kullgrens electric guitar gives it a very different vibe. I don't like his playing at all. But to be honest, I don't think Oriental Wind had a good evening back then in late October 1981. The music sounds strained (very unusual for a Temiz album!) and tense in a bad way. It's almost as if there was something worrying them, as is they had something else on their mind and tried to make up for the missing spark with force. Some moments here are better than others, but I miss the natural flow and telepathy between the musicians most of the time. And flow and telepathy are crucial for this music to work.

OKAY TEMIZ'S ORIENTAL WIND – Live At Montreux Jazz Festival 1982 (Caz Plak, 2022)
Instrumental
International relevance: ***

Ah, now we're talking! Forty minutes of top range Turk jazz action! Still guitar in the mix, but Lelle Kullgren is out and Stefan Osterberg is in and he's much more responsive to the moment, firing off some almost Terje Rypdal-like salvos that hit exactly where they should, But everybody's on the same page here, effortlessly striving in the same direction, thinking with one unified mind. This Montreux show, left in the vaults for a baffling forty years, is the exact opposite of the stifled Bremen date. It's all about the collective efforts, but every musician needs to be mentioned by name as they all play on their absolut top. Lennart Åberg moves like a panther in his death defying guerilla sax solos. Palle Danielsson is freaking insane on the bass, playing stuff that I thought was humanly impossible. He's almost like an orchestra in itself! Bobo Stenson's piano and keyboards might seem a bit tame in comparison, but although he fires away some dazzling keyboard runs, his main role is being the glue that keeps it all together, filling out whatever musical spaces need to be filled The ensemble play is out of this world, it's more than telepathy – they're tight as siamese quintuplets. No need to hold it back: Of every album I've written about here – and we're talking thousands of albums – this album is among the very, very, very best.

Turkish Folk Jazz full album
Zikir full album playlist (CD version)
Live In Bremen full album playlist
Live At Montreux full album playlist (Bandcamp)

MIKE CASTLE – Kaliyuga Express (Sonet, 1970)

English vocals
International relevance: *

Chicago born guitarist Mike Castle spent time in Sweden and teamed up with Peps Persson and his then backing band Blues Quality for one album 1970, seemingly the only one Castle ever did. An all-blues effort with the exception of Gordon Lightfoot's ”Early Morning Rain”. Only ”Stockholm Blues” and ”Eagle Blues” are Castle originals, the rest is rather pedestrian cover choices such as ”Sweet Home Chicago”, ”Death Letter Blues” and ”Walkin' Blues” (although the latter is only a digital bonus track). Castle is an adequate but unexceptional acoustic guitarist and an uninspiring singer with a voice better suited for American folk styles than blues. Therefore he sounds best on the Lightfoot track and Mississippi John Hurt's ”Casey Jones” than the gruffer songs of Son House or Robert Johnson. He's learned the moves but fails to infuse much personality into them. Blues Quality appears on two tracks, Peps on six.

Kaliyuga Express full album playlist

ROBERT ERWING – Betongänglar (Text O Bild, 1982)

Swedish vocals
International relevance: **

After releasing one single on the vehemently commercial label Mariann in 1981, he returned with a privately released full album the following year. A strange affair with symph rock aspirations, loaded with cheesy synths and Erwing's thin, slightly nasal and rather funny sounding voice. He's definitely not much of a singer, and not a lyric writer of note either. His observations, summed up in album sub-title ”En förortssymfoni” (”a suburbian symphony”), are banal and sometimes out of metre, and they only get more in your face when delivered with Erwing's shaky, occasionally off-key vocals. The musicianship is otherwise decent – especially for a private release – with plenty of unknown local Gothenburg performers. The only one I can spot that had a career in music after this album is co-songwriter Göran Ihrfeld who later was in Beatles tribute band Lenny Pane. Most famous name here is well-known actor Reine Brynolfsson who draw the record label!

”Betongänglar” is unbearable if taken seriously, but if you're into off-beat music devoid of self-awareness, this is a gem.

Betongänglar (suite)

EJE THELIN GROUP – Hypothesis (Musicians Record Co, 1979) / EJE THELIN – Bits & Pieces (Phono Suecia, 1980)

Instrumental
International relevance: **/**

Eje Thelin already had a long career as a trombone revitalizer when he recorded these albums, entering the live scene already in the mid 1950's and making his record debut in the early 60's. He went through many changes including a free jazz phase with Joachim Kühn resulting in a couple of early 70's albums of which I gladly recommend the very expressionistic ”Acoustic Space”. He made a gradual slip towards jazz fusion in the 70's, and these two albums from the turn of the decade 1979/80 are probably the furthest he got in that direction. By that time, jazz fusion in general had become a very stale genres lazily giving in to the conventions it had created for itself.

”Hypothesis” however is an unusually vital effort, displaying an openness that had been long lost. Allowing free form (”Duett”) and soul jazz (”Back-woods Song”) into the mix, as well as giving piano player Harald Svensson free reign over the self-explanatory track ”Piano”, and allowing dreamy moods into ”Curved Space” and the two versions of ”Here's That Rainy Day” certainly broadens the palette. Svensson might in fact be the real star here, adding a certain lyricism to the album.

”Bits & Pieces” was recorded with roughly the same line-up as ”Hypothesis”, but expanded with bassist Bronisław Suchanek, occasionally percussionist Malando Gassama and with Steve Dobrogosz on piano on some tracks. The album opens in a moody way with the beautiful ”Gloomy” which lives up to its title and followed by the almost ambient ”Islands”. The entire album is much more peaceful than its predecessor; only ”Castor And Pollux” and ”Carneval” heaten it up a bit. Which album you prefer at a given moment is a matter of mood. You could say that they are two sides of the same coin.

These are not my favourite Thelin albums – I still prefer the noisy Thelin of the early 70's – but regarded in the jazz fusion context where they belong, these two discs are head and shoulders above what the genre most often had to offer at this late date.

Hypothesis full album
Bits & Pieces full album playlist

KLARA EXPRESS – 1975 (no label, 1975) / WASA EXPRESS – Live At Jarlateatern 1976 (no label, 1976)

Instrumental
International relevance ***/***

The seeds of Wasa Express were already in the ground by 1975, although their debut album wasn't released until 1977. They recorded an LP's worth of material as Klara Express in 1975 in the legendary Decibel studio in Stockholm where myriads of albums have been recorded. If these recordings were made as demos or if they were in fact intended for release I don't know, but they remained locked away for decades before getting a digital-only release.

Klara Express was a very different-sounding band than when turning into Wasa Express, and this incarnation featured EGBA trumpeter Ulf Adåker and trombone player Nils Landgren who both left early on. They were obviously a balancing force in the band, as those Klara Express tapes top everything made after their departure. Instead of the daredevil gymnastics that make Wasa Express such an overbearing band, Klara Express focused on the groove. Åke Eriksson is a drummer well-known for his skills, and here he pulls out every funky trick in the book to great success. The syncopes blare away with precision but also all of the feel it takes to make it swing, groove and funk. It's fusion music alright, but it's in the higher legion of jazz funk, much better than most albums in the same mould. It's a pity these recordings weren't released back in the day, and even greater pity what the loss of Adåker and Landgren did to the band.

”Live at Jarlateatern 1976” is an early document of Wasa Express, and while it still has remnants from their early Klara characteristics, they were already heading for their typical style where it was more important to dazzle and baffle the audience with instrumental acrobatics than to present something with emotional substance. And even in those moments where they emphasize the funk bits left over from the Klara Express days, it sounds dull and calculated. ”Jarlateatern” isn't quite as terrible as their later properly released albums, but it's still dead boring and clinical.

None of these albums have been released physically. Both of them were originally available for free download from Åke Eriksson's website, but are now available for streaming on the regular platforms.

Klara Express full album playlist (Spotify)
Live At Jarlateatern full album playlist (Spotify)

JAN HAMMARLUND & KJERSTIN NORÉN – Några här, några där... (Amalthea, 1981)

Swedish vocals
International relevance: *

I've already written about Jan Hammarlund's entire 1970's catalogue here, but he continued making records long after that, with a discography reaching well into the 2010's. Never foreign to working and performing with other (predominantly female) artists, there are several releases co-credited to others. This is one of them, made together with Kjerstin Norén. She was one of the original members of Röda Bönor, and subsequently had another band called Kjerstin Norén & Damorkestern with members from Husmoderns Bröst.

”Några här, några där” – with the unweildy subtitle ”Jan Hammarlund Och Kjerstin Norén Sjunger Sånger Av Il Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano: Ivan Della Mea - Giovanna Marini - Paolo Pietrangeli” – consists of songs by contemporary Italian songwriters (as the subtitle says) translated to Swedish. The vocals are split rather evenly beteween the two singers, and although Norén might not be the greatest voice ever heard, her songs are still a welcome break from Hammarlund's always annoying warbles.

The album as a whole has a somewhat different feel than many other Hammarlund albums which has a lot to do not only with Norén's involvement but also the arrangements. The most different-sounding track is ”Balladen om Ardizzone” with its renaissance-styled framework. A well seasoned line-up surely helps too; how about Kjell Westling, Fred Lane, Lena Ekman, Ale Möller and his mate from various constellations Dan ”Gisen” Malmquist to name but a few? Recorded in Copenhagen, a couple of Danish musicians get on the payroll too.

But all in all, this remains too much of a Jan Hammarlund album, and unless you're a fan of his, you may just as well pass on it.

Full album playlist