TRAD GRAS OCH STENAR

— First review of this album —

Keeping up with their unpolished live-sounding aestethics, this is TRÄD, GRÄS OCH STENARs new and probably last album. Mainman Bo-Anders Persson has announced his retirement at an age of almost 80 years.

Mostly, this is remicient of their INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER days of minimalistic jamming but it's the more structured songs that shine here (even more so in the company of the noodle- tracks).

"Punkrocker" is a song by TEDDYBEARS originally released in 2000. It's already one of the most covered Swedish Rock Songs, TEDDYBEARS themselves having done two more versions.

"Summer Disco" is indeed a Disco instrumental but I was still surprised to hear it at a Stockholm nightclub.

"Wedding Reel" sounds more like another Swedish Prog group of the 70s, the newly resurrected KEBNEKAJSE.

"Pondering Wondering" is the only song with vocals (this time in Swedish) apart from "Punkrocker"

Of the jam-tracks, the mellow "The Most Beautiful Part of the Dream" and druggy "Unexpected Encounter in the Mushroom Forest" are the best.

These are very obscure, archaic live sessions from this 70's psych rock collective. the sound recording is really poor, garage and amateurish (sometimes provoking an absolutely painful listening) but we have to try making abstraction of this and infiltrate the intimate compositions and improvisations delivered. The opening tune represents the highlight of the album with an epic stoned soundscape, starting as a CAN song with obsessive rhythms, then transformed into a dense, melancholic acid 'trip" with fuzzy guitar solos and attractive melodies. It's closed to weird krautrock jams without experimentations. After this deep spaced out free form composition the musical quality declines with absurd songs as "Dibio" (a such "ridiculous" humorous short composition for acoustic guitars and naive hyppie like vocals) or the grotesque folk- ish "munfiol". "Var vila" is not a more serious affair, including heavy guitar riffs with ultra sick voices but the melodies really rock and try with a certain success to catch the essence of freaked out psych rock classics. An explosion of sounds for the best and the worst.

Well, i can't be too hard on it.

Psychedelic garage music with political interludes? If you have read my review of "Träd Gräs och Stenar"'s self-titled debut album you might know that i'm not a very big fan of the band. For 1970, it is not very original, The Velvet Underground were doing the very same thing, only better, on their "White Light/White Heat" album in 1968. Actually, that is a pretty good way to describe the music played by Träd, Gräs och Stenar during this period, the sound/noise ratio is very much the same as on "Sister Ray", and the length of the songs were usually about the same. The jam feeling is pretty similar to that album by the velvet underground, but they lacked the originality and pure force that The Velvet Underground had so much of. Plus, the songs presented here, while some of them do change a little during their running time, are very stretched without there being much to will them with.

The sound quality is atrocious as well, and while it is supposed to be a live album, don't expect an experience like Yessongs or Seconds Out, i think that at most, there must have been 15 people clapping for these guys.

This is heavily psychedelic, repetitious, and rather noisy, music, but since there is a time and a place for that as well, i will give it three stars. Plus, there is something charming about the way the band just moans "aaal aaalooong the waaatchtooweeer..." and make it actually sound like they are yawning.

Now, this is a pretty stupid album..

No, really. Träd gräs och stenar is an album made by swedes who really thought that they were doing something cool. Definitely a terrible band in any way imaginable. No one really knew how to play an instrument, and no the songwriting is terrible throughout all of side two, which is the only part the band wrote themselves. Out of these 4 quite terrible compositions, "Sanningens silverflod" is the most interesting, being a not totally unenjoyable psychedelic track, but after that follows some of the most freaked out, in a bad way, music i have heard. It's not even particularly avant-garde, it's just silly, in a very pretentious way.

Side 1, however... is a little more interesting. It consists of two cover tracks, psyched out rather seriously, and extended as long as... well, as long as Bo Anders could hold his guitar without falling asleep, i guess. Now, don't expect anything revolutionary about these two tracks. They are just as lazily performed as the tracks on side two, but since the material from the start is a lot stronger, they can only really mess them up to a certain degree. To get an idea of what it sounds like, think about what Gong were trying to do on "The isle of everywhere", for example. Now, imagine it 10 times worse, without anybody being able to play guitar like Steve Hillage, and with the Riff from "Satisfaction" repeated over and over, only faster, for 12 minutes straight. And with terrible sound quality.

Personally, i quite like side one despite of the lack of variation, and when i'm all by myself, i like to do "the Hippie-dance" to All along the watchtower and just space out for a while.

Not the best there is, but if you're looking for something seriously psychedelic, then you might find something of interest in it after all. (But try the live album "Gärdet 12.6.1970" instead, if you can get your hands on it).

This review unlike my others will be short, because I have not many words to say about this terrible album.

Träd Gräs Och Stenar are a Swedish psychedelic rock band from the late sixties. I knew that this album did not have any ratings and decided that it would be a good thing to buy it and review. Well I regret paying 2 dollars for it in the bargain bin. This album is the epitome of terrible, not only due to the amazingly disgusting sound quality, but also due to the fact that the songs on the A-side are jams that not only utilize boring chord sequences (The Am-C-Bb-C chord pattern on All Along The Watchtower gets a bit boring after 4 minutes. Well it lasts 8 here!) and the songs on the B-side are studio jokes that go on forever without lasting more than 5-6 minutes tops.

'All Along The Watchtower' is the best song here, and would be the only reason to listen. But the crappy quality of the sound drags it down with the rest of the songs, and the microphone for the singer isn't adjusted right either. You can barely hear the vocals. Now, the song might had been good had it been 3-4 minutes in length. But it drags for 8 minutes with a 6 minute guitar solo that is so extremely boring you'll most likely find yourself skipping the track without hearing it fully once. I love long guitar soli (Willie The Pimp is 8 minute long and really stuns me) but this one is a major failure.

The same goes for the second song. And the B-side is more like a 15 minute joke than anything.

Overall, a really dissapointing album. I'm usually very generous when giving ratings, and often overrate a lot of albums, but this one is truly one of the worst albums I have ever heard. I do not recommend you to buy this, as it has nothing going for it. There is no progressive in this, and there's nothing spacey about it either. It's a garage-esque jam CD that never goes anywhere. Ugh.

"Djungelns Lag" (Laws of The Jungle) offers us an experience of this cult band's live concert. The quality of the music varies from good to quite bad: For example the first track "Sanningens Silverflod" is a quite good dark & moody euphoric rock resembling little HAWKWIND without their cosmic synth soundscapes. Then on the second track "Dibio" the only good quality in my opinion is it's shortness, this sounds more like a stoned joking in front of the audience. The third song "Tidigt om Morgonen" (Early in The Morning) contiunes in the acoustic style of the previous "song", but now the moods are more deeper, reaching nearly religious heights. The singers don't hit the notes, so if offkey singing (and partially palying) makes you feel bad, this definitelly isn't a record for you! The song has a long trance oritented jam session between the folky wailings, and this rock chaos is the element which pleases me here most. The seeking of trance continues in minimalistic manners but in strong power on "Munfiol" with the jewish harp giving the rhythm to the violin. Sadly this is only a short excerpt which is faded out in the end - a resolution which annoys me quite much. Did the tape run out or was the performance ruined? "Vär Vila" continues as a trashy ROLLING STONES sounding gonzo rant. I like the sound and the melody of the guitar, but the singing here is bit annoying. The later part of the song with improvisations without singing is great. "Drammen export - Sommarlåten" fades in (again, why?), kicking out good jams. There's a strong power in the mantric rock patterns, later mrhing into more tender moods, also introducing predesigned melodies nicely after long open playing, proving that the players really listen to each other. This kind of long good jams are the reason why I like this record even due it's other faults. Therefore the enhanced CD with an ver half hour long (!) bonustrack "Amithaba - In Kommer Gösta" is more interesting to listen than the original vinyl, which on the other hand is a fine collecting item. The long epic starts from the tunings and introduction speaks, from where the slow mantra starts to build up - this is a honest and a precice documentaric way of releasing live matrial which I prefer. The huge musical form waves and shimmers like the sun, dissolving the sense of time. If the album would concist only material as good a this performance, it would be a five star record! If you like archaic psychedelia and early trance oriented Krautrock, check out this unbalanced but interesting album!