TID ÄR LJUD

Although I generally find that Scandinavian's two most important decades for contributing to the prog cause are the 70's and 90's, I must say that the second wave seem to have lost a lot of steam in the 00's, but there still a few surprises, like the Norwegian Elephant 9 or the early Paatos and this GBS, which escaped my radar until fairly recently. This standard prog quartet appeared in the middle of the decade and released their debut album in late 06, but apparently this was a rather discreet side-door entrance on the scene. It's not the album's design that the culprit, here because this sumptuous digipak is very catchy (for progheads anyway) and the booklet is filled with marvellous naïve drawings that fit rather well their music. Sonically this group develops a mainly instrumental prog rock, often close to the typically- Scandic mellotron-laden retro-prog

The seven tracks , that range from five to almost ten minutes, are almost totally instrumental (a few spoken phrases on the Syrenernas sang - Siren's Song I believe), but the quartet receives help from a few guests, including two violins on Aniarasviten and Naturen tracks, the former also benefiting from weird electronics bruitages, and a flute on the closing track. The group's sonic spectrum is clearly an organ (by synth)-lead prog that features the typical Nordic melancholy, neither too-classical nor too-jazz leaning, just mainly rock. One of the very few critics I could formulate is that the group tends to overstay a bit too long in the great grooves they found, without trying to extrapolate, just content to expands in terms of lengthy solos, but then again the groove and enthralling solos are enough to keep me happy in the greater scheme of recent prog releases.

BTW, I can't help thinking that graphic designer Berglund is somehow related to keyboardist Lundberg, but this is just a hunch, based upon inverted syllables in names. A superb debut album that has caused me to review my top twenty of the last decade, and it's possible that one I will re-evaluate it downwards, once I will freed from its spell. But in the meantime, it's not likely to happen too soon.