ARBETE OCH FRITID

This is my fourth Arbete och fritid review and their first record released in 1970 when they were made up by Ove Karlsson (cello, bass, guitar, organ), Bengt Berger (drums, percussion), Kjell Westling (fiddle, saxophone, flute, guitar, piano), Roland Keijser (saxophone, clarinet, flute, organ) and Torsten Eckerman(trumpet and percussion). This music dwells in a very artistic sophisticated music area which flourished in a Sweden were everybody could play. The musicians are great but the compositions a bit boring. It's a mixture of folk music, art music and jazz and for many people I think this could be heaven. I am not amazed even if I admit this is good music. The first track i perhaps the best: "Damen i svart" (The lady in black) has a weeping cello and a very folky melody going around. In the end we meet great windwork. "Garbergsbrudens dödsmarsch" is a short and great folk song. I have earlier written I would have heard more folky stuff from A&F. The track "Arbete och fritid" seams improvised and is a bit boring beside of heavy rock style. "Mora-Nisses vallåt" is a modern melodical song with great windwork. This is a great track. The title refer to a Swedish skier Mora-Nisse Karlsson. "Esso motor hotel" is perhaps a pleasant track but it doesn't hit me. "Engelska kanalen" do not either turn me on but "Vind" is a nice track with deserving style.

Arbete & Fritid's first record is a good debut. It is better than "Andra lp" but not as interesting as "Se upp för livet" or as good as "Arbete och fritid" (their third record here on PA). But as I have mentioned before, if you are interested in the Swedish "progg" scene, this is an essential band. But not really my style.

Arbete & fritid is Arbete och fritid's fourth studio album(ProgArchives has forgotten the record "Slottsbergets hambo å andra valser") and was released in 1973 on MNW(Musiknätet Waxholm), the biggest progressive label in the early seventies' Sweden. I don't count Ostpusten- Västpusten in this review because it's a bonus track. I wasn't very pleased with their lp "Andra lp" but this was better. The album features Bosse Skoglund, Ove Karlsson, Tord Bengtsson, Roland Keijser and Torsten Eckerman. This disc is very comprehensive.

Three tracks are traditional Swedish folk tunes played in a progressive rock way. The best of them is the first song "Gånglåt efter Lejsme Per Larsson i Malung". That is also one of the best progg (Swedish progressive rock in the 70s) songs ever. It is really heavy but very native and mournful. "Halling efter Ulrik Jensestuen Valdres" is also very good with fantastic blow work of Roland Keijser.. "Polska efter Steffen Henningsgård, Brekhena" has live feeling with stomping feets. The more experimental tracks are the slavic inpired "Elâzig-Dans" which is played on flutes, a melody that remains in your head afterwards. "The European Way" has bas vocals (but with an interesting political message) but something happens and a nice musical world opens its garden. A track of experimental jazz. "Dagen lider" gives you a sad but great feeling and the melancholic "Vägen till Nyvla" has perhaps the most beautiful melody. "Petrokemi" is the most psychedelic track, in the way of Träd, gräs och stenar (but much better). That song is perhaps something for those who enjoy Space rock and Krautrock. "Nidälven" is a boring track. I most mention the bonus track "Ostpusten ? Västpusten" also. I don't think about it in the rating but it really makes this record more interesting. It's an almost twenty minutes long track with excellent instrument work. It's not symphonic so perhaps you'll become bored but it's still great music.

I can't give it five stars because it's not my favourite type of prog but it's still amazing music and I know you also will find moments of beauty and joy in Arbete och fritid's music.

This record is essential to understand the swedish seventies' music and the movement called "proggen" or "musikrörelsen" (music movement). Se upp för livet is Arbete och fritids fifth studio record. It is a very long double record which lasts for 88 minuts and features Ove Karlsson och cello, bass, guitar and organ, Jan Zetterquist on many instruments, Thomas Mera Gartz on fiddle, guitar and song, Torbjörn Abelli on bass and song, Tord Bengtsson on bass and Ulf Lauthers as an author. It was released in 1977 and contains twenty songs.

If not very good it is a very interesting record to explose, especially if you speak swedish. It is impressive how many styles they manage to mix on this disc. It reaches from punk rock in short "Lev hårt ? dö ung" about being young and don't think about what is best for you to wild space improvisations in sixteen minuts long and superb "Födelsemusik". That piece is totally chaotic but still sophisticated and somewhere there is a melody. Sometimes it feels they are just joking with us like in "Dansa i ring" or "Knoga och knega". Sometimes they are very monotonic such in "Spel i soluppgången" and in another "Stora David Bagare" there are nice vocal harmonies. "Älskade barn" is very obscene about sex and in "Jag är inte som andra" can we hear a poem about feeling alien. We get different views about how "progg" (and prog) music sounds. "Jag vet inte så noga" for example isn't prog musically but it's a nice soft romantic song about every day thoughts. The highlight on this album is the only pure folk song "Brudmarsch från Vågå i Norge" which is a heavy melodic piece, sprung from a Norwegian wedding. You can say a lot about this record and as a conclusion the best definition is art music or avant-garde music. Every other definition would fail.

But why don't I think it deserves more than three stars. Well three stars is good but what I miss here is professionalism. Many songs are made carelessly. Perhaps that is what people like with Arbete och fritid but it bothers me. It also lacks strong tracks that go to history and live on their own perfection. A very different album with something for every taste to enjoy.

This music is interesting to listen to but I don't think it's really good music. Some musicians here are very talanted but I don't think they did their best. I am proud of all good progressive music we made in Sweden in the seventies but I think the best was the political progressive music (that is not listed here).

Arbete och fritids secord record "Andra" (second) from 1971 is something different. They took inspiration from jazz, swedish, finnish, greek and balkan folk music and mixed that in some form of early world music. The result is not epic but absolutely something I recommend you to try. The record pearl is "Två grekiska låtar" - there they really caught som wonderful music, melodies and fantastic instrumentation (flute and saxophone). "Långdans efter Hjort-Anders" is a nice little song. I think they as swedes should have worked more with swedish folk music. Otherwise this record is very experimentel but not very much above that. The best on this record is Roland Keijser and Kjell Westling work with the woodwind instruments, but as I mensioned, they could've done something better of it.

Psychedelic and adventurous Zorba from Sweden

There was clearly something in the water back then! Initially I'd wanted to include Arbete och Fritid in my recent Swedish prog marathon, but alas this was not to be due to filing problems, and to put it mildly: This act is anything but one-track minded - as they assimilated so many differentiating musical facets into their sound, that they practically are impossible to box down. These guys were breaking new ground, albeit with some clear connotations to acts like Terry Riley, Cage and a small but highly original core of Swedish bands.

I have spoken about his bond before, and especially on this sophomore release does it become increasingly obvious just how much in common bands like Kebnekaise, Archimedes Badkar, Älgarnas Trädgard, International Harvester(and all of its branchings), Fläsket Brinner and even an act like Samla Mammas Manna had. A strange and psychedelic form of Nordic Krautrock openly based around some rather experimental endemic folk music. I am not suggesting that we create a new box here on PA to throw all of these into - calling it Nordic Kosmische Musik, but I am however kindly suggesting people who are like-minded to take a chance on these trailblazing bands, that sadly are unknown to but a few outside of Scandinavia.

The folk music on offer here is one that circles around old Nordic musical themes. Apart from sounding like a runaway psychedelic rendition of Zorba the Greek, you'll hear them twirl around in the music led on by the eschewed sounding violin and the spinning waltzing rhythms that these entail. Just like all of the aforementioned bands, Arbete och Fritid also roam the heavier psychedelic airwaves. The Krautrock flavour here is undeniable with its slowly moving caterpillar-like ooze of gelatinous violin, sleepwalker tempi and the swampy electronics fizzing away underneath it all. These sections are scattered throughout this second outing, bringing with them a climatic build-up within the given track - re-leaving it of its natural tension.

Some of these natural tensions redirects the micro-tonal electronic experimentation one would hear from Terry Riley and to a lesser extent The Taj Mahal Travellers, - and on this album it sounds to me like a beautiful mixture of both, although it becomes something entirely different and adventurous transcribed onto this folky fusion template. Something illustrious and waving - hovering stagnantly in between the musical spaces.

Then you've got small spurts of fusion highly reminiscent of old school New Orleans brass bands yet here delivered with a decisively middle eastern touch. They match the festive twirling of the Nordic folk music and oddly enough ornament much of these festive musical progressions - sitting on top of the pudding like a sonic emperor of rainbow rosettes. Sometimes they come off sounding like bridal march music with a twist, and other times they reflect a deep and bottomless sadness that occasionally empties out in these profound and esoteric musical stagnations, which I was just on about.

Whether one chooses to approach this band from a folk music point of view, avant guarde, fusion, Krautrock or a musique concrete type of deal, - the bottom line should preferably be that you approach it anyway you can. The music hiding beneath this little Swedish gemstone is one made up of charismatic and adventurous sounds, and if you're on the look out for small endemic pockets of original progressive music, then this second album by Arbete och Fritid is a true humdinger.

An incredible prototype of Swedish progressive / avantgarde / jazz / folk rock.

ARBETE OCH FRITID, a Swedish experimental rock ensemble pretty influenced by pure folk music, were founded in 1969 around a cellist / composer Ove KARLSSON. Their formation has been frequently changed but thoroughly worked as a music commune under experimental / minimalistic / underground jazz music like John Cage, Terry Riley, or La Monte Young. They'd always gone forward as a leader of Swedish avantgarde / experimental music scene in 1970s.

The first "Damen I Svart" has struck our fancy definitely, with a bit whacked-out but splendid / glacious ritualism deeply into the song. Ove's cello solo is quite impressive, especially with the smoothness like a cool clean brook, and well-harmonized saxophone concerto can make us comfortable into dream. "Garbergsbrudens Dödsmarsch" following with the same melodies sounds more massively folksy with full of violin passion.

The most suitable song for calling avantgarde folk mixed with strong jazz is their self-titled one. Sounds like they would play improvisationally, aggressively, and pleasantly ... actually, smooth but powerful drums / percussion sounds launched by Bengt must take the lead in this stuff I'm sure. His steady and organic play should accelerate their progressiveness / experimentalism. On the other hand, the first shot of Side B "Mora-Nisses Vallåt" or the next one "Esso Motor Hotel" is slightly pop / catchy jazz related rock, that can encourage us freshly. They would enphasize people need good humour and good music.

"Engelska Kanalen" tosses another panoramic sound onto us, filled with insistently meditative psychedelia, that reminds me a clear landscape of tribal dance ... quiet, solemn but sincere, enthusiastic. Not seen yet but guess their enthusiasm be leaning toward Sancta Lucia or something). Just like a soft breeze, their sounds can come into our mind really. The last "Vind", created only with dim piano / glockenspiel riffs, sounds not only tragic but expectative. Suggest lots of Swedish reviewers and fans listening to this simple stuff might feel something magnificent, something cool, and something fascinating.

Sometimes desert, sometimes old-flavoured, and sometimes lyrical texture can be heard all through the album. Recommended.