TUSSILAGO FANFARA

Anna Själv Tredje (with a reference, I think, towards St. Anne, mother of Virgin Mary) is a duo created by music-makers Ingemar Ljungström and Mikael Bojen. Neither of the two artists' music experience tells the consistent shrud of the duo's journey, the music decides "itself" on the entire meaningful style and experiment. The two artists practiced this music starting 1975 or 1976, they succeed a defining album, titled Tussilago Fanfara, then dis-ambled at the end of the decade. Ljunström himself is much more known, since he joins a couple of more electronic, punk, wave or rock duos or trios, most profoundly Cosmic Overdose (a polished band, but an insatiable order of sound) or Twice A Man (even trickier...). Mikael Bojen is yet an obscure artist and music composer as, in this album, he makes entire ornaments and sound-ballads towards the uncommon artist and the un-related passion.

The importance of the Anna Själv Tredje ensemble, and of Tussilago Fanfara, should be rather big, considering a few things, like the flawless (or very atom-hard perfectioned) creation orientation, deep in the humble electronic artistry and progressiveness, the colorful obscure intentions marked by the precision or the delouse of their initiative, the pretty rare recording factor (that has an entire emotion of great and adapted music) or the symbols of a band with no echo and misty presence, that surrounds all the intelligent and organic means and natures of its so-approved style. Then again, Anna Själv Tredje isn't about the glory of the music in the dust of the resemblance, some things are moderately elevated and dynamic, others contemplate the music that the entire breath of classic electronic and modulating experiment covered up, in the 70s, to an extent of a powerful overdose.

The band's marked flavor has tendencies towards a psych-active late impression, or towards the kraut-bytes of some dimensions beyond the bad dream and the teared reality. Yet, for sure, Anna Själv Tredje is exclusively a band for the electronic mature stage, upon the vast influence that comes from Klaus Schulze and the even more enormous impression the music-melody-sound intricate line of thought goes through, directly convincing of Schulze soundscapes, dark ambients or sequence energetic conversion. The point of ephemeral and experiment even can allude some drone-actions, likewise the serene or subtle machine-shades from Cyborg. But the best fragrance comes from the mid-Schulze delight, starling Moondawn when working on sound-mist and melody-raptures or Mirage when the dynamics and the sequencers, the synthesis work and the strange forms have a better and more significant development. There are small minimal parts that can satisfy parallel-styles from Hamel, Glass or Reich. Plus, upon the electric guitar work Bojen does (and in fact, given an entire piece, Tusen år & sju timmar), the album opens up its color to breath in more popular, shapeless or post-experimental substances, genre a low-pitch groove and guitar swell by Ashra.

Overall, Anna Själv Tredje are greatly hooked in the entire Berlin School mechanism, plus they share (gratingly) their own moment of music, experiment and vaporous sound-stream. The album is a "mindphase" for aficionados, yet stands out just as much as an electronic gift of sound and surround.

It bothers me to no end that Anna Själv Tredje's Tussilago Fanfara was never reissued on CD, forcing you to pay the big money for an original LP (they're hard to come by these days, even in Sweden). This group consisted of Mikael Bojen and Ingemar Ljunström handling various synthesizers (one of the was probably an ARP 2600, can't tell the rest) and other keyboards (clavinet and possibly organ), as well as guitars. Seems there's a connection to Cosmic Overdose and Twice a Man, but the latter appears to be Älgarnas Trädgård-related. Let me tell you that this album is completely essential for all who enjoy Berlin School electronic music. Sweden has never been a hotbed for electronic music, unlike Germany, or 1990s Britain (Radio Massacre International, Redshift, and Airsculpture are examples), It's really too bad that Tussilago Fanfara was only released in Sweden on the Silence label. This album could easily fit on the Brain label in Germany, and I even say Britain's Virgin as well, this kind of electronic music should have been destined for such labels, but that never happened. Great spacy electronic with a minimalist influence and spacy feel that's in the vein of Schulze or Tangerine Dream, with minimalist patterns that get me thinking of Terry Riley or Galactic Explorers' Epitaph For Venus. When the guitar playing appears, it reminds me of Ash Ra Tempel, or that is, trying to imagine if Gilbert Gandil of Pulsar replaced Manuel Göttsching, since the guitar playing (apparently Mikael Bojen) has that same sustained fuzz style that Gilbert Gandil did on those Pulsar albums. Silence Records is still around, and while many of their titles have since seen the light of day on CD, this one hasn't. What gives? I had to fork out the money for the LP, but it was worth it. It was on my want list since 1996. I was just completely blown away by this album. I really love the fact the late '70s still had room for great electronic music, like what Tangerine Dream and Schulze demonstrated, as well as Tim Blake's two albums for EGG, Crystal Machine and Blake's New Jerusalem, and of course, Anna Själv Tredje's Tussilago Fanfara. If you can find a way to hear it, do so, you won't regret it!

Jellyfish sonnets

Continuing with my Swedish ramblings - this time I thought I'd review one of my most beloved mellow Krautrock infested electronic jewels. It sounds pretty close to what Cluster was on about in the mid 70s, but then again I've never really heard another album quite like this. Jacques Cousteau would have loved this one, and I'm not entirely sure, but I seem to remember seeing a Portuguese man of war jacking off to this very album not long ago on the Discovery Channel.

I've heard a lot of Berlin School experiments the past 10 years, and what strikes me the most is the familiarity these releases share - often in terms of sameness. Not that I'm complaining, because I rather like the approach, but sometimes you find yourself confronted with what seems like an old friend - only to be surprised and pushed to redefine what you'd thought about this type of music in the first place. This album did that to me. Yes it's an obvious prog electronic case that on some level reminds me of both Schulze, Cluster and Tangerine Dream, but there is something here that I absolutely adore - something that grabs me by the throat each and every time.

Tussilago Fanfara is an album that moves forward with the speed of a tired and immobile season. It takes its time - it is slow like a montage of overweight snails slithering their way across a football field. Through copious amounts of pulsating synths that sound like beating hearts - everything about this album feels alive and vibrant. It's like watching life on a cellular level. Imagine these worming cells zipping about in alternating patterns - think of these as different parts of the music - all of them moving about in a colourful gel - slowly secreting sounds that speak about the very essence of nature itself - and then maybe you're on the right track. Sounds like something which was tailor made for yours truly come to think of it...

There is no getting around it - I simply love this album! I often talk about the fluid nature of electronic music, and this one is no different. It sounds like it was recorded under the sea - or in fat greasy olive oil. It's drifting, oozing, watery, slithering, sliding, wobbly and gelatinous like a musical liquid pouring out of your speakers. All of it held together by this magical and wondrous glue.

One of my favourite things about it, is the fabulous way it inter webs the guitar into these electronic dreamings. And this is one of those traits that separates Tussilago Fanfara from other outings inside this genre - no matter how insignificant this may sound to you. It really adds something unintelligible and beautiful to these tracks. A sloshing guitar making the pieces flow more naturally and feminine - like those deep water creatures that look like internal body parts existing only in a pulse - boom boom boom. Like I said, it's this gelatinous fluid texture that bleeds into everything here. I mean even the guitar comes off as some kind of jellyfish instrument - complementing the full picture in a way that makes me drift away like the month of may during an inspiring and glacier blue coma.

I adore everything about this album - even the overexcited guitar sequence that joins in during the end of the first track - transforming it slightly and bending it out of shape, - or perhaps the never ending meandering synth vocalisations calling out eternally in these round hazy emanations on Inkomster Utanför Tiden, that end up in some beautiful guitar yearnings, that sound like a beaten down David Gilmour crying out in his dreams.

Dreams. Yeah, I've had my share of them whilst listening to this album. They pop up almost immediately when the music starts. Like drifting into that special indefinable place where you're not entirely sure, whether you're awake or setting sails on the mighty oceans of sleep. This one will take you on a boat ride to the ends of the earth, and personally I often feel like I'm journeying deep inside of myself - penetrating the inner works of my psyche listening to these mellow bewildering tracks. It's very easy and comfortable to get lost herein, and I try as hard as I can not to find my way whenever I put this album on - and pray that I'll find a way into the magic that is this record. Oh yeah - we're setting sails again matey!

A wonderful Swedish experimental electronic group from the original heyday of progressive music, Anna Själv Tredje build on the sound created by the Berlin school masters but add a touch of dark mystery and potential horror.

Tussilago Fanfara is a darkly atmospheric synth exploration with strong echo effects and very deep production that makes it sound as if this music is generating itself out of a giant hole in the ground. For the most part, gentle mysterious synth washes flow endlessly in an all- consuming cosmic fashion, but "Unkomster Utanför Tiden" is a definite standout with soft tribal-esque percussion, synthetic organ noodling, and electronically manipulated guitar playing. The guitar doesn't seem to fit all to well and kind of drowns out the mysterious underwater type of atmosphere established by the first half of the composition, but this is mostly because of the tinny and overpowering treble. The guitar sounds much more appropriate on "Tusen εr & Sju" where it is fixed with a delay that helps it blend more appropriately into the moody electronic background that nestles another set of simple tribal percussion, which all comes together to create a track that sounds like Ashra in depressive mode.

"Den barbariska söndagen" is the track that is most influenced by Schulze, but mostly only because of the demanding progressiveness of the composition. Thick cascades of sequencers and synths build slowly until picking up the pace near the half-way point where intermittent crashing symbols add impressive drama and the track simply slows down and drifts into the darkness.

This sole album by Anna Själv Tredje is a bit more interesting than typical Berlin school albums of this era because of the impressive goth atmosphere and periodic tribal percussion that sets this among the unique albums in its genre.

Striking photomontage cover picture set up the correct moods for the hallucinogenic dark visions of this album titled as "Coltsfoot", the fragile yellow flower announcing with its appearance the start of spring at the northern hemispheres". The supplementary cover text I understood stating "?crawling in the cosmic twilight zone with Anna Själv Tredje", the group name possibly referring to the mother of Virgin Mary. Though the inspiration for this solitary album of the Swedish duo is drawn from obvious sources, in my opinion these fellows have pleasantly focused to the early 1970's sound heritages of Berlin krautrockers, allowing the musty analogue solutions prevail at the time of recording along with the creations of Klaus Schulze. As for example I personally felt that during this time Tangerine Dream for example had cleared their own cosmic sound towards cleaner abstractions of "Stratosfear", further from their archaic pre-"Rubycon" sounds, and also Ash Ra Tempel's psychedelic organic tones had long ago dissolved as more sophisticated ambient constructions of Ashra.

On the start of the album, really dark electronic cosmic sounds are evocated, offering vision to vast sights "Sphagnum Bog"'s landscapes, populated by hollow calls and atonal distant crashes. Clearer sounding synthesizers with eerie motives are introduced, and later joined by sequenced looping, which start to dominate the composition along, with layers of keyboard structures. These interacting aural forms venture calmly with key changes, taking shapes with very affecting harmonic dramatics. My own favorite piece, "Incomes Out of Time" or something such, arrives from oppressing wall of whispers and spacey winds, blowing the music experience towards determined sequencer web and baroque-oriented fast keyboard sounds, these caressed by supporting ethereal electronic sounds. Long but minimal composition is composed brilliantly from these elements, allowing each layer to linger without hurry on the song. A change occurs in the middle of the tracks, as luminous electric guitar appears over distantly blowing huge gales, quiet tribal drum looping and persistently continuing whispers, which finally consume the song's flame.

The B-side of the album starts spinning the longest aural journey of the record, "Barbaric Sunday". It shimmers with minimalist network of both programmed and manually operated sounds, allowing a state of religious-resembling experience being borne. After a long contemplation the tension is tightened by focusing to an intensive synth theme strengthened with waves or drum cymbal plates, this reminding like electronic dreams of some dramatic sequences from early Pink Floyd or Ash Ra Tempel recordings. On the last phase, more focused devotions towards hypnotic minimalism are practiced, building as a whole also a very fine song experience. Last track's name possibly refers to technical permittivities of materials, on the context maybe to electronic devices or magnetic fields. This conclusion of the album is also most organic of the four songs, appreciating several layers of Mikael Bojen's electric guitar explorations upon calm and steady tom beating.

In the aftermath of last reverb echoes of the album, I would claim that even if the record might not be considered musically very innovative due comparison to the German electronic kraut classics which it resembles, it is still a very affecting disc from its own merits, and within this musical school of style. Thus I would recommend it warmly for anybody appreciating meditative vintage electronix.

A dark barroque electronic pastorale, that is how I will start the bi-annual PA review of this "Masterpiece", or as they call it in PA, not so known "Gems". Released in 1977, I will be the first one to admit, it does resemble TD's and Schulze's work in those same times. So, 4,5 PA stars, why? Each song, there are four, are used each, as whole concepts, meaning they are free of each other and yet integral parts of the whole, but totally different in "atmospheres", which in turn set this album as a different kind of effort in four perspectives.

The simmilarities as mentioned go as far as the sound of the synthethizers available at the time sounded. It is completely obvious in the course "Mossen", the first song of this LP goes through. This simmilarity is made irrelevant, by the way the musicians handle the song-writing, which in turn, forewarns of the posterior musical "language", both TD and Schulze will adopt and use in their near future.

This is made clear in, "Inkomster Utanför Tiden", the second song. The use of an accordion and organ, alongside "electronic" pulses is mesmerizing, closing with a "Stratosfear" like kind of electric guitar. As soon as side "B" starts with "Den Barbariska Söndagen", the third song, it is quiet clear what this musicians are capable of offering to the "Progressive Electronic" genre for the first time (and last, this is this band's only record), this is the real deal.

And from here things just get better, with the closing 4th. song "Tusen år & Sju Timmar", the most experimental of the whole. It returns the course to the acoustic world of electronics, with an awesome and inspired guitar song, something like "Krautrock" unplugged, to call it somehow.

So as it takes, it gives back. .............................****4.5 PA stars.

You have been forewarned.

4.5 stars. Man that has to be one of my all time favourite album covers, even the picture on the back cover. A black and white picture done by Swedish photographer Tom Benson who in his day had his displays in art galleries across Sweden, a very influential artist. While you may not think of Sweden when you think of Electronic music, this is one of my favourites from that sub-genre. A duo who named themselves after a Leonardo Da Vinci painting from 1510. Both Ljungstrom and Bojen play keyboards and synths while the latter adds some guitar. This was love at first listen. A mid-paced, melancholic album released in 1977 that can also turn quite dark at times. Two tracks per side.

"Mossen" is possibly my favourite as sounds swell until it slowly pulses. It's dark and mysterious with haunting wind. Music for the mind as the organ arrives a minute in then electronics around 2 1/2 minutes as the darkness and experimental sounds fade. Very much a Krautrock/ Electronic vibe here. The synths start to swirl 5 1/2 minutes over top to the end. A great start!

"Inkomster Utanfor Tiden" features these haunting whispers that seem to be on a loop and they continue throughout the 11 1/2 minutes. It sounds like wind or waves as the organ arrives a minute in. Electronics join in at around 1 1/2 minutes. So much going on after 2 minutes as another sound is added. Man this is so "out there". It settles back 5 1/2 minutes in until it's like the start of this song with the whispering and waves. Percussion joins in at 6 minutes along with some high pitched abrasive guitar that I'm not that into. The guitar stops before 10 1/2 minutes as the final minute ends like it all began.

Side two starts with the longest track at over 14 minutes called "Den Barbariska". Spacey synths along with organ I believe to start. Such a beautiful drifting sound here that builds. A darker more bass sound before 6 minutes then electronics pulse and twitter over top. Clashing sounds follow then it settles back around 10 1/2 minutes with organ, synths and more and this continues pretty much to the end.

"Tusen Ar & Sju" has an ethnic sound to it with that percussion and picked guitar I believe. A strong Krautrock vibe here as in POPOL VUH. This is very repetitive until a new sound arrives 6 minutes in then it turns spacey late.

I may bump this up to 5 stars down the road as my buddy Guldbamsen has rated it as such and he knows this album better than I do. A must for Electronic fans out there.

A progressive electronic project from Sweden producing spacey synthesiser burblings in the style of classic Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze - shiftting gears towards the sounds of Ashra when the fuzzed-out guitar gets involved. There's touches of world music too on Inte Utanfor Tiden and Tusen Ar & Sju Timmar - not as much as Popol Vuh, but enough to keep things varied. Pretty decent, all round, and proof that the freaked-out improvisational approach of the early Krautrock/Berlin School scene was still knocking about in 1977, even if you had to go to Sweden to find it. Dreamy, introspective, and mystical, much like the strange cover art, Tussilago Fanfara is a delicious trip.