impulses and obsessions
hello friends.
Fall is here and with it beautiful walks, endless rain and dreaded premonitions of a slushy, cold
and long swedish winter. Let’s not despair…
(live-setup for trio-gig, October 2012)
There’s a bunch of of stuff in the works right now, I’m slowly getting a few releases together, and hopefully they will
see the light of day within the next few months.
The Dränkstenen 10″ is still delayed but will hopefully be released sometime during the winter/spring on the Vintermusik label. Also coming out here is a 12″ reissue of my friend Peter Brodericks Ten Duets tape.
Don’t sleep on this if you want it, they’re sure to sell quickly!
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A 60 min cassette made up of recordings made before and during my trip to Utrecht earlier this year will be released by the great new label Awkward Formats. The title is “I Have A Heaven Ending And Weaving Thin Threads Of Darkness From The Light That Was Given” and it’s made up of various recordings of me playing the violin, piano, pump-organ and various e-bowed string instruments. All of it processed through tape echos, delays and various homebuilt boxes, recorded and re-recorded on to cassette-tapes and then used as the basis for improvised live-mixes with live processing and tone-generator jamming. Really pleased with how this all turned out, both sound-wise and visually.
Here’s a short sample:
Some words on the release from Awkward Formats:
“In “I Have A Heaven Ending And Weaving Thin Threads Of Darkness From The Light That Was Given” slow sad drones built on pump-organ and various strings brighten and dim gradually across an hour-long cassette housed in an engraved wooden box containing a printed note and photographs by Henrik Landén. The sounds were created for and during a weekend of concerts in Utrecht in September 2012.”
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Also in the works is a 12″ entitled “Troubled Morrows” which will be released via Kalligrammofon.
This is not part of the same narrative as “Née“ or “Heart Attack Money” but something new.
Artwork is being made by the fantastic Johannes Brander!
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Johannes and me also have a duo called Heathers/Hollows and our debut double cassette release
“Staring At The Invisible World” has been delayed and delayed throughout the year but it is
getting really close to an actual release now! Don’t fret, it’ll be here soon!
Sample “Rain Water Poison”, the first track from side C of the release below:
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Me and my band Scraps Of Tape are currently working on album #5, and some other goodies
are in the works as well. Keep your eyes open! We’ll also be playing a gig in Copenhagen at BETA
on November 30th, and we’ll be playing a bunch of new stuff mixed in with all the good ol’ hits.
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Nice words from various places about the Blessings-tape “Bittervatten”.
It’s selling out so be quick if you haven’t gotten your copy yet.
From The Elementary Revolt:
Blessings is a three piece hardcore, punk, crust band from Sweden who formed early this year. Blessings feature members of Scraps Of Tape, Anchor, Fä, and the Swedish indie rock band Chester Copperpot. Blessings play an absolutely punishing style of music that incorporates elements of hardcore, punk, and crust within their sound. Blittervatten is the band’s debut seven song LP, which features seven songs total lasting a little over the twenty eight minute mark. Overall, these 7 songs make for a dark, omnious, and downright nasty listen. I can’t begin to describe how good this album is. Do yourself a favor, pick up a copy of the cassette, if you live in Europe. Blessings is a must listen for fans of Martyrdod, Wolf Brigade, Cursed, and Rot In Hell. Highly recommended! Enjoy!
From Toxicbreed’s Funhouse:
Blessings are a new project from Sweden with members of Anchor and Scraps Of Tape. This is one of the most promising debut releases I have heard all year, 7 songs of crusty and dark heavy hardcore. Highly recommended.
From Fuck Yeah Metal Punk:
Sometimes there are albums that you need some time to digest, to fully understand. Sometimes there are albums that click right away and are highly addictive. Blessings’ Bittervatten belongs to the second case. Really, it’s truly amazing. The songwriting is pretty diverse, The vocals are fantastic, and the production is perfect and takes everything to a whole new level of harshness (the guitar sounds like it was processed through sandpaper, giving a nice Noise Rock vibe). As highlights, i would like to point out track 5, with a total Gaahl-era-Gorgoroth worship intro, and track 6, which is, so to speak, something else (it’s more doom-y and the vocal work is one of the best i’ve heard so far).
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Thanks also to Johannes and the fantastic Peeter Uuskyla who invited me to play a set
with them at Galleri Magnus Winström in Gothenburg during Kulturnatta last friday.
I had a blast!!
photo by Sara Winther
Heathers/Hollows
Preview the track “Rain Water Poison” from the upcoming 2-cassette Heathers/Hollows release on NativePartsRec.
Heathers/Hollows is me and Johannes Brander (Skogar/CrystalCrypt etc).
Psychedelic shoegaze noise drone bliss mania with inspiration from swedish legends Endless Smile, all things Matthew Bower and Neil Young.
More news soon.
…a healing force…
Albert, your music is a healing force in my universe. thank you.
also, I will perform with scraps of tape at malmöfestivalen on tuesday.
j . g . w
Flera Meter Kort video
Today we’re streaming the new video for out first single “Flera Meter Kort” off of our new album “resident flux” over at dagens skiva. Go here to view it:
http://dagensskiva.com/2011/08/13/dagens-video-scraps-of-tape-feat-mattias-alkberg-flera-meter-kort/
Soon I’ll be back from my vacation. As usual I’ve recorded some music and this time my beloved Sara has helped me out with vocals and general input on everything. I’m superhappy with the results. Take care. /jaw
Kanshin, 8″ Lathe Cut, Scraps…
I totally forgot to post about this when it was released but here goes:
Me and Dag Rosenqvist (Jasper TX) make music as THE SILENCE SET and we
contributed our track “So Will Everything We Love” to this fantastic compilation
which was put together to raise money for the current recovery work being done in Japan
following the earthquake of March this year.
Please have a look and help out.
More info:
Me and Dag are currently finishing up a fullength which I’m super proud of.
We’re working slowly and patiently and it will hopefully be finished and released within this or the next year.
If you for some unfathomable reason aren’t familiar with Dags amazing music yet, you NEED to check him out.
Other news is:
We’re mastering the new Scraps Of Tape album which will be released this fall
through Tenderversion.
We’ve done some awesome collaborations on this album and
I’m way excited to see what the future will bring.
Live shows, touring and whatnot starts in August!
The simply amazing Brian Records will be releasing a 8″ lathe cut by me
and this is going to be such a sweet thing!
From Brian Records:
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Brian records is proud to announce our first fully interactive release. Johan G Winther is releasing a beautiful EP with 4 original tracks, backed by remixes/reinterpretations by Machinefabriek and Clem Leek.
Limited to just 50 copies we are asking you to design the artwork.
Inspired by a book called homemade record sleeves
the intention is that you buy the release and are sent the MP3s.
Whilst the lathe cut records are being cut you listen to the music and design your own sleeve (folded A3 in the Brian Records house stylee) you then send in your sleeve and when the records come back you will be sent the finished release in someone else’s sleeve.
Plus a book with all 50 sleeves. Plus a CD with all the tracks plus the best of your own revisions of the originals. I am pretty hyped about this one.
If you are to you can bagsy a space on the list (no strings attached) by emailing “I’m in” to jimlad at brianrecords dot co dot uk.
I am so proud of and excited about this release that I can hardly contain myself!
More info as this unfolds.
Hmmm, there’s some more stuff brewing, a piece of music I recorded in like…2003-2004 something will finally see the light of day on one of the coolest labels around.
But this isn’t official yet so hush hush.
A lot of collabs being completed right now too, stuff that has somewhere to go and stuff waiting to find a home. My days do not have near enough hours in them for me to find the time to do what I want. Fuck it, sleep when you’re dead right?
/jgw
Thee Gutted String – A Ring Of Bone EP
From today my new Thee Gutted String EP “A Ring Of Bone” will be
available at bandcamp.
Thee Gutted String “A Ring Of Bone” EP
1. A Ring Of Bone
2. Grace Your Doorstep
3. Ending With Friend
3 songs recorded during 2010-2011 in Hagarna and Gothenburg.
Thanks to Douglas Holmqvist (piano), Stig and Jörgen Nord (bass & drums).
I hope you are all well. jgw.
110203…re:create
I’ve been neglecting to post anything (almost) about mine and Peter Broderick’s split 7″ and I don’t know why,
but here we go, better late than never:
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re:create series vol.1
Or: ‘Peter Broderick and Johan G Winther on Johan G Winther and Peter Broderick’.
For Vol.1 in the Re:Create Series we are very happy to introduce an exciting collaboration project to you called Peter Broderick & Johan G Winther on Johan G Winther & Peter Broderick. We can hear the two musicians tenderly performing their songs with violin, guitar and glockenspiel a.o., but most prominent may be their use of a small choir of voices. In their collaboration they never actually play together. Instead their playful project is about creating several kinds of artistic checkpoints arranged as a chain of mirror-like events making them switch roles and perspective with each other back and forth until they suddenly end up right back where they started, figuratively speaking…
Now here’s a description of their project, in their own words:
Peter writes a song about Johan
Johan writes a song about Peter
Two men sing about each other
Peter covers Johan’s song
Johan covers Peter’s song
Two men sing about themselves
Peter takes a photo of his face
Johan takes a photo of his face
Two men make portraits of themselves
Peter draws Johan’s photo
Johan draws Peter’s photo
Two men make portraits of each other
Peter Broderick is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from Portland, Oregon (US) that has released numerous of solo recordings over the past years. He has also worked as a tour and studio musician for various acts like Efterklang, She & Him and M. Ward to name a few.
peterbroderick.net
Johan G Winther resides in Gothenburg, Sweden and seems to always be part of at least ten different projects or bands at the same time, Tenderversion artist Scraps Of Tape being one, and it is a mystery how he can find the time for it. Using the name Tsukimono he has done countless releases but this will be his first one using his own.
timecanvas.wordpress.com
I also found this nice review:
PETER BRODERICK AND JOHAN G. WINTHER – RE: CREATE SERIES VOL 1 by Brendan Moore
This is the first in a series of releases from Tendervision Records where two artists are paired off, each writes a song and the other covers it. As such, on this particular 7” we have four songs…
The aesthetic of the physical releases mirrors the concept of the music therein. The label has made great efforts to make the release a complete experience. Fitting with the concept of recreation, the album covers are made using old 7” covers with text being imprinted right over the top of it, thus each is unique and each is something old made new (think Cotton Goods approach applied to vinyl).
The pairing of Peter Broderick and Johan G. Winther makeup this first release. Peter Broderick pens “Pappa i Sverige” and Johan G. Winther covers it, Winthers writes “Chasing Kingdoms” and Broderick covers it. What’s interesting is how much Broderick and Winther do with the concept of recreation; it’s both simple and ambitious for an introduction to this new series.
All four songs collected here are very strong and both men jump around as far as genre, blending modern classical, folk, and electronic minimalism.
Winther’s guitar work shines on his two contributions, as his playing is both spare and pointed. Delicate electronic flourishes and a whole slew of other instruments serve to accent both his pieces. His cover of “Poppa i Sverige” blends a rich tapestry of instruments and an almost choral approach to the layers of vocals he creates.
As for Broderick, there have been two different sides to his music thus far; there is the singer-songwriter folk works that make up his Bella Union releases and the classical instrumental works such as he has released for Type. Here he takes the classical instrumental aspects of his work but sings over top of it. As such, it feels like a unique entry in his body of work. On his cover of Winther’s “Chasing Kingdoms” we get to hear the two approaches combined as Broderick sings over delicate strings and the song provides one of the highlights of his career thus far.
This is one of those releases that leave you hungry for more. However, as far as four song collections go both Broderick and Winther have combined to create songs rich in depth so that you can listen to them over and over. This is a wonderful collection that serves as an introduction to what has the making of a very promising series.
- Review by Brendan Moore for Fluid Radio
Available through Tendervision
www.tenderversion.com
www.peterbroderick.net
www.timecanvas.wordpress.com
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Order your copy from tenderversion before the run out (they’re pretty limited!)
or you can go here to get a digital version of the release.
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Here’s a few reviews from our tour together:
Amazingly Blog
Beard Rock
Mein Zuhause, Mein Blog (In German)
december
So, last couple of months has been really busy with various things, mostly playing/writing music and being a dad.
I’m on 50% paternity leave at the moment, so almost no time wasted at work anymore…feels great!
Went to Skåne for some Scraps Of Tape action last weekend, got up at 6 on saturday-morning and went to my studio to pick up my gear and make it to Malmö in time for our 10:00 rehearsal. The roads were awful 50% of the time, with cars skidding of the road right in front of my eyes. I didn’t dare stopping myself in case I would get stuck myself. Got a lot of work done, wrote some loose arrangements for 3 songs and had some awesome hang-out time. Met up with Ola and Victoria from Tenderversion and talked about the plans for the new album, tour-ideas and everything else. There’s gonna be some sweet stuff happening in 2011!
The new album is slowly taking shape and there’s a lot of nice new things happening in our music. It’s probably not that
different from what we’ve done before, more of the same and more new stuff, trying to push it like always.
I’ve met some people that have told me that they really liked the vocals on the last record and that’s nice to hear, but everyone seems really bummed when I tell them there probably won’t be that much vocals on the new one, at least there’s not that much yet.
Vocals have always been seen as more of a instrument/sound than actual vocals in scraps of tape. We’ve put it in songs whenever we’ve felt like there was something missing, or if we wanted to evoke a certain mood or feeling. It has always been
a thing for us to try to take the focus away from the traditional idea of how most people listen to songs/music with vocals, removing the spotlight and importance away from the singing and on to the music as a whole.
When we wrote “Grand Letdown” we tried to push the sound of SoT by moving it more towards traditional songwriting, more verse-chorus-verse based arrangements and more vocals, but still not losing the idea of the collective sound where nothing is more important than anything else. Hippy’ish but the way we’ve always done it.
Now we think we managed that pretty well, and of course more people found it easier to listen to us than before but now we’re on to something else. Vocals will still play a part of our sound but I hope we’ve come up with a few ideas that will keep it fresh and non-stagnant.
Recordings will begin in feb 2011 in Gothenburg at Welfare Studios. Wish us luck.
I’ve also been pretty busy doing some stuff for Crowned With Horns, a new project featuring new and old collaborators. It’s slowly slowly coming together and I think sometime during the early part of next year there will be something presented. I’m way excited about this!!
Snow and ice is covering this part of the world and it makes everyday a living hell, just taking my son for a walk is such a hassle that I can hardly be bothered, so we spend most of the time inside listening to music, singing and acting like idiots around our home. Eli is beating our piano into dust every day, and is climbing all the bookshelves and anything else that provides enough of a handhold. It’s pretty nerve-wrecking in a way, but most of all I’m proud the see the little hell-spawn tearing it up already!
We’ve been listening a lot to VED, Trap Them, Chet Baker, Earth, various childrens-music albums on spotify and some radio the last couple of days but geez, the radio these days (at least P3) is just horrible. Bla bla bla about mostly totally irrelevant issues and program-hosts being total self-indulgent assholes most of the time. Thanks but no thanks. P1 works most of the time, and I haven’t checked out P2 to much yet.
I’m awful at making lists of my favourite music and stuff every year, because I tend to forget completely which year I discover stuff, and/or listen a lot to them but here’s a few things I’ve been really giving a lot of time this year, music-wise:
Abandon – The Dead End
Swans – My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope In The Sky
Converge – Axe To Fall
John Lurie – Stranger Than Paradise & The Resurrection Of Albert Ayler
The Bear Quartet – Monty Python
Baroness – Two First EP’s
Trap Them – Seizures In Barren Praise
Early Graves – Goner
Lewd Acts – Black Eye Blues
The Microphones – Mount Eerie
Kvelertak – Kvelertak
Meleeh – To Live And Die Alone
Simeon Ten Holt – Complete Works For Multiple Pianos
Tonight we’re gonna make christmas-treats and hang out with a friend!
September 2009
Hey.
Just got back home from a 4-day tour in Japan with my band Scraps of Tape. It was our 2nd time there and it was twice as much fun as last time.
Instead of just gawking at everything in stunned amazement I could finally enjoy it and feel a bit at ease. Also for some reason I could handle the
japanese cuisine a lot better than last time, even though I’m still not completely in love with it.
Anyhow, I had a great great time and I want to send some thanks to everyone who was with me on the trip and who came out to the shows. THANK YOU!
I also thought this might be a nice time to re-post this:
Tsukimono – Van Venue Hotel (download link here)
This is a mp3-ep/tour-diary that I recorded during the last tour. I used the endless hours of waiting in the van, at the venue and (yes, you guessed it) at the hotels to write a patch in reaktor 5 and to mix some field-recordings with some sounds from that patch into a few tracks
of tour-impressions/sound-snaps/memories. All in all I think I ended up with about thirteen tracks and the four that ended up on the release were the ones that felt most like the state of mind I was in at the time. Somewhat disoriented, dazed, pleased and happy.
It’s a free download so go ahead, get it and hear what a Japan-tour sounds like to me.
We have a European-tour coming up in about a month and these are the dates:
24 Oct 2009 DE – Halle, Reil 78
25 Oct 2009 DE – Frankfurt, Ponyhof
26 Oct 2009 DE – Jena, TBA
27 Oct 2009 AT – Vienna, Arena
28 Oct 2009 TBA
29 Oct 2009 CH – St. Gallen, Grabenhalle
30 Oct 2009 DE – Münster, Amp
31 Oct 2009 DE – Berlin, Dot Club
01 Nov 2009 DE – Hamburg, Astra Stube
There are big things happening within scraps at the time and we are really looking forward to this, and it will be very special for us so please if
you are into our music do come out and help us celebrate what will be a very special tour for us. It will be awesome, I promise!
Other than this I’m also still working with Dag Rosenqvist (Jasper TX) on the debut-album for our band (at the moment we’re calling it “The Silence Set”) and this is a really rewarding thing. We’ve had a break now because of tours and other stuff but the plan is to get back on it next week and try to finish it all up asap.
The split with Dwayne Sodahberk is really close to completion now. We’re working on the packaging and design and this will really be a super-release. D’s tracks on this split is as I said before, fantastic. He is one of my personal favorites in the swedish music-scene today and I’m super-excited about this.
The latest thing tho is a collaboration with the amazing Berlin-based genius of Nils Frahm.
About 6 years ago (it might be even longer) I recorded a piece of music entitled “Heart & Strings (For Ingar Gustavsson)” which is a string-based composition. Violin, Viola and Cello-samples were used to create an approximately one hour long piece in three parts. It could be called the older sibling of my “Time Canvas”-release, almost a research-project in a way. Anyway, I did a release of 10 copies which were a cd’r stuck to the back of a small oil-painting (all ten were handmade and exclusive) which I gave away/sold off immediately. I don’t even have a copy myself anymore. A short while after this I had a hard-drive meltdown and thought I lost the original recordings and not too long after that I had sort of a personal meltdown which ended with me deleting maybe 75% of all the music I’d made up to that point…I lost a lot of music and I still regret it. Maybe it was for the best tho, who knows?
I’ve been thinking I’d lost the tracks up until about 6 months ago when I found them again and played the piece this summer to Nils when he visited me together with the lovely Peter Broderick. We got to talking about it and we decided that Nils was gonna record some piano over it.
Work is now well underway and the results I’ve heard so far are absolutely stunning.
Well, that is it at the moment I guess. Probably forgot loads.
playlist:
Shapes – whatever I can get my hands on
dirty three – horse stories
john fahey – the transfiguration of blind joe death
heather woods broderick – from the ground
lewd acts – black eye blues
converge – axe to fall
readlist:
Ashley Kahn – A Love Supreme
Ronny Olovsson – Värsta Pappan!
Johan Nilsson – Koka Makaroner
Take Care And Be Well.
/johan
