Well, now the songs from the single “Anything” have been sent to our e-mail subscribers, a week in advance, and it will indeed be interesting to hear what the reaction will be. I you would like to get the songs now you can sign up here.
And since I wrote a post some weeks ago about failures and winner-loser culture, I just had to share a story I found in Levitt and Dubner’s book “Freakonomics“:
A poor black couple in New York had a boy back in 1958, and the man decided to name him Winner. Obviously he thought that the name Winner Lane would guarantee his son future success.
Three years later, the couple received another son, and for some strange reason they named this son Loser! So this second son had to grow up with the name Loser Lane, and as far as the story goes he hasn’t changed it later.
Loser, though, didn’t seem too affected by his name; he got a scholarship, graduated from college and started working at the New York police department. Eventually he became a high ranked officer as a police inspector. It seems that no one hardly ever calls him Loser, though; people call him a range of other names like Jimmy, Timmy and even Losier and his colleagues just call him Lou.
What happened to Winner then, you may wonder? Well, his biggest achievement seems to be his long criminal record containing more than 40 occasions of burglary, abuse and other stuff.
Maybe then names doesn’t matter too much or maybe they do; the father just mixed up the boys.
The release date for the new single “Anything”, November 10th, is coming closer. While waiting, Lasse have been filming Jenny Fall and working with the video for the title song, as you may have seen in photo posts on our Facebook page. Below you can get a taste of the first part of the song, and as soon as we have more material we’ll reveal some more. /Pär
Lately I’ve been reading a lot about the Roman Empire, about their society, wars and culture that reigned Europe and parts of Africa and Asia for many centuries. Quite fascinating in many aspects, and even more so, when you think about that it all happened 2000 years ago.
Reading a book by Tore Janson about the values and life in Rome made me think about some parallels between then and now. I was reading about Juvenal, an author who lived around the year 100 and wrote satires. The satires were mainly about daily life in Rome, about habits, manners and customs and things that happened. The angle was often the moral downfall of the romans and how different groups of people demoralized the society, like women for example. A rather conservative, grumpy guy and I think you can imagine the type.
One satire was about a different place, though. He wrote about a far-away place in Egypt where two nearby villages was quarreling about some religious matter and went out in the streets and threw stones and sticks at each other. During that brawl one man died whereas the opposing gang ripped his body apart and ate him!
An invented story, of course, but why? Well he didn’t like easterners at all, which he ranted a lot about and to connect them with the most outrageous moral crime of all was a way of making them as small and different from “real humans” as possible. But the main reason for this disgust of eastern foreigners he wrote about quite openly: he disliked that the greeks, the jews, the egyptians and others came to Rome and did good. He thought that they made fortunes, careers and good names for themselves at the expense of “honest Romans”, hence his fear of easterners.
It’s easy to recognize these days in Europe, isn’t it? The fear of foreigners coming to your country leads to picking up some fearful happenings, habits or religous ideas and putting them in the hands of the immigrants, while exaggerating the problems with the immigrants in the home country, spreading more fear.
The fear seems to be about these problems, people living in ghettos parasiting the society, criminals and terrorism. But I do believe that the real fear isn’t about that at all, those stories are just a tool. It’s really about the same fear as Juvenal had, that the foreigners will do better than you, that they will be the ones that do something good for the society, influencing it and leave you behind, making you feel smaller than you already are. Quite the contrary I’d say.
The only difference between between Juvenal and us is that he could tell about of his fears straight out, and today you really can’t because then all the rest of the argumentation would fall apart.
Last weekend Lasse and I locked ourselves up in the Bus Depot studio to finish the songs “Anything” and and “As Long As I Don’t Cry”. After a shorter session with some additional recordings we spent the following three days with making the final mix of the songs.
To explain to those of you who doesn’t understand music nerd language, the mixing process is about shaping the songs from the building blocks, the recordings, into the vision one have about how the songs should sound and feel. I went up to Stockholm from Skåne, where I live, to help Lasse out with this; as Lasse does most of the recordings in the studio, it’s a great way to have us both put a mark on the end result into something we both stand for all the way.
It’s a process that has it’s ups and downs; listening to the same sound clips a thousand of times (feels like that) can be quite tedious, but there are plenty of eureka-moments to keep you going, where problems with parts of the songs opens up into something you know you really wanted to achieve.
In the end, though, it’s hard to really have a distance to the result, to really enjoy it, but after a couple of days the feeling for the songs comes back again and I can say that I am really, really satisfied with the songs. Also the sensation of having been part of creating something precious after a lot of hard work add some extra to it. (well if you can define hard work on my behalf as mostly sitting in a chair, listening intensely and now and then grunting something)
Thomas Eberger, Stockholm Mastering
The final stage was achieved yesterday with the mastering of the tracks at Stockholm Mastering by Thomas Eberger. It’s where the overall sound of the tracks are adjusted, compressed and polished. Well, don’t ask me to explain it further, it’s a little like magic to me.
Well, all in all, the songs are now on their way to all the outlets on the Internet, such as Itunes, Spotify, Amazon and of course our own music page. The release date is set to November 10th and of course we’ll notify you when they are availble. If you want the songs in your mailbox as soon as possible, you can sign up for our newsletter, and we will have them sent to you as soon as they are ready.
As Lasse showed you a glimpse of the songs from the new single a couple of days ago, we thought it would be a good idea to show you even more from the song “Anything”. We made a film of Jenny Fall recording the vocals for the song and you can watch it here below.
Since then Lasse have continued to polish the songs, and today he recorded additional backing vocals for both songs with both Jenny and Ulla for both “Anything” and “As Long As I Don’t Cry”. I haven’t heard it yet, but I will tomorrow, as I’m going to Stockholm (I live in Skåne) to do the final mix with Lasse over the weekend.
There’s a high probability that you’ll hear from us during that session, as you might have guessed if you follow this blog or our Facebook page. Anyway, here is the lovely Jenny Fall. /Pär
It’s decided now, that the next single, which will also consist of two songs, will be released in November this year. As you might have guessed from earlier posts it’s “Anything” (lead vocals Jenny Fall) and “As Long as I don’t Cry” (lead vocals Ulla Wrethagen)
Lasse was working with these songs in the studio yesterday, and shot this film where he tells a little more about the songs and shows you a bit of how they sound.
Singers on the next release are the lovely Jenny Fall and Ulla Wrethagen. Two voices with with a very different kind of expression and timbre. Both equally good.
We almost can’t wait to let you hear what they have accomplished.
Ulla Wrethagen sing the song "As long as I don't cry"
Sad news, that Steve Jobs is not with us anymore. My thought goes to his family and their loss of someone loved. And then to the rest of us, who lost a true visionary. Someone that succeeded with the intent to give us the tools to express our own vision. Who obviously loved what he did and has helped us do the same (love what we do that is).
Apple tools and products has for almost thirty years been an integral part of my personal, professional and creative life. I’ve built a career in the graphical business, I’ve created my music, edited my home videos and written my lyrics with the help of them. The full list is just to long write here.
It’s hard to imagine what life would have been without all those tools. Perhaps better, perhaps worse, but different for sure. And the thing is that I will never know.
What I do know that this life so far has been very good, I love what I do, and that Steve Jobs’s vision and accomplisments has played an important part in that.
Thank you!
And I think he sums it up pretty well in this video from his commencement speech to the graduates of Stanford University in 2005.
Most people know Pär Enqvist as the singer of the band PEB (former Pär Enqvist Band), where he sings in Swedish. If you haven’t listened to them you should listen to the latest album “Utanför lagen” (“Outside the Law”), it’s brilliant.
But few people have heard him sing in English before “The Big One“, (well, in concert he occasionally does a song or two in English with the band), so I thought it was a good idea to show you a song I like a lot, a song he made in another collaboration together with Tobbe Möller, “Only Live For the Things Worth Dying For“.
The song is written and produced by Tobbe Möller.
Digging even deeper, there’s also another song with these two, but with Swedish lyrics by Pär Enqvist, which is called “Tonårsbarn” (“Teenage Child”), also a favourite song of mine I’ve listened to a lot.
And yes, there will be more songs with Pär Enqvist later on from Bus Stop Dreams. Additionally, Tobbe Möller, his collaborator above, will also soon appear as the lead vocalist in a track we’re working on.
Loser, though, didn’t seem too affected by his name; he got a scholarship, graduated from college and started working at the New York police department. Eventually he became a high ranked officer as a police inspector. It seems that no one hardly ever calls him Loser, though; people call him a range of other names like Jimmy, Timmy and even Losier and his colleagues just call him Lou.
