Push rec

The last three days has seen Love & Honour being busy in the studio and the result is one track nailed. Ok, still some horns to record but nevertheless, very close to completed and it sounds gooood.

Honour came up with chords and lyrics and then Love contributed with some intelligent orchestration and production. Or was it the other way around? Doesn´t matter really as everyone is happy like a juvenile wolf, feasting on the first snatched little lamb...

In these days it´s very easy to be upset by the political landscape in Sweden. It will be interesting to see if and how this affects the efforts by yours truly in the studio. After all, anger is a gift.

Racism?

Yesterday I experienced one of the most interesting taxi drives ever! Taxi drivers are often quite polite, not chosing to debate heavily, on the verge to aggressively, with their customers. Luckily this one was the brutal exception which meant a very amusing ride.

Yours truly suddenly saw a pedestrian with a big home made sign on his back, taking part in a one person demonstration. The sign read something like, "Against M (the swedish conservative party) and racism!". Such nice demonstrations must be supported so I leaned out through the window and cheered loudly - heeeeya, nice one!

The reply from the taxi driver came fast as a shark,
-There´s no such thing as racism!
Caught by surprise I had to ask what he meant and he went on,
-I´m telling you man, racism doesn´t exist, only jealousy. Socialistic jealousy!

As you might understand this was a logical step a bit too heavy to follow and it didn´t become easier either. After some more q & a it was perfectly clear to us all that we had to deal with a logical mastermind here. It´s not easy to understand someone who can put racism against jealousy and then ask if a former student of mine (who served as an example in our discussion as one who definitely had racist ideas and was pretty outspoken about it) wasn´t a worse human being, compared to James Brown...

Whoaaa! James Brown suddenly got to serve as an example of a person who wasn´t a evil guy OR a racist. This made him a better person than my former student and it was obvious that being the best person alive was the goal here. Swedes in general were very highly ranked by our driver, only telling the truth, never expressing racist ideas... When I tried to tell him that I do think that I´ve heard some swedes say both racist and jealous things, it didn´t impress at all. Also tried to argue that you can be both a racist and a jealous person at the same time, that I didn´t see the versus deal between these two phenomenas.

Still, according to our lovely driver, racism didn´t exist. I wonder if he skipped all the history classes in school? Of course jealousy can be a reason to express racist ideas (even though I would say that fear of unknown ideas/rituals/behaviour would be a more common reason) but that doesn´t make these ideas any less racist, right? And you didn´t really get the feeling that he was debating on a semantic level either, he was just very convinced about this idea. Weird indeed.

Well, a taxi ride is always an opportunity to learn something new. This one will not be forgotten easily!
Guess what party he supported?

Let´s celebrate!

So, yesterday over a dinner at the most classical vegetarian restaurant of them all in Göteborg, Solrosen, Love & Honour was properly founded. Two gentlemen agreed on taking the first steps of what will become something... hopefully very nice.

Next step is to start etching, sketching, recording and planning the future (which of course is an overwhelming task!) so that you, dear unknown reader, can listen to what now is only in our heads.
Very interesting it shall be!

Slowness as a method?

More songs made, ideas constantly popping up. Sketches recorded, sometimes with satisfaction as bonus, sometimes with a restless feeling - it´s all going to slow.

Couldn´t you then turn slowness into a method? Wouldn´t that be great? I mean, there is such things as slow motion and more recently, slow food. There is probably a sub genre being born right now somewhere which will be called slow metal in some years. So, slowness seems to be something good sometimes, right?

Then what if you´re a restless soul? If you used to like to chill but nowadays are as restless as a hamster on speed? Ok, so things are actually falling into place...    slowly (sorry, that one had to come!) and that´s of course nice. Still, there are so many ideas to try out, so many things to record and then so many shows to play, right?! Maybe the band should be named Slow & Honour instead...

Let´s build the band first.

First step..?

Must be to have a blog, right? To be able to write notes. Important notes. About progress.
Well, progress is slowly made. It´s hard though to work properly when living in Berlin.
So many things to do! Like drinking weissbier. Like eating Mustafas gemüsekebap.

Still. The foundation of one track was recorded yesterday.
The acoustics in an Altbau apartment is really sweet. Maybe the real audio nerds can tell if it´s recorded in the west, or in the east? That issue still seems to be important to some people here...

So, what´s this then? Not 100 percent sure really. It´s called Love & Honour and it´s about music, emotions and politics. It´s a work in progress run by yours truly. Most likely with the aid of some other sweethearts.
And it has begun now - yeah!
/Hellbender