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SRSCD 3614CD
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2011 repress. CD reissue of this all-time Swedish underground classic, originally issued on the Scandinavian Love label in 1968. International Harvester were the second incarnation of Bo Anders Persson's group, after Pärson Sound (whose early sound experimentation was finally documented in 2001 by Subliminal Sounds). Early in the 60's Bo Anders Persson had envisioned a new kind of communicative music -- would it be possible to create a more contemporary kind of rhythmic music that could play the same role as traditional folk music, a music that was both sensual and transcendent? In 1967 came the answer. The hypnotic feelings of Terry Riley's eternity music + the rough-riffing of The Rolling Stones = a new alchemical wedding. Pärson Sound was formed, which started to perform publicly in the summer of 1967. The next year they changed the name into International Harvester, taken from the American company manufacturing agricultural machines, trucks and ambulances. The astonishing thing about their two official recordings is the complete freedom of the music, inspired by a Terry Riley-esque repetitive song structure. The atmospheres of these songs are both utopian and dystopian, mixed with an early environmental awareness. Sov Gott Rose-Marie starts with the strongest of statements: the Latin death hymn "Dies Irae," played like it was a medieval heavy rock-theme. This was music of turmoil and inner upheaval, mostly played in the slowest of rhythms, but still with a sense of constant change. There's constant juxtapositions going on between documentary sounds and floating states of mind; hard rocking tunes, demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, bird song, sounds from police radio, psychedelic tranquility, lullabies.
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SRSCD 3616CD
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2013 repress; 2001 CD reissue of this psychedelic underground masterpiece from 1970, with a 12-page booklet, including English liner notes and photos. Includes one bonus track not found on the original LP. Recorded 1968-69, digitally remastered in 2001. The lone album by this post-International Harvester group, originally issued in 1970, once again led by the academic tape-composer turned radical folkie psychedelicist Bo Anders Persson. Accompanied by an able body of co-conspirators including Thomas Gartz (drummer/glue of the Mecki Mark Men, whose LPs on the Limelight label are not to be missed), Torbjörn Abelli, and let's not forget Ulla on small cymbals. Thunder-plod of magnificent tidal proportions, recalling the burnt splendor of the Träd Gräs och Stenar Live Gardet 1970 set -- TGOS in fact were nothing more than a stripped down quartet version of Harvester! Another piece to the incestuous little jigsaw that was the 1967-1972 Swedish druggist music school dropout sector. Completely burnt, devoid of restraint, massive (some of the best sounding drums this side of Zeppelin, to boot). Blown through and through and through.
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