With Andreas & Jag we’ve been working on eight or nine songs over the last stretch of time. Two are completely finished — mixed and done. And another two are getting very close.
One of those songs is a beautiful 6/8 track called Hospital Rhymes. In this clip, Andreas is adding some wonderfully moody textures on a Wurlitzer electric piano.
The instrument is a Wurlitzer 200, introduced in the late 1960s, and it quickly became a staple in modern pop and rock productions. Perfect for songs that need a little shadow around the edges.
Over the years it’s been used by bands and artists like Electric Light Orchestra, Supertramp, Queen and Ray Charles, and you can hear its unmistakable sound all over records from the ‘70s onward.
In this case, it just fit the mood perfectly. Dark, dreamy, late-night stuff.
#andreasochjag #vintagekeys #recordingkeys #studiolife #wurlitzer200
Big Drum. Music face wrestle.
For my project of recording some Molesome songs with only sounds that I love I decided to add some timpani to a verse...!
Often when you hear timpanis they are often used in a kind of bombastic explosive way but I wanted to do something a bit smaller and gentle. A bit like whispering into a megaphone.
#molesome #timpanis #recordingpercussion #studiolife #producerlife
There are always a lot of things going on in the studio and seeing how the world and the business of music is today I try to keep a close relationship with the people I work with and the people who listen and buy the records I release. I have been working with photographer Martin Gustafsson for probably 15 years or so...!
We are on the verge of releasing the first Andreas & Jag material in about 25 years. When it was time to figure out the cover artwork, I started talking with Andreas about ideas. Somewhere along the line, I thought it could be interesting to try to find a tiny Märklin homeless figure and place it around different instruments in the studio.
My initial idea was to place it on a guitar (Rickenbacker of course...)...but that didnt make any sense when you saw it through the lense but me and Martin kept on trying different things. After trying 9 or 10 different ideas we stumbled on one idea and immediately knew that “This is the one”.
I won’t reveal the final shot but I thought it could be cool to see one of the ones we didnt use...!
#andreasochjag #photoshot #miniatures #creativeprocess #studiolife
Piano instrument. Vintage hand person.
A lot of people have written and asked about the Insectual Music project and whether we’re going to record more and the answer is of course yes.
Me and Mats met up last week and recorded three new tracks.
Before Mats came over, me and my wife Åsa were talking about how ridiculously good he is and I said: “Mats knows all the songs.” Then we thought about it for a second and realised that not only does Mats know all the songs — he also knows the songs he hasn’t even heard yet.
Yep. That’s how good he is.
The whole idea behind the Insectual Music project is to highlight Gaby Stenberg’s remarkable Mellotron tapes of tuned insects. And instead of just throwing short clips online we thought it would be far more respectful — and honestly much more fun — to actually record proper songs using the insect tapes.
As some of you know I’m generally not a huge fan of covers, but in this case it makes perfect sense because the whole point is to let people really hear the Mellotron insects. Familiar melodies make the strange sounds easier to notice.
There’s something strangely beautiful about it though. Tiny creatures buzzing away somewhere in the Swedish countryside recorded in the 1970s by actress Gaby Stenberg eventually ending up inside this electro-mechanical prog monster from Birmingham.
Me and Mats work very fast. One song usually takes about an hour to record, but that’s mostly because I’ve already mapped out what songs and sounds we’re going to use beforehand and that Mats of course...knows all the songs.
On “Jag vet en dejlig Rosa” we started with the Jenco Celeste and then added the Mellotron cello for maximum vemod. (Look it up kids…!)
But for the bass I wanted something that tied in with the Celeste tonally, so I dragged out the Fender Piano Bass instead.
Next up…
Mellotron insects.
#jagvetendejligrosa #fenderpianobass #gabysenberg #insectualmusic #matslundgren
The Korg Mono/Poly was one of those synths that arrived just a little too late to become a true icon of the first synth wave. Released in 1981, right as polyphonic synths and digital technology started taking over, it ended up slightly outside the spotlight despite being an absolutely brilliant and gloriously quirky machine.
When you have a bunch of analog synths you tend to get picky about what you use them for, and I use my Mono/Poly for one very specific thing: very slow arpeggios. And I mean slow.
I went to school to study electroacoustic music and was always intrigued by the almost allergic reaction to rhythm that seemed to exist there. Every electronic bleep, squeal and bloop was supposed to hang freely in space.
So my idea became: how slow can music get before it stops feeling like tempo altogether?
The Korg Mono/Poly became my accomplice in that experiment. I would pick a chord and let the Mono/Poly crawl through it as slowly as possible for ten minutes straight. Then I’d record another pass. And another. And another. Four tracks later you suddenly had this glacial, drifting chord movement that was strangely beautiful to listen to.
And because the Mono/Poly’s pitch is… let’s call its pitch flexible… all kinds of strange overtones start blooming inside the sound. Little phantom harmonics, almost organ-like textures appearing out of nowhere.
These “Langsam” experiments keep popping up on the Molesome albums every now and then.
Pictures by Martin Gustafsson as always. And honestly, if there’s ever any doubt about who took the studio photos, the answer is very simple:
If it looks good, it’s Martin.
And the rest is me.
#korgmonopoly #analogsynth #vintagekeys #studiolife #synthporn
When we were recording with Pineforest Crunch at EMI studios we worked with Pontus Olsson. He was an older and very experienced engineer and he wasn’t exactly thrilled to be working with this up and coming band. You got the feeling he got the job by losing a bet.
But...he lightened up two or three times during the recording sessions. The big one was when I had brought Becken concert cymbals to the studio because he had never recorded that before and thought it was kind of fun.
Last weekend I worked with the Swedish band Valley and had a similar experience (not the tired worn out part...I still love recording)....
I got to record an instrument I had never recorded before...The Cajon.
The cajón has its roots in Peru, originally built from shipping crates by enslaved Africans who were forbidden from playing their traditional drums. They turned whatever was lying around into instruments anyway.
#valleyband #recordingengineer #cajon #studiolife #producerlife
If I were to feed the IG algorithm the text would read like this.
“Acoustic guitar. Played with hands.”
But instead you’ll get this...!
This is how it all starts...We get the coffee on and then Andreas starts playing songs at the kitchen table. We generally dont discuss the songs very much...there isn’t a lot of aboutism going on. He usually plays 2 or 3 and then I pick one. Andreas has probably 2 or 3 hundred songs just ready to go. The songs I pick are generally the ones where I can hear the finished thing in my head or I have a clear idea of what to do with the track. I also try to keep in mind what other songs we have on the album and what this song will add to the mix.
...and then we start.
(...and yes that’s a Lamb lies down on Broadway mug. Well spotted)
#andreas&jag #acousticguitar #singersongwriter #studiolife
When we started recording at home we didn’t have much money or know-how, so we used whatever we could find and pushed it as far as it would go. This Magnus keyboard was the first non-drum thing I ever got. This was the start of the madness that became the Roth Händle studios “collection”.
I found it sitting in the window of an old hairdresser’s salon in Råsunda for 250 kronor. I didn’t really know what it was or what it sounded like, but I knew I needed it. Borrowed 250 from a neighbour, went down there, and carried it home.
The Magnus was an electric “fan organ,” built mostly in the late 50s and 60s — cheap, strange little American organs powered by an actual internal fan blowing air through reeds. Kind of toy instruments, really, but with this wheezing, haunted sound that somehow made perfect sense in a bedroom recording setup. When you run it through guitar pedals things get really interesting...
But the most interesting part of this story isn’t really the “first keyboard” or even the Magnus. It’s the hairdresser.
Right by Filmstaden in Råsunda — the old studio where Bergman, Vilgot Sjöman and Greta Garbo shot films — there was this tiny salon on the corner. Greta Garbo used to get her hair cut there before she left for America.
And when she became one of the biggest film stars in the world, she still sent the hairdresser a Christmas card every year. When Christmas came around she thought of him.
That’s class. Pictures by Martin Gustafsson
#magnusorgan #vintagekeyboards #gretagrabo #gearstories #studiolife
There is so much ugliness in the world right now. A whole lot of shouting and pushing. I sincerely dont think it should or have to be like that.
My strongest counter reaction right now is that I really want to create something beautiful. Recording simple small songs using only sounds that I think are beautiful. Sounds that make me genuinely happy. Ive likened it to going to a restaurant and just eating three desserts.
One of those sounds and instruments is the Bass Marimba.
#bassmarimba #molesome #beautifulsounds #beautifulinstruments #beauty
Bought a cheap Zither at a flea market.
Made it into a Snare Drum for a new song I’m working on.
#zither #molesome #experimentalpop #fleamarketfinds #producerlife
There are plenty of people on the internet — and especially Instagram — who are far more successful at this whole thing than I am. “Woohoo 100K followers” and “millions upon millions of views” on instrument clips.
And whenever I start investigating why those things travel further than mine, the answers are always strangely simple.
Covers are more popular than original material.
Instrument films should exist without musical context.
People like close-ups of hands.
The idea behind my films has never really been that.
I’m trying to show what I actually do with my days. In and out of studios. Recording and playing music in a multitude of rooms, places, strange little situations. Regardless of Instagram algorithms, computer science analysis, statistics wrestling and whatever else decides what survives online this week… this is still what I do.
Today’s film is from last week’s Insectual Music sessions where me and Mats record songs using sounds we love — Celeste, Mellotron and old broken textures — before wrapping it all up with Gaby Stenberg’s Mellotron tapes of tuned insects as the lead melody.
In this clip Mats is recording the famous Mellotron cello sound.
If I asked the Algorhythm Oracle whether this whole project seems like a good idea, I think I already know the answer.
Good thing we’re doing it anyway.
#mellotronrecording #mellotroncello #vintagemellotron #vintagekeys #gabystenberg
