Hector Projector

November 7, 2008 at 1:00 pm

Hector ProjectorHere’s a voice that will catch your attention. The music reminds me of classic folk singers like Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. . There’s something especially capturing in Hector Projector’s music, that’s hard to describe. Maybe it’s the ambience or his voice, or the combination of them. Well, judge for yourself by listening to the songs below.

Hector Projector is also a brilliant animator, and you can see a sample of it in his video for “It’s Art” here below. You’ll find more films on Hector Projector’s Youtube page.
Last spring Hector Projector released the album “Missing Limbs”. If you wanted a physical copy of the album, then you could send him a drawing, either according to his instructions or freely. A guess of mine is that this will lead to a new animation project, and it will be interesting to follow this.

You can download the interesting album “Missing Limbs” from Hector Projector’s site, and here you can listen to two tracks from this album with the addition of the song “In Retrospect” from the album “Ballpoint Covers”.

Hector Projector also has a Myspace page.

I’m Playing the Strings Tonight
Does It Matter
In Retrospect

Ulf Ljusberg

November 7, 2008 at 1:00 am

Ulf LjusbergI like the close acoustic feeling when I listen to Ulf Ljusberg. My thoughts wander of to a small jazz or blues club, where people in a relaxed way are sitting down, sipping their beer, with their attention on Ulf and his collegues performing on stage. It feels familiar in a way.

It’s hard to directly put Ulf in a single genre. I would say that the base is the blues that often marries folk music in the songs, but there is more than that. There is a nice jazzy playfulness, which surprises me and catches my attention, and an experimention with rhythms that I seldom hear with other artists. Maybe it’s this last thing what makes me sense the uniqueness in Ulf’s music. That he can take an apparently common style and make something new out of it, with a different accent.

Ulf has released a number of EP:s, some of them under the name “Something From a Forest”, but since 2005 in his own name. Read an interview with Ulf on It’s a Trap.

On Ulf’s Last.fm page you can listen more and download songs. You can also visit his Myspace page.
Here’s three songs to enjoy:

Whatever Was
Caught In This Skin (acoustic)
Puzzle

Hans Lundgren

November 5, 2008 at 1:00 am

Hans LundgrenPeople have created fantastic film music throughout the years. I think it’s strange that there’s so few collaborations between musicians/artists and movie creators. A director I spoke with the other day explained to me that he always set aside a rather large sum of money for the music of the movie. But when the movie project takes longer time than expected and other events, unaccounted for, need to be taken care of, this sum of money is used, and compromises have to be done.

I want to tell you about Hans Lundgren, 26 years old, whose music makes me shiver of well-being. Here he describes how he started making film music:

“For me the interest for film music started already at the age of 7 when I used to rush to the TV to be able to see the intro to “Dallas”. I loved the music and how it interacted with the moving pictures. But it wasn’t until I was 15 that I became aware of film music at a deeper level.

After playing and singing several years, I started study music on high school in Skellefteå, and it was there that I seriously started composing music inspired by movies. After that followed studies in composition on Skellefteå Music College, Framnäs Folkhögskola, Musikhögskolan i Piteå, film science at Luleå Tekniska Universitet, and now in Stockholm at KMH (Royal College of Music in Stockholm) and DI.

This is the first time that they have created a film music program on a higher level of education in Sweden. The education is divided more or less with half of the time at KMH and half of the time at DI. The theoretical parts at KMH and the practical parts at DI. And just like with all the other students at the movie department at DI, 4 students are admitted every two years. That is, 4 directors, 4 producers, 4 dubbing editors, 4 film editors, 4 screenwriters, 4 photographers, and now this year also 4 film composers.

As a first project at DI we were assigned to write music for four short films. Every team has their own movie that is supposed to work both as a story that stands for itself and also in a context together with the other three movies. All four films are spun around the same central event which binds the movies together, but from the different perspectives of four people and their unique experience of the situation. It has been a very interesting and fun process to be a part of. My first meeting with the short film I was to compose to, was at a spotting session where I, together with the director, the producer and the others, watched a raw cut of the film where we started discussing how, when and what function the music should have in the movie. When should the music start/end? What’s the emotional style? What’s the musical style, and so on?

After that, I watched the movie a couple of times, without starting to compose anything, just to absorb the movie. It was easier to get to the core of the story then. For this project I made a couple of different versions of the music, before we found something that felt right from an emotional and dramaturgical perspective. We have recently finished the project and made the final cut of the movie. That’s when the dialogue, the music and the effects are mixed together to create a good sound picture for the movie. The premiere will be in November.

Soon the recording of the next project starts, and I am looking forward to being part of telling a story in a musical and dramatic way that drags people into the story. Finally I would like to say that I really hope that this education will help to lift Swedish film music, and that people who want to write music for films can have a place to meet, develop and work together with the professional film makers of the future.”

Here’s a couple of tracks from Hans’ production:

Resan mot ljuset
Death Is Not the End

Do you want know more about Hans? Here is his site.

There you read that he has arranged and orchestrated “Sjökor och Stekare” for the Umeå Symphony Orchestra, that he has been played in P2 (Swedish national radio channel), and that TV4 has shown his short film “Att återvända” (“To come back”). Just the images on his site are worth a visit. Beautiful!
And of course you can listen to his music.

Peter Lindström

October 29, 2008 at 6:13 pm

Peter LindströmPeter Lindström is a true music soul. I have a feeling that he breathes and eats music in some kind of way. Feelings that are streamed out to us through the music, and everything he does is about this. That’s my illusion about Peter anyway.

Maybe you have heard him before, if you are following this blog, as the voice Welkin, in Welkin and the Jangler. But a music nomad like Peter creates music in other ways too, this time as a solo artist.
Here you’ll meet a more basic singer/songwriter, with nice guitar playing, but also with Rhodes piano as in the wonderful “Baby Blue”. You can listen to three tracks here, and I should mention that he gets some help by Julia Bryngelsson, in “Now That I’m Free”.

Last spring Peter went on a US tour solo, and during two months he performed on all kind of places across the US. A tour that has both excited him and shaken him, a trip of both discomfort and joy. He has promised to write a book about his US adventures, and hopefully this man of words and music will write his book through a blog soon. This is how he writes after a few weeks on tour (translated from Swedish):

“After four gigs on this two months long but eternal tour, I became sick. With a fever and a cold and everything, I have been imprisoned in a hotel room on the outskirts of Atlantic City, for almost three days. Absecon, New Jersey. Here’s nothing to do unless you’re a prostitute, if you’re a john or if you’re offering hotel rooms for these people. I’m getting better now in any case, which is comforting since I’m supposed to bend some strings in the capital tomorrow night. So far the response has been incredible, and it’s been a while since I’ve felt so excited to get out and sing my songs to people. The records are selling but, believe it or not, the money is hard to hold on to. But then again, spending three days too close to Atlantic City may not be so wise.”

Baby Blue
Alyantic City
Now That I’m Free

Visit Peter on Myspace

“Phony Baloney” (Austin TX, 4/28 -08)

Meadowmusic celebrates 100!

October 25, 2008 at 1:00 pm

MeadowMusicThis is the hundredth post on this blog. It means that we so far have presented ninetynine artists, songwriters and producers. We thought of celebrating this by having a mini cavalcade with songs from some of the artists we have reviewed. Many of these songs are exclusive for download only here on Meadowmusic, and I hope that they are shared with people all over the world if you as a visitor like the songs.

We, here on Meadowmusic, are overwhelmed by all the support we have received since we started in the beginning of July. We started this because it felt like we were carrying around a secret that we just had to share with the world. And the secret was that there’s so much fantastic Swedish music, that seldom is played on the radio or other mainstream channels. And that this music is just as good, well, in fact much better than what is heard there. Well, it’s not a secret anymore, is it?

First we would like to thank you as a visitor, because you come here and listen to the music. Every visit, every time you listen, every recommendation to a friend, every mention of what you hear contributes to the promotion of the artists and their music, and to the support of this blog.
Thank you for all mail and tips and also for the communication with the artists.

We also would like to thank all the artists that support us. And I don’t mean only the artists that we have presented here, but also all of you that have contacted us, telling us that what we do is important and great. Thank you!

Below you’ll find some extra songs with artists from earlier posts. (Click on the artist’s name to go to the post about the artist.)

Pär Edwardson in a fantastic song about a girl with huge hair
The Girl With the Huge Hair

Aurgunn, the poet, on bliss
Saligheten

Lasse Söhr has produced Isak Strand in this song
The Lie

Maini Sorri sings about Goose-Liisa
Hanhi-Liisa

Angelica wishes that you let her enter
Let Me In

Chris Michols wants to go home
I Wanna Go Home

Listen to Jamin Pirnia in a collaboration with Nihad Tule
Are You Happy Now?

Andreas Lundgren is so cool
Sunset-lover

Some Kind of Rubus sings about Goula, “no one could fool’er”
Goula

Rock with Bodies
Loser

And 100 % energy with The Rumble
The Long Run

Martin Bentancourt, whom, together with David Silva, gave the FRA debate some groove this summer, with his hit “Första generationens svenne”
Första generationens svenne

Last but not least the cool Zed Is Dead
Soul Pollution

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