These tracks were written and recorded in small pieces, mostly late at night.
It was never the original intention to release them, it was more my way of winding down.
A sort of therapy, if you will.

The track typically start of as a simple melody or chord progression and then evolves almost organically into the full track as the recording progresses. Sometimes the initial piece of melody does not even make it into the final track.
It's also fun too see what kind of measure changes or weird chord progression you can actually get away with (i.e., without it sounding "strange") if you mask it with a nice tune.

Since I play all the instruments myself, there is a fair bit of iteration before the final version of the track emerges. I guess that's part of the fun and part of the therapy, and when I get bored the track is allowed to run away in any direction.

Enjoy!
J.

::::: Schizophonia
A bit of a roller-coaster moving through different elements, styles and tempos without much concern for tradition. I apologize in advance for doing a 6/4 solo over a 5/4 backing track, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

This track contains pieces of the following ambient sounds:
- "1937 Tornado Siren II" recorded by Delilah, released under Attribution 3.0 License
- "Frogs" and "Water" recorded by Lisa Redfern, released under Attribution 3.0 License
(creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

No guitars were harmed during the recordings (except for the occasional snapped e-string)

::::: Affirmations and Lies
A more straightforward and to-the-point song, but still with a few excursions from the main theme. The slow-down in the middle is based on the beginning, only now with the chord progression running backwards.
The solo on the ending slower part may be a bit corny, but the narrative imperative seemed to mandate it.

::::: Friendly Fire
The initial theme for this song was first conceived a long time ago, but I never recorded it at the time. The song moves from the initial synth-orchestrated theme through more guitar-driven new parts to someone playing the organ in a large cave.

Moving out of the cave, we find ourselves on a beach with a guitar. The drum part of this is intentionally done as to mask the rhythm (at least for a few bars), and then we're on track for reprise and finale.

Probably one of the longest songs I will record, as my studio computer had some problems handling all the track data without stuttering. Oh well, probably time to get more RAM anyway.

This track contains pieces of the following ambient sounds:
* "Thunder Strike" and "Ocean Waves": recorded by Mike Koenig, licensed under CC-BY 3.0
* "Crows Calling": recorded by Jim Crow (sic), licensed under CC-BY 3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
* "Shorebirds On Beach" and "Seagulls", licensed under CC0 (Public Domain)


::::: Signal To Noise
This song started out from improvising over a simple chord progression, and just evolved from there.
There is a bit of a waltz 2 minutes in that could probably be expanded on. (BTW, the chord progression for this part is _really_ weird, but it proves the point that you really _can_ get away with just about anything in 3/4.)
The piano/bass ending is very much inspired by the folk music interpretations by the great jazz pianist Jan Johansson
(Please check out the 1964 album "Jazz på svenska")

::::: Jessica
This was the first of these tracks to be recorded with my new DAW setup, and I struggled a bit learning the SW at the same time,so it took me a while. I think it turned out OK in the end, but I got a newfound respect for sound engineers.
I also learned that anything sounds good in studio speakers, but a mix that is good when listening in one car can sound totally weird in another car.
It's probably magic.


::::: The Further Adventures of Kattebatte (aka Kattebatte på Nya Äventyr)
The first (and last) part of this song was recorded on an Amiga500 with the "screamtracker" software some years ago. I decided to keep this part from the original recording and redo everything in between with my current instruments and DAW, and -as always- some new themes emerged in the process. I quite like the semi-acoustic part in the middle, where the 6/4 section suddenly expands to 7/4 for a few bars in order to make room for all notes in the melody.
"Too many notes", anyone?

The "chorus" (of sorts) returns three times, but with very different mixes - from full focus on the melody to full focus on the progression in the backing tracks

::::: Five Past Midnight (aka Harlösa by Night)
After an ambient start this goes straight into a swedish folk-music mode and stays there through the piano part in the middle. I think I wrote that particular piano part when I was 15, so it is about time it got recorded.
I was surprised that the "rock" ending worked well, since 3/4 is not traditionally a rock measure.

The beginning and the ending are actually just extreme versions of themes that are already included in the main portion of the track.

::::: Birthday Song (+ Hue and Cry)
The first part of this song is based on the traditional Swedish birthday song "Ja må han leva" or "Vi gratulerar".
The second part (where the somewhat inebriated Hungarian folk musicians stumble into a rock concert) was included because ours is a kind of universe that allows tunes like this.
And yes, half of the instruments are recorded backwards in this section.