First Band from Outer Space meets Dr. Space- Göteborg, Sweden 5/2-3/2008

Friday May 2nd

It has been a while since I jammed with FBFOS. The djembe player and the flute player (Jose) are no longer in the band and they have a new guitar player (Jerker) and keyboard player (Petrus). This is going to be a blast. Anyway. I left home at 8:46 and got a flat tire a few km from Helsingborg. Almost was a blow out. I ended up getting help at a tire repair place after wasting at least 30 mins at the Stat Oil. Anyway, back on the road about 11:15. The rest of the drive was no problem. It takes a little over 3hrs to go the 320km from Copenhagen to Göteborg (Gothenburg). I was listening to some cool music in the car (Titan, Pothead, some of the new FBFOS jams, Phideaux, Black Label Society).

It was easy to follow Johan's instructions and I gave him a call when I got to his parking lot and you have to pay to park there. 2kr a hour. It is a little strange the way the meter owrks but Johan had a whole bag of coins, so that was awesome.. He was quick to take a shower and then we were off to the rehearsal space.

14:40 Everyone is here and in a great mood but a lot of work still ahead as they were suppose to set up all the cables and get it all ready last night but it ended up too much of a party and too many people so it never happened.

15:34 We are getting closer to set up now. I have my 3 synths (Yamaha CS-10, Nord Lead 2, Octave Cat). The room is not that big and damn the drums are loud in here but we will manage. Looks like we record on 28 channels. They have some really nice mics and gear so the sound should be quite good. The guitar and bass amps will be in the other room so we will all wear headphones. Hope this works out ok?

Didier Engineer

16:35 We are doing the line checks now. A lot of joints are being smoked and people are in a great mood. Awesome weather outside as well. I bought two cases of beer with me from Denmark as it is less than half price of what you pay in Sweden. We just had some cake as today was Johan's 37th birthday! Yeah..... Congrats.... I did my line check and it sounds good. I am running the two mono synths through the Line 6 delay unit using the analog delay setting. Frippe has a great bass sound with this new ORange head and his Rickenbacker.

18:35 Frippe's Orange Bass head (only 3 weeks old) blew a tube, we think. We had to drive over to a shop to get another one. Everyone is really hungry now. I have not had anything to eat besides that cake since 11, when I ate a little sandwich I brought along. It turns out it was nothing to do with the tube. Probably the bass cable? Shit.. a few hrs wasted... People are having a good time though and feeling good with some beers and joints. Only Johan's guitar left. IT is a lot of work to set all this stuff up as the control room is some distance from the recording room. YOu have to have long cables and run them through these mailboxes... A nice guy Daniel who plays in Uran with Frippe is hanging out and drinking all our beers and doing a pretty cool drawing. He is suppose to be cleaning up the place..ha...

21:23 We are listening to the first jam now (21 mins). We all had some pizza, beer and a walk down by the water for some fresh air. Pretty spaced out and Petrus plays a really cool distorted delayed organ. I love that sound. People seem a bit tired. This is the end of the jam in a piece we called Folketskog (The People's Forest).

22:35 Damn.. we recorded a few short pieces and I really felt like we were getting it all together now and Kalle had to leave. I was feeling really inspired.

23:11 We had one last jam with the sound engineer Didier, who plays drums. It was not that great. People were quite high and tired now as it was friday, the end of the week. It will be better tomorrow. The sound on the recordings is really great though. Wow.. I am impressed. This we called From the Atom and Out (see Atom picture above). Here are two pretty cool parts from it:

From the Atom and Out 1
From the Atom and Out 2

5/3/08

Frippe has to work until 16:00 today so we will go drive out to the Islands off the coast here and hang out for a few hours. It did not take that long to go out there. I think it is like 25km or something and they have these free ferries that take you between the islands. That is really cool. We hung out on the HonoÖ (Chicken Island). They also had head and foot island as well. Weather was amazing. Just shorts and a t-shirt. We had some smoked fish and a beer and sat in the sun and talked., IT was great...

Scott and Johan

16:00 We had a great time and now are back at the studio. We made stop to pick up another case of beer as well.

18:35 People seem more fresh today and are in a good mood. Kalle says he is really inspired. The usual ritual of beers and joints and we are listening to the last jam from yesterday and it was not that good. Sound is great though.

19:15 We have the first jam and it is only like 10mins and everyone just stops and goes out. I am not sure what is going on. Everything seemed fine. Turns out people were not high enough... ok... need some extra inspiration.

20:29 We just had an amazing Jam and it started off as Maggot Brain by Funkadelic. Johan was really channeling the spirts and did not even know he was playing the tune. Cool.. This was for sure the best jam we did. 44 mins... Listen here... Maggots from Space P1

22:16 We had another jam and Petrus played guitar and I was the only one on synths. I really like playing with him so it was a little strange.

22:52 We are goingot have one last jam and see what comes up. People are really in a party mood now and Frippe's girlfriend has been here with their dog and some friends as well.

00:03 The last jam was pretty far out. I was playing really spaced out. It was quite heavy at times.

It was a great and fun weekend. The music could have been better but we still made some cool jams. The band was:

Johan- Guitars, Frippe- Bass, Drums, Dr. Space- synths. ¨Petrus- Keyboards, Guitar, Kalle- Drums, Bass (Left to Right below)