Reform

lördag 28 maj 2011

Seven new videos and Progressive Playground

I present you with all the songs in the correct order. I am very satisfied and I think everybody did a great job. Paul Svanberg played amazingly and so did Jonas Englund! Thank you guys! I hope we will play together soon in a near future!

Enjoy all seven songs:

That's all for now! I hope you will enjoy the videos!

Take care
Jesper

fredag 13 maj 2011

From the Jam session on May 8!

Hi everyone!

The gathering started on Sunday 8th of May at 1300h. The personnel consisted of:

Jesper Bergman: Electric bass
Christer Bjernelind: Double bass
Mattias Lennestig: Keyboard
Magnus Ramel: Keyboard
Milton Öhrtröm: Keyboard
Peter Åkerberg: Electric guitar
Jonas Englund: Electric guitar
Peter Pedersen: Electric guitar
Anders Bergman: Percussion
Bill Öhrström: Percussion
Per Tjernberg: Percussion
Paul Svanberg: Drums
Åke Eriksson: Drums

The intensity was obvious from the very start. Bill and Åke started off a groove and from there the airplane lifted off!

Everyone contributed magnificently and it all flowed.

Four really good numbers came out of this session:

Ambient Noise

From the Hilltop and Beyond

and

Horrorscope which infact is a Ralph Lundsten composition, Op 167. His original was recorded with Ralph Lundsten & The Andromeda Allstars in 1979. Watch the video at the end of this post!

Our version became quite interesting. I will present it when we know what to do with all the material.

The last piece I will mention was actually the first one we recorded. I call it "In a Strangely Nice Kind of Way". Press it and listen! It lasts for 20 minutes.

I am very proud that so many prominent musicians joined the group and helped us fulfill this dream. Nothing existed to begin with, but thanks to our universal mind everything worked out. I really hope we will play together some time in the future. I have great hopes for this album and it seems as if it will turn out as a double!

Here is Horrorscope by Ralph Lundsten:

Christer Bjernelind and Per Tjernberg played together in the group Archimedes Badkar in the 70s. A great Swedish progressive group. Listen to them here:

Per Tjernberg is a legend that has recorded numerous solo albums. He actually recorded an entitled Don't Stop in 1983. Listen to Lucumi Suite from that album with no one else but Doktor Åke Erksson himself on the drums:

Åke Eriksson is Swedish drum legend mostly known for his work in Wasa Express and Egba:

Bill Öhrström once turned down a part as singer in an English r&b band. This band later became The Who!!! On Jimi Hendrix' first visit to Stockholm Jimi stayed at Bills apartment in Stockholm. Bill produced the legendary Swedish duo Hansson & Karlsson and has all his life played music and lived for playing music. He has played with everyone! Bill is always young! Here is a a clip from one of the times when he played with us at Stampen. Åke is playing the drums:

Paul Svanberg is an up and coming jazz drummer. Listen to him playing with Ulf Wakenius! Impressive!!!

måndag 2 maj 2011

Some great news!

söndag 24 april 2011

A review, an update on the new album and some general thoughts and news!

Reform at Myspace
Digg Reformed
Digg Uncut & Lo-Fi
Buy our albums
Review of Uncut & Lo-Fi
Review of Easy
Reform's GrIndie award
Reformed is reviewed by Meadow Music (SE)
Reformed is reviewed by Meadow Music (EN)
Reformed is reviewed by Music Stage (SE)
Check out Reform at Facebook
Opinions about Reform at DN Påstan(Swedish)
Visit A&R Jesper Bergman and receive 2 barcodes (UPC) for free!

The work with the new album is proceeding. We have more than twelve songs to choose from. There is a jam also which I really would like to include. Let's see if there is enough space. Anyway, I am more than satisfied with what has come together up until now. The keyboards are amazing. It seems as if Mattias and Magnus form a great team. On Sunday May 8 I am planning for a big jam session with some special guests. If it works out I will give you the details. I will contact everybody as soon as Easter is over.

I am also going through all the Reform concerts chronologically. It was not until the concert at Kolingen in November 2009 that I started to record the concerts with active microphones and DAT. There is a lot of material with quite horrible sound quality and I have become better at mixing and restoring over the years. I am working with the concert from Gamlingen on the April 12 2009. It is quite interesting to hear how the group has developed the sound since then. This work will of course end up in a digital release called something similar to "Best of Reform Live 2009-2010". The physical and digital album Uncut & Lo-Fi, though it still feels interesting, is no longer a representative source of how the group sounds live. This is, firstly, due to the sound quality and secondly because we now have a steady crew. There is actually yet another album in pipeline. I believe it will be only a digital release and it will consist of all the alternative takes, demos and versions of the songs included and excluded on and from the sessions leading up to the completion of the new album.

Why I want to use some recorded jams on the album is because I still want to convey that Reform is based on music created in the moment. Music that is not the same twice.

We have received another review of Reformed. This time by Music Stage. Check it out here.

Skivrecension, Reform, Reformed
Skrivet av Matilda Hedberg Dowdle
2011-04-05 20:33

Loungemusik eller experimentell jazz? Den frågan kan man utan tvekan ställa sig när man lyssnar på bandet Reforms skiva Reformed.

Jag ska vara ärlig. Hade jag plockat upp Reformed i närmaste skivbutik och läst vad för typ av musik det var jag höll i, hade jag aldrig lagt pengar på skivan. Så avtänd blir jag på experimental jazz.

Men så är inte fallet nu. När jag klickade på play på Spotify möttes jag av musik vars like jag aldrig stött på. Jag kallar det för experimentell jazz, andra kanske skulle säga hissmusik. Jag själv får en lugn känsla i kroppen när jag tar del av skivans enda sex låtar. Det finns en bra balans mellan de konstanta lugna beatsen och gitarrerna a la Jimi Hendrix som ibland kommer in i låtarna.

Det finns varken sång eller något som verkar som en röd tråd. Reformed är däremot en skiva att ta fram när dagarna är stressiga och maten bränns vid på spisen. Det är en skiva som för dig till en annan miljö, vare sig det är en strand i Thailand eller en takvåning i New York.

Låt oss gå tillbaka till exemplet om skivbutiken. Hade jag vetat mer om bandet, baserat på det jag nu har lyssnat på, hade jag tagit upp plånboken. För visst finns det en mening med musiken som strömmar ut ur högtalarna. En mening som jag mer än gärna vill ta del av.

Those of you who do not read Swedish will have to use the Google Translator. I am very satisfied with this review and I am also proud of it!

To conclude this post I will present you with something that is definitely not very Reformish. In the spring of 2010 we made two concerts in which we incorporated some cover songs performed vocally by Bill Öhrström. The first time we did some 60s soul music and the second time we did some 60s American Psychedelia. The three following songs are from that second gig in May 2010.

How can we Hang on to a Dream by Tim Hardin

Summer in the City by the Lovin' Spoonful

and

7&7 is by Love

Bill is a great singer and performer and he also fits in beautifully into Reform's own tunes when he plays the harmonica. Bill is music and music is Bill!!! I hope we will play with him again soon!

Enjoy the music and stay tuned for the new album!

onsdag 2 mars 2011

Reformed is reviewed by Meadow Music

fredag 25 februari 2011

Yet another new song. With vocals!!!

Reform at Myspace
Digg Reformed
Digg Uncut & Lo-Fi
Buy our albums
Review of Uncut & Lo-Fi
Review of Easy
Reform's GrIndie award
Check out Reform at Facebook
Opinions about Reform at DN Påstan(Swedish)
Visit A&R Jesper Bergman and receive 2 barcodes (UPC) for free!

Press the song title to listen to the song!

Dear reformers!

Yesterday, February 24, we produced yet another outtake for the new album. It is called Align and is written by me and Peter. The lyrics are also by us. Yes, I just mentioned lyrics! It is the first Reform track with actual vocals, by me. I am satisfied with both the lyrics and the singing.

Why a vocal track? Our goal is to have three tracks with vocals on the new album and it is partly because we do some Grateful Dead tracks live and then thought "why not try to do some tracks of our own with vocals?". Another reason may be that it is important to broaden one's horizons: Can we keep our sound although we incorporate vocals? Judge for yourself! I think it works and really brings a dark, gloomy feeling to the improvisation.

The following tracks with vocals will, I suppose, be Nuclear War, which I co-wrote in the middle 90's with my old friend Petter Nyhlin, and a song written by me, Anders and Peter called Here's to Life. We played both these songs under the name Mountain Men at Mats Jarl's Backstage Festival in August 2010. Mountain Men is a side project consisting of only Peter, Anders and myself.

Here are the videos from that event:

To confuse you some more I will end this with a clip with Janis Joplin playing the song Raise Your Hand from Frankfurt in 1969. This is great! A genius at her best!

Music is music!
Jesper

söndag 13 februari 2011

Two New Tunes + A Jam

Reform at Myspace
Digg Reformed
Digg Uncut & Lo-Fi
Buy our albums
Review of Uncut & Lo-Fi
Review of Easy
Reform's GrIndie award
Check out Reform at Facebook
Opinions about Reform at DN Påstan(Swedish)
Visit A&R Jesper Bergman and receive 2 barcodes (UPC) for free!

On the 6th of February we had yet another great rehearsal with the new fantastic Reform line-up. Everyone is contributing and this time we rehearsed two new tunes:

Click on the title to listen to it!

Little Vienna, composed by Peter Åkerberg and

Groovy Thunder, composed by Micke Hujanen.

Little Vienna is a beautiful piece not too inspired by the place where we now have played two weekends in total, I hope. For me, the name actually fits the composition perfectly. It sounds like a strange dream, as a painting of Salvador Dalí would sound and like a circus in black and white from the 20's. Peter plays the lead and hands over the first solo to Hujanen and then takes over to hand over the wheel to Magnus Ramel and then the conclusion comes with the theme played all over again.

Groovy Thunder is a very bombastic piece. It feels very genuinely jazz-rocky with roots from Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra. It is basically based on three riffs, each of them very strong and quite intricate harmonically. The first solo is performed by Mattias Lennestig and the second one is played by Peter.

I am certain that this upcoming album will be great. Taste the name "Age of Reform". How does it sound and feel?

JAM

These two tunes are not the only musical matters that came out of the rehearsal. We also had a great Jam. Jamming is the moment when there will be magic or not. When it feels right you just go with the flow and actually starts wondering "what is that fantastic music that I'm hearing?". It is almost as magic as opening Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. Either you are caught up in it or not. You can talk about it for hours, but the only conclusion is that music is one of the last remnants from when the still not rational human beings roamed the earth and the air was filled with magic. It is nice to sometimes not feel so rationalized.

Take care!
Jesper