Villebråd - "Ultrarapid" (2009)
 
 
Recording log, written by Påhl
 
In March of 2008, Erik and I gathered our stuff and drove out to the Klockhammaren Studio in the woods outside of Uppsala, where Henrik - the owner of the studio - was waiting for us. As this was our second session in the studio ("Alla är här utom jag" was recorded at the same spot) we had a somewhat clearer vision of what to do than the last time. Although the location was quite wonderful, especially with the spring sun looming over the treetops, we decided to work quickly and focusing on the drum takes only. Much of the material had been carefully rehearsed together with David and Petter during the previous months, but since it was just me and Erik at the studio - and I needed to operate the studio - Erik had to program the songs as midi tracks with a klicktrack to play along. And although we had already decided while writing and rehearsing that we would go for a straighter and more beat-oriented sound this time, this awkward process gave birth to quite a few new ideas. We all felt - when the midi tracks met the blast of the drum set - that we should try and capture some of the electronic, hypnotic quality of these infantile original songs. So basically the overall production of the album started with that angle of approach.

After finishing the drum takes, we went back into town and spent the next few months doing overdubs in Erik's apartment. A couple of times each week I and Erik met up with either David or Petter to lay down their parts, and it really felt like they immediately understood what we were aiming for. David, who actually started the embryo for Villebråd with me and Erik back in 2001 (although he didn't play on our 2005 demo), is an amazingly open-minded musician who stops at nothing if he likes it - regardless of which genre it fits into. We played him stuff that we all laughed out loud at because it was so over the top cheesy or spaced out, but moments later he put down these awesome guitars and we all just sat around nodding. The same applies for Petter, who probably is the most capable of us all, and the one who's most devoted to classic progressive music. We really feared that he would start crying when listening to some of the ideas we had, but he was totally cool with it. In fact, his presence on the album gave it a firm push even deeper into the unknown, beyond what at least we perceive as "prog rock" or "pop" or "new wave" or anything else - and that's just the way we wanted it! So we spent some surreal nights in that place, not knowing where we would land at all. During this time we also took a late night trip to the home of professional hammond player Andreas Hellkvist who helped us out on one song, "Tusen sätt att förklara". His apartment was just big enough to hold two gigantic hammond organs and a coffee table, where I, Erik and David crammed ourselves and the recording equipment. He tried out the ideas we had in mind and mumbled something about the lack of logic of the chords, but when we were finished I think he was quite happy with it. I know we were.

In the middle of June we drove off again, this time to my and Erik's parents' house on the east coast of northern Sweden. Since our parents were on vacation their deserted house was a place where we could lay down the vocals for the album without neighbors back home thinking we had lost it completely. This is also where we finished writing the lyrics for the album. Instead of writing them all separately like we had done before, we thought of the songs this time as one long intertwining lyric, pretty much like a concept album. We wanted the themes to span loosely between loneliness and suicidal depression, capitalism and consumption mentality and surreal affection for others and oneself (or is it the same thing?). We also threw in some thoughts that had popped into my head while working at the psychiatric ward in Uppsala. We wanted to make this a lyrically darker album than "Alla är här utom jag", perhaps unconsciously because we felt the songs had taken a turn for the brighter musically... Anyway, the process of putting down the vocals was very much fun, partly because it's a late stage in the recording and for the first time you get a sense of what the album is going to end up like, but also because since we are poor guys and own pretty much no equipment at all, we had no pop filter to cover the microphone. When starting the first take, Erik looked around to find a knitted cap or anything that we could cover the mike with. The only thing he could find was a Santa Claus mask with a red cap attached to it, that had been lying around since Christmas. So that's basically what I held in my hand while recording the vocals for the album. Not exactly Abbey Road standards, but it supplied some strange intensity to the sessions. This general lack of equipment and resources also forced us to seek alternative solutions on the instrument front, resulting in Erik beating on an empty trash can instead of a conga on "Feberdröm" and me stirring a jar filled with broken glass in the interlude of "Neandertal". The oddest thing we did was probably miking up mom and dad's ancient PC with Erik playing the notes on the computer's keyboard through the obsolete but not forgotten software Fasttracker 2. This can also be heard in some overdubs on "Neandertal".

While at our parents' place we also met up with our long time friend and jazz musician Christian Broberg who brought some percussion to the house and blazed off. We caught him on tape doing that on a song that we later came to call "Älskade maskin". He also let us into the local church, where he works as a cantor, and there he laid down some piano lines for the track "Amerika".

The time since then was spent mixing and mastering, sitting in front of a speaker drinking coffee and hovering between "why the hell are we exposing ourselves to this voluntarily?" and "we are actually getting somewhere!". But in the end, when we finally decided to pull the plug on the process, we sincerely felt that we had created something different and something good. Hopefully you will too.