BTV127 UFO Över Lappland : Spökraketer LP/cd/cs
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UFO Över Lappland Spökraketer (btv127) cd/cs/LP Buy cd Online / Buy cs Online / Buy LP Online Track listing: SIDE A
1. I’m Rolling Like Thunder, I’m Something You Don’t Understand! (8:46) SIDE B 1. Blå Vägen (8:13) |
UFO Över Lappland‘s new album Spökraketer will be release on 29 April 2022 and is now available for pre-order. The vinyl edition is pressed on transparent green smoke vinyl.
UFO Över Lappland from Umeå in the northern part of Sweden (also home to Cult of Luna, The Spacious Mind, and Refused) are an instrumental kraut-rock band in the vein of Neu!, Amon Düül II, or early Kraftwerk, but with psychedelic overtones and some post-rock sensibilities.
Spökraketer is the follow up album to their self-titled debut that was re-issued in 2021 by Burnt Toast Vinyl. When UFO Över Lappland entered Parasit Studio (Gryssjön, Sweden) for their next recordings, the band had much more of a clear path to follow beyond the improvised jam sessions of their debut. This time the songs were written and arranged, but still not set in stone. During the recording process, UFO Över Lappland took those base ideas, but added new sounds and experimented with spontaneous ideas during the recording sessions. The results are tighter and more focused, but the recordings are played live in the studio, maintaining a fluidity.
As with everyone else in the music industry, UFO Över Lappland have been affected by the pandemic, and pulling this record together has taken time with long production queues, but both Burnt Toast Vinyl and the band are very happy to release Spökraketer and share these tracks with all of you!
The title Spökraketer (Ghost rockets) refers to unknown flying objects observed in various sightings in northern Sweden during the 1940s. A full explanation to these observations has never been given, but declassified US Air Force documentation quotes the Swedish Air Intelligence Service that “these phenomena are obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth.” UFO Över Lappland, indeed!
Thomas Christensen is a photographer living in Greenland and UFO Över Lappland collaborated with him for appropriate photos of the Aurora Borealis to use for the album artwork.
Frederik Lyxzén from Parasit Studio mixed the album. The audio was mastered by Grammy winning engineer Stephen Roessner (Calibrated Sound, Saxon Shore) and was cut to lacquers by Bob Weston at his Chicago Mastering Service. The LPs are pressed on high quality green/ smoke swirled vinyl from Gotta Groove in Cleveland.
UFO Över Lappland started playing in early 2013. Three of the members were already playing together as The Magic Lantern, an improvisational experimental post-rock band that had started in the mid 2000s. (The Magic Lantern has an ep released on Burnt Toast Vinyl.) The band felt like they wanted to move towards more space-rock/kraut and focus more on playing live than just creating in the rehearsal place and gradually became UFO Över Lappland. They recorded some songs, created more, played live, recorded more songs, and started planning for a physical release. In 2016, Fluere Tapes (Stocklholm) released the album as a limited edition cassette release. One of those tapes made it all the way to the Sulatron Records office in Germany and they wanted to release the songs on LP and CD. So, in 2018, the UFO debut record was released on Sulatron. UFO Över Lappland received some European media attention from psych and kraut focused media as a result of the release and the band has played live in Umeå with touring bands, as well as other venues in Sweden with a planned German tour interrupted by the pandemic. The debut vinyl pressing sold out and was re-mastered/re-issued in 2021 by Burnt Toast Vinyl.
UFO Över Lappland press:
“..As debut albums go, it’s one of the finest in the genre that I’ve heard, highly recommended.” – The Terrascope (from the founders of Ptolemaic Terrascope and Terrastock)
“Terrific spacerock jams set to Krautrockish motorik rhythms.” – Psychedelic Waves
“These are hypnotic tracks that extend what Harmonia and Neu! were exploring in the 70s to what Camera is doing today and beyond. Hypnotic tracks, spacey sounds, trancey basslines, and repetitive guitar riffs take us from hovering UFOs over the frozen tundra to the deepest depths of space ala Pink Floyd’s ‘A Saucerful of Secrets.’” – Henry Schneider, Exposé Online
“Psyche, Space and Kraut from Swedish Lapland, who create their very own cosmos, which lives primarily from hypnotic repetitions. UFO ÖVER LAPPLAND set out for a psychedelic Krautrock landing” – Thoralf Koß, Musikreviews.de
“The music is incredible!” – Bob Weston, Shellac, Chicago Mastering Service
“Primo motorik Swedish fuzz” – Lars Gotrich, NPR Music/Viking’s Choice