Arbete Och Fritid - Arbete Och Fritid (1973/2003 Remastered Expanded Edition)
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Album: Arbete Och Fritid - Arbete Och Fritid (Remastered Expanded Edition)
Released: 1973 (2003)
Genre: Folk-, Prog-, Jazz-, Avant-Rock
MNW - MNWCD 39
4th album from '73. A frenzy mixture of heavy traditional folk, waltz, tangos and jazzrock, ending with the cool "Ostpusten - Vaastpusten" songs which is a 19 minute jam filled with flipped violins, drums and horns. Worth the price alone !! - Record Heaven
Much needed reissue of this long-lived Swedish band's fourth album, from 1973, with an excellent 20' bonus track from 1974 tagged on. Terry Riley's 1967 visit to Sweden and his work with these musicians when they were still just young ones in High School resonates here, and you get a weird and vibrant mixture of Riley, the Third Ear Band, bits of free improvisation and ancient Swedish folk music all blended into an excellent, droney whole. In the final analysis, Arbete Och Fritid must be counted among the most important Swedish groups of the 1970's. They played an incredibly wide range of musical styles. - Scented Gardens of the Mind
Their third album (fifth if you count the split with Kustbandet & the collaboration album with poet Rolf Lundqvist). This should not be confused with their debut album on Sonet, also with the title Arbete & Fritid. It contains mostly of Folk music from Balkan, Scandinavia & Asia. But the stand out track here is trumpeter Torsten Eckerman's "Vagen till Nyvla". Their playing is more disciplined here than on their other releases. The exception is "Petrokemi ..." - some thrashy, free jazzy one chord Kraut with wailing saxophone - Prog News
Before there was Hoven Droven and Garmarna, there was a heavy-folk rock band called Arbete and Fritid, the Jethro Tull or Fairport of Sweden (with maybe a bit of the Fugs thrown in for good measure?), with their heavy brass, electric guitars, fiddles and flutes making the 1970s in Sweden shake and rumble. They were alternately loud or elegant... vibrant and often quite wry. These early 1970s recordings were as amazing as anything being produced in England or the US at the time, merging all manner of sounds from hard rock to Medieval regality in a scattershot of musical madness. Quintessential late 60s pop with a folk flair.
They eventually evolved into a much harsher experimental band, far different from these decidedly folkie recordings, so if you hated them in the 80s, you might love them in the 70s, and vice versa. - CD Roots
The world of '70s Swedish left-field music holds many amazing gems, and Arbete Och Fritid ranks among the best ones. This album was recorded and released in Sweden in 1973. The 2003 CD reissue on Music Network's MNW imprint adds 20 minutes of bonus material in the form of a single piece recorded by the Swedish National Radio in 1972. At this point in time, the group consisted of Tord Bengtsson, Torsten Eckerman, Bosse Skoglund, lyricist Roland Keijser, and leader/artistic mastermind Ove Karlsson. Add Bernt Berger and Kjell Westling for the session from 1972. This album showcases a profound fusion of Nordic folk, psychedelic/progressive rock, and avant-garde music. You never know what to expect next. A saxophone solo can evoke Albert Ayler (in "Ostpusten -- Vastpusten"), a violin/cello duet section at the end of "Petrokemi det Kan Man Inte Bada I" brings a contemporary classical touch, while other cuts share interests with the likes of Alan Stivell, the Samla Mammas Manna, and You-era Gong. The first half of the album (side one on the original LP) consists mostly of rock-ified and freaked-out renditions of folk tunes, Nordic but also a Turkish one ("Elazig-Dans"). Festive, they boil just enough to be innovative and wild without losing the listener. Side two is more challenging, with some style-hopping within a single track. The bonus "Ostpusten -- Vastpusten" alternates between inspired space rock episodes and free jazz breaks, with a mock-Western finale -- the group pulls it out like a new Dutch swing outfit (think ICP Orchestra or Clusone Trio). Sound quality is not fantastic (some signal overload when saxophones and trumpet hit it), but this album has a lot to offer. Only three tracks have lyrics. The booklet of the reissue is very informative, but, sadly, in Swedish only. - François Couture, AMG
"Wow!" was also my immediate reaction to Arbete och Fritid's eponymous 1973 album. To be honest, I was geared up to be blown away by these guys, who have pride of place in the first lines of the notorious Nurse With Wound influences/admiration list, since well before this reissue was even in the offing. Having devoured the recent years' bounty of Swedish avant-rock arcana unearthed to whet our appetites, I knew to expect something special from this late revival. Arbete och Fritid (Work and Leisure) bore the reputation of a live favorite on the Scandinavian festival circuit and some crossover with the membership of the exciting Parson Sound/Trad, Gras och Stenar/(International) Harvester axis. Propitious enough, and the album's opening notes only served to confirm Arbete och Fritid as the real deal. I should say "note," a glorious sustained blur of brass and strings trembling with the potential to go anywhere. Oh Lordy!
Like the circle gathered around the creative compass of BoAnders Persson, Arbete och Fritid mainstay Ove Karlsson was inspired by the tape and drone experiments of Terry Riley, whose frequent visits to Stockholm throughout the '60s had stirred up and galvanized the local talent. Jazz, rock and folk musicians enlightened to the possibilities of the almighty drone, Karlsson, Persson and others began to blend techniques gleaned from avant-garde avatars like Riley and La Monte Young with the traditional melodies and rumbustious jazz-rock jams that went over so well at communal gatherings. Where Trad, Gras och Stenar appealed to the youthful rabble with Rolling Stones and Hendrix covers and the paraphernalia of Eastern exoticism and shamanism, Arbete och Fritid cleaved to Nordic culture and recorded infrequently. Adapting folk melodies, already steeped in the rich overtones of keyed fiddles, bird-like flutes and thrumming drums, to drone-minded arrangements of horns and electrified instruments, Arbete och Fritid made the ancient music of Sweden much more palatable to modern ears, without resorting to the crass tactics employed by later Scandinavian folk upstarts like Hedningarna and Vasen. Arbete och Fritid's revitalized versions of such tunes as "The European Way" and "Halling efter Ulrik Jensestuen, Valdres," a Gaelic-sounding reel executed with shiver-inducing echoes of Steve Reich and John Cale, parallel what Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span were doing concurrently for the music of the British Isles-and prefigure what Makoto Kawabata has done with Occitanian folk music in recent years. A Bulgarian melody even gets the full Para Dieswarts Duul acid-folk treatment with flutes and bells on the gorgeous "Dagen Lider." With the exception of Torsten Eckerman's "Vagen till Nylva," a jewel in a glittering Hosianna Mantra-era Popol Vuh acoustic setting, most of Arbete och Fritid's originals are short and, oddly enough, more conventionally traditional-sounding. But the churning "Petrokemi det kan man inte bada i," with its sputters of Ayler-esque sax and animated vocalese, brings Faust's Tapes favorite "J'ai Mal aux Dents," the Persson-axis bands and the jazzier (and rather more obscure) Flasket Brinner to mind. A 19:41 bonus track, "Ostpusten- Vastpusten," recorded in 1972 but previously unreleased, goes further out than anything on the album proper, with devotional chanting, tandem fiddle-and-brass explorations and percussion that builds from antsy patter to a tribal-jazz deluge that carries the players (and listeners) into an ecstatic state Fela Kuti could have embraced. A 12/12? And then some. - Gil Gershman
Arbete & Fritid were very much in the Silence-label underground style,comparable to Trad Gras och Stenar (with whom they shared some bandmembers).The band frequently changed members with cellist and composer Ove Karlsson being the exception.The musicians teaming up in Arbete & Fritid all had a experimental jazz background but were also inspired by avant-garde minimalist composers such as John Cage,Terry Riley and LaMonte Young.But it was the newly awaken interest in Nordic folk music traditions that got the band started in 1969 and it was the bands unique blend of folk music,jazz,rock and avant-garde experiments that made them one of the truly unique bands in the early 70's,long before anyone heard of world music.Arbete & Fritid was one of the most appreciated live acts during the 70's,maybe because you never knew what the concerts were going to be like.It could start off as a rock concert,as a meditative Indian concert,as a vital folk music gig or as an avant-garde jazz night;and before it was all ended you could be sure to have all your preconceptions turned around.These concerts would many times also include some half-crazy vocal tracks,in dadaist tradition.Arbete & Fritid have inspired many other artists to experiment with Nordic folk music and with the nearly 1000 concerts they played they opened a lot of people's minds for music without boundaries.Many of the lengthy jams that made up their gigs were never transformed into records. - APB
Incredibly eclectic and strange avant-rock band from Sweden. From what I can surmise, their lyrics are quite politically charged. But it's hard to surmise much when you don't understand Swedish. At any rate, Arbete och Fritid ain't gonna win many fans over from the Genesis / Marillion side of the prog rock continuum! They do, however, show some affinities with the RIO style of progressive rock. Several of Arbete's members were previously in groundbreaking Swedish psychedelic ensembles of the late 60s, such as Trad Gras och Stenar (Trees, Grass and Stones) and International Harvester. The arty, noisy, avant-garde leanings of those bands are expanded and developed further by Arbete och Fritid.
The first, eponymous LP is rather heavy on the Swedish Folk Music tip - 5 of the LP's 10 tracks are credited to "trad. arr.". About half of the LP is instrumental as well - and the vocals are a bit odd and are kept to a minimum. None of this is as experimental and flat-out weird as their subsequent recordings (no electronics at all), but this ain't no rock'n'roll LP for the most part (though they do a primitive-psych freakout thing on Side 2). It's all quite well done, the playing is spirited throughout and their choice of material is quite good. There's lots of trumpet and saxophone which, as a jazz fan, I really liked. I especially enjoyed the last section of "The European Way", which sounds like Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry jamming on a traditional Lithuanian folk tune. On most of the other pieces, they don't really 'jazz up' the folk tunes - preferring to play them straight (rather like Kebnekaise did, only with horns and violins instead of electric guitars).
Like many of the underground Scandinavian LPs I've seen, the personnel and instrumentation is listed separately. So, you know who is on the LP and what instruments are played, but not who plays what instrument. The instrumentation is largely acoustic, and dominated by trumpet, saxophones, flute, violin, drums / percussion, and cello. Typical rock instruments such as bass, guitars, piano, and organ appear on one or two tracks only. The personnel are: Tord Bengtsson, Torsten Eckerman, Ove Karlssen, Roland Keijser and Bosse Skoglund. The only name I recognize is Skoglund - he's a drummer / percussionist who went on to play with Bo Hansson, Archimedes Badkar, Christer Bothen, and Bengt Berger. Karlsson and Bengtsson are multi-instrumentalists who sing and play violin, drums, accordion, cello, guitar, and keys on the group's subsequent LPs. As much as I like this LP, I must say that you have to have a yen for warped folk music to really appreciate it. Prior exposure to the music of Samla Mammas Manna helps a little. If Tom Waits came over for dinner, I'd play this LP for him...
I am not sure when, or if, Arbete och Fritd broke up. Ove Karlsson and Ulf Wallander formed a mindblowingly wonderful band called Nya Ljudbolaget with percussionist Hasse Bruniusson (Samla Mammas Manna) and trumpeter Karl-Erik Eriksson (Ramlosa Kvallar). Thomas Mera Gartz recorded several solo LPs and is now a revered figure in Swedish underground rock circles. - Dave Wayne, New Gibraltar Encyclopedia Of Progressive Rock
1 Gånglåt efter Lejsme Per Larsson, Malung 3:06
2 Elâzig-Dans 2:48
3 The European Way 9:08
4 Slavvals 2:03
5 Halling efter Ulrik Jensestuen, Valdres 6:20
6 Nidälven 2:36
7 Petrokemi det kan man inte bada i 6:30
8 Dagen lider 3:56
9 Pols efter Steffen Henningsgård, Brekhena 2:38
10 Vägen till Nyvla 6:00
11 Ostpusten - Västpusten 19:41
Bosse Skoglund Trummor, bjallra
Ove Karlsson Gitarr, sang, elbas, cello
Roland Keijser Elorgel, tenorsax, harskramla, sopransax, flojt
Rolf Lundqvist Sang, visselpipa, lasning
Tord Bengtsson Elbas, munspel, piano, fiol, elorgel, kor
Torsten Eckerman Trumpet, slagverk, elorgel, piano, tamburin
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