Press release

We started in October 2004 and we never stopped. Some things were shot to shit and some pulled through. Some were left along-side the road others were offered a lift. What can I say; making records is a strange and beautiful process. We went about things pretty much the same way we always do, and by we I mean myself and Rolf Klinth, the co-producer of 'The Loyal' and owner of the studio where we recorded. This time I played all the instruments except for the drum parts on three songs, and one guitar lick, courtesy of Pontus Levahn and Mathias Johansson respectively. It has to do with saving time and since I am a fan of creative immediacy, playing the parts myself, enables me to move in between ideas at my own pace. Early on, I set up some basic ideas and guiding points to navigate by, these were as follows:

1. Make an album, and not a collection of songs.
2. Use a limited amount of instruments and tracks, but make every sound as big sounding as possible.
3. Let most lyrics revolve around the concept of loyalty.
4. Make songs that are easy to transform into the live format. For my part, I feel content with what we accomplished. Nuff said.

One criticism that I have heard of my debut album, 'Is My Head Still On?', was that it sounded too 'polished' and 'slick'. This is pretty ironic, seeing that not a single song on the album, took more than one day to record. Still, I somewhat understand what the critics are referring to, and agree to some extent. I lack the patience of doing thirty takes in order to get a guitar melody sound half way decent. I much rather do two takes, and cut and paste a killer loop out of it. This is a working method that easily erases the semi-sloppy 'live feel' out of a recording, and creates a 'computerized' precision which I find appealing.

On 'The Loyal' we have used the old 'cut and paste' method to an extent, but have also added a lot of 'live and uncut' elements to try and blend the two. All the vocals consists of two takes, one in the left speaker and one in the right, a method that was brought to my attention by the late Elliott Smith. It creates a very eerie and panoramic feeling that works really well with the songs and theme of the album. During the Loyal sessions, Rolf and I decided to bring in a third party for the mixing and the choice fell on Peter Katis. Listening to his work, for example 'Instinct' by Denali and both Interpol albums, there wasn't a doubt in my mind concerning his capabilities. But still, after spending two weeks at Tarquin Studios, it was with a great sense of relief we returned to Sweden with eleven beautiful mixes in the bag. This was the first time during the past ten months I really felt confident about my accomplishment.

For a short period of time I felt at ease. Only to wake up the next day, realizing every song on the album was performed too slow. But that's just the way my mind works I guess. La di da, la di da.