”Get them before they get all trendy and lame”

I was just on www.pitchforkmedia.com to check out what new records were out, something i do every morning. Enough about that what i wanted to write about is not my morning routine but a commercial I saw on pitchfork. The commercial was for shoes and said ”Get them before they get all trendy and lame”. It struck me as kind of od but then when I thought about it this is exactly what fashion is about these days. It's fashionable to be out of fashion and it's trendy to not be trendy. This strikes me at first as something very postmodern just as kitch becomes chick as popular culture becomes high culture, the social status of being uncool becomes cool. I took a look on wikipedia to see if maybe it's not at all a postmodern thing. It's seems that fashion for the upper classes of the oxident in history has been something very important to be up to date with. It seems as well as the uppe class vas very aware that they dressed in the same way and took some pride in this. In the begining of the 1800 the upper class at least thought that they dressed the same way all over the oxident. Something that can be seen as something similar to the trend of being un trendy is that the lower class tried there best to immitate the upper class fashion, this irritated the upper class wich led to fast changes in fashion so the lower class could not keep up. Today when class is not as big of a seperation of young people (i am very aware of there still being class differences) instead you cultureral capital is gained from being first with a fadd when people immitate what a cooler group has already done they do what the lower class did to the upper class during the 1700s and 1800s. If you want to dig deeper in cultural capital and subcultural capital with young kids i deeply recomend the book Club Cultures by Sarah Thornton. The book is about the rave culture in England during the 90's.

Well thats all i had to say im working on some tracks but I have problem finishing tracks instead I just start new projects but hopefully I'll finish something soon.

/Jonas

Good songs:

The Apartments - Help
Bad Brains - Stay close to me
Violent Femmes - Blister in the sun
Ali Farka Toure - Bakoytereye
Tortoise - Speakeasy

Frans

A new year's promise

Hello all eager readers!

Over two Ariman cups of tea and coffee, me and Aron had a conversation this afternoon. We talked about the passed times, regretting all our mistakes. Many of these stories included alcoholic beverages. We agreed that something has to be done. There is a strong glorification going on about the surge of alcohol. It seems to be a deep rooted epidemic spreading over the western civilization. In the mid-teens, Norse kids encourage each other in drinking beer, wine and liquor. Maybe this tradition dates back to our viking ancestors, maybe we have the forerunners of French decadence to thank for the never ending "Livet är en fest" mentality. Anyway, we mourned the many hours of the last five years or so we've lost fooling around with the likes of Dionysus. There could have been many fine things created in all those drunk and hangover hours. There never seemed to be a line we could cross, we could never go to far. It was all like some Hakan Hellstrom song, discotheques, trams and broken hearts all in a drunken HAZE!

As I just wrote, ART could have been produced. Instead our humor turned indifferent and internal. Our friendship became based around parties and getting drunk. We started measuring fun in how drunk you could get, how stoopid things you could do and still live. We simply forgot the original human spirit we once carried within ourselves since childhood. We never aimed at discovering our true artistic potential, and above all: we didn't interact with each other. In between parties each man huddled in his own trench, cutting of all IRL and sober contact with his friends. This seems a very21th century phenomenon, the computerized life extinguishing pure human fantasy.

Next weekend me and Aron will be arranging a banquet. The rules are simple: all guests are to be intoxicated by the ideas and dreams of the others. No booze in to be taken part of. Cooking exiting food, listening to good music and possibly watching a movie by the end of the evening will be enough to please the participants in this experiment. Our hope is that all concerned will agree that finding substitutes for alcohol is a fair existence. That the hard partying of the twenties will be replaced by true stimulus. That only having some drinks about once a month is a far healthier life, both for us and our wallets.

This is something to believe in. It may seem boring or even Christian to you people. But have yourselves a thinker. Listening to music while *not* stoned... if you get the picture. Sick and tired of this end- & useless intoxication. Let's try to set a good example!

//Frans, brooding deep inside what's left of my moral

Stapelfestivalen

Great news for summer! Frans and Josef will most probably perform a live set at the so called Stapelfestivalen. This festival takes place in Västra Hamnen (the West Harbor), Malmoe between July 24 and July 26. Exact date and place will be published as soon as we get to know it ourselves. Originally, Cloud Study was the band signed up for this event, but as Fredrik will be having a family vacation at that moment, Frans will take his place. This means we probably wont be calling our selves Cloud Study, instead perhaps Swahn Study or Frans Cloud, we'll see bout that. We'll perform tracks from both the Cloud Study and Frans Swahn portfolios, and we intend to blend the songs to a minor marathon. If you want to see the first performance of your lifetime (I guarantee you will will bring you more) come to the West Harbor around July 25. See you there!

Thoughts for Summer

This is Frans behind the keyboard, reporting on the progress of my music making. The last weeks I have been occupied by things that weren't of musical matter. On my spare time I have been able to make some music, though... I have come up with a couple of songs, the best I have uploaded on my mypace (myspace.com/fransswahn). The songs are based around samples of jazz, funk and rock songs by such great names as Bobby Hutcherson (Verse from the album Stick Up!), the Meters (Stormy from the album The Meters), Television (Prove It (1974 version) from the bootleg record Double Exposure) and an Esquivel song that turned into some kind of dub. Other artists I have sampled in songs that are still in progress are Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Astrud Gilberto and Circle Takes The Square. I've made attempts at combining samples from different genres into funky hip hop beats.

Ableton Live has been a close companion, although I doubted the reliability of the program when it all of a sudden gave up on me some weeks ago. However, I managed to get back on track and now I have begun the recording of a new wave song à la Pylon, a pastiche of a 50's ballad and an advanced chord progression bossa song.




Making music with the BMS (myspace.com/brokenmixersessions) is oddly enough still a thing I like, and long to do. Alas, teaming up with'em hasn't been easy. I enjoy the solo music making. The problem i that if I get stuck in the middle of a tune there is no one else there to help me out. Therefore some song tend to never be finished. Oh, thats a lie; none of my songs are finished. I dream of putting 5 of my best songs onto a record and mail it to producers, record companies and festivals. My only problem is that I never get satisfied with my results. This summer I must make myself, as we say in Sweden, get my thumb out of my butt, and JUST DO IT!!! I really want to do some concerts, either with or without the people of BMS. Once we talked about throwing a party somewhere in Lund and performing our songs. Perhaps this plan is still a plan. We'll see when Josef and Fredrik return from their two weeks in Thailand. Our friend William has been employed as poster paster by the Malmö club Inkonst. For us, this could mean possibilities to perform at one of Skånes best stages.

This fall we have a gig, improvising music to Victor Sjöströms film Körkarlen. This will be an interesting experience, since none of us has done anything like this before.

I'm visiting Adam in Stockholm this weekend, and I really look forward to meeting the hip-ass people of our capitol. I'm so tired of this village I could die. In June me, William and some other people are going to Berlin for ten days to delight ourselves at Berghain etc. Yeah! After that I might train down to the French Riviera via Amsterdam, along the Rhine, Alsace/Lorraine and Geneva/Montreaux. Trips to the family in Varberg and Karlskrona are compulsory in July. Can't see any time for work or music, YUK!

This blog is a super swell idea. We are a couple of guys who need a place to post our musical and artistic ideas and tales of our experiences. Unfortunately, the sole participants so far has been me and Jonaz. This means that the goal of A Swedish Taste of Technology is yet to be fulfilled. I hope for this blog to be of great use for us, and other readers. Please spread the word about this dawning avant-garde movement. It's about time that Sweden sees a full artistic movement of genuine quality. Especially in these times of icons like Amanda Jenssen and repetition of retro-guaranteed-to-make-U-dance-"new wave"-ish and French house music. Man, I'm bitter!

Well, just so you know it: Things WILL actually boil here at Swedish Technology. Whether it will be me or we who make this joint jump only time can tell. I hope for a posse of never before beheld magnitude. Aiigght???

Frans