ANEKDOTEN

Anekdoten are masters of prog with incredible musicianship and very powerful song structures. Until All the Ghosts are Gone is one of their triumphs along with their earlier masterpiece Vemod.

The Scandinavian band effectively capture a unique soundscape of heavy guitars interspersed with majestic keyboards. Nicklas, Anne, Jan and Peter are virtuoso musicians and it is all wrapped in a beautiful atmosphere of emotional lyrics sung with power by Nicklas.

Shooting Star is a 10 minute proggy track that seques masterfully into Get Out Alive. This track has a sensuous mellotron sound and acoustic layers.

If It All Comes Down to You is a melancholic piece featuring the flute of Theo Travis from King Crimson and Steven Wilson. Again the vocals are emotive and sweetly sung to add to the melancholy nuances. The textures of light and shade are augmented by strong keys and guitars but that flute is divine. It adds a pastoral Canterbury feel that is unsurpassed.

Writing on the Wall sounds like King Crimson with lashings of mellotron that remind me of In The Court of the Crimson King. The lead guitar break is beautifully played and there is a great section of phased keys and heavier layered guitars. This is a master-class of musicianship.

Until All the Ghosts Are Gone opens with haunting flute, peaceful verses, then builds into a symphonic Chorus. The instrumental break is Theo's twittering flute sparring off with Nicklas mellotron. It is a beautiful and ethereal soundscape that transfixed the ear.

Our Days Are Numbered is an instrumental that closes the album with a heavier sound once it builds. The guitars are a machine gun attack with an off kilter drum tempo by Nordins. The lead guitar soars and dives on this with some crazy time sig changes. Half way through it breaks with a sparse atmosphere of saxophone sounds by Gustav and a doomy baseline by Jan. This is tremendous stuff.

The album is deservedly one of the highest ranking Heavy Prog albums. It definitely merits my 5 stars too. You know a masterpiece when you hear one and this is it.

Looking back at all those Post Eighties Prog Bands I wrote about since the early 90s Swedish formation Anekdoten is one of my most beloved ones. That's why I still feel very lucky that I have seen the band twice, and for sure a beautiful and skilled female musician playing on a Mellotron is a pleasant rarity!

Anekdoten is rooted in 1990, as King Edward, performing songs from King Crimson. When in 1991 Anna Sofi Dahlberg joined King Edward this inspired them to intensify their rehearsals, to write own compositions, and to rename the band into Anekdoten. Next Anekdoten released two demo-tapes under their new name, in 1991 and 1992. With the second demo things started to roll for Anekdoten, because several Skandinavian progressive rock labels showed their attention and invited Anekdoten to make a CD on their label. But the band preferred to release their debut album entitled Vemod on their own label in the Spring of 1993. The press hailed the obviously King Crimson inspired and Mellotron drenched compositions and Anekdoten started to become a hot prog band! Two years after their highly acclaimed debut Anekdoten released the successor entitled Nucleus, this album showcased the band its huge potential and was also welcomed very warmly, by the fans and the press. This review is about their third effort entitled From Within, in my opinion the band at their artistic peak. Incredible how Anekdoten shifted from an obviously King Crimson inspired band into a progrock unit with an own musical identity, with trademark Anekdoten elements: a hugh tension between the mellow and heavy and bombastic parts, embellished with fiery and howling electric guitar, an aggressive and propulsive bass, splendid drum work, an omnipresent Mellotron, and often melancolical vocals, adding dark undertones to the music.

The only obvious King Crimson inspired track on From Within is Groundbound featuring biting Fripperian guitarwork and intense Mellotron violins, in the vein of ITCOTCK.

In the titletrack and the songs Kiss Of Life and Slow Fire the climates frequently change from mellow with twanging guitars and soft Mellotron to propulsive and bombastic with fiery guitarplay, an agressive bass, majestic Mellotron eruptions and excellent drum work, very compelling music.

And I am pleasantly surprised with the variety of the songs.

Firefly : Mellow electric guitars, cello and piano.

The Sun Absolute : A simple basic rhythm, coloured with vibraphone, cello and an intense Mellotron sound.

For someone : Twanging acoustic - and electric guitars with fragile vocals and cello.

Hole : This highight contains awesome shifting moods, from a heavy wall of Mellotron and guitar to soft interludes featuring sensitive vocals, guitar and Mellotron, and delicate instrumental passages, embellished with vibraphone and Hammond organ.

After all those years I still consider this Anekdoten album as a masterpiece, it keeps on carrying me to a Swedish Progwalhalla, To Retro Prog Heaven .... and hail to The Tron!

After the neo-prog dominated 80s, the entire world of progressive rock exploded in the 1990s with so-called prog revival bands jumping onto the scene. Bands like Spock's Beard, Dream Theater, The Flower Kings, Porcupine Tree, Tool, Symphony X and Thinking Plague were reviving the vast wealth of sounds that were incubated in the 1970s which mostly lay dormant through the music industry dominated 80s. The Swedish scene was one of the most productive with bands like Anglagard taking the lead with its outstanding debut "Hybris" in 1992 but right at its side was another Swedish band from Borlãnge that formed in 1990 and delivered its first powerhouse debut in 1993.

ANEKDOTEN formed by Jan Erik Liljeström (bass, vocals), Nicklas Berg [aka Nicklas Barker] (guitar, Mellotron, vocals) and drummer Peter Nordins took a different approach than many of its 90s counterparts. Eschewing the blatant Pink Floyd inspired space rock, the symphonic prog excesses of Yes and Genesis or the nerdy avant-prog workouts inspired by the Belgian chamber rock scene, ANEKDOTEN looked rather back to King Crimson, specifically its "Red" album and created a heavy style of art rock that implemented a bantering Rickenbacker bass, Fripp-ian guitar angularities and a turbulent atmospheric delivery. VEMOD was the debut album and in Swedish means "sadness" or "melancholy." The album indeed delivered the perfect mix of instrumentation that offered the perfect downer vibe.

Soaked in mellotron, the album featured a veritable mix of creepy atmospheres augmented by the lugubrious cello playing of Anna Sofi Dahlberg which contrasted starkly with the heavy rock workouts of the chugging guitar, bass fuzz and percussive pummelation which in tandem delivered an oddball mix of psychedelic folk style passages with heavier prog rock that verged on drifting into extreme metal territory. Also notable was the unique tender vocal style of Jan Erik Liljeström who added that detached Thom Yorke melancholy before Radiohead latched onto the same idea. VEMOD finds the extra touches of guest Per Wiberg delivering grand piano runs as well as Pär Ekström adding the occasional flugelhorn and cornet sounds.

The opening instrumental "Karelia" sets the mood with eerie old school mellotron synth sounds that burst into the KC proto-metal "Red" dissonance which dominate the band's first two albums before drifting off more into psychedelic territories. Given the uniqueness of ANEKDOTEN's sound, the opener allows an acclimation period before the album begins its vocal dominated aspects on "The Old Man & The Sea." By this time the various complexities of the instrumental interplay had been well established and then allow the cryptic English vocals to add an entirely new dimension to the band's overall effect. Taking things much further than KC ever did with "Red," ANEKDOTEN demonstrated that KC had plenty of life left after its sole offering of that particular phase of Robert Tripp's creative output and added a 90s spin that fit in with the alternative outsider music that dominated the decade.

The album perfectly balances the brooding slower passages with the frenetic and even jarring brashness of the heavy prog workouts that find the guitar, bass and drums in some sort of trance inducing psychosis but the skilled musicians maintain firm control of their seemingly uncontrollable beast and demonstrate an unshakable restraint. Perhaps the most "Red" sounding of all is the "ballad" "Thoughts In Absence" which evokes that same more chilled moment of "Fallen Angel" however ANEKDOTEN crafted a much darker, even depressive take on KC's 1974 classic. The juxtaposition of the spidery guitar parts with mellotron-soaked ambience gives ANEKDOTEN a sound like no other and despite comparisons with bands like Anglagard, Magma, Ruins and others, ANEKDOTEN remains to this day a unique prog force that somehow conjured up the perfect blend of bombastic hypnosis.

ANEKDOTEN was no one trick pony with a constant evolution throughout its run through the 90s and beyond and although every album is brilliant in its own way, for my personal tastes i still find this debut to be my absolute favorite of the lot. It not only captured the spirit of the 70s greats that launched the entire prog scene but gave it all a serious upgrade in a way that was quite effective with a multitude of interesting diversions into everything from classical chamber psychedelia to post-rock like repetition. Needless to say the band mastered all the Frippian techniques of "Red" and took them to the next level and beyond. Despite all these astute analyses, the album is just a pure joy to experience from beginning to end and one of those that i never tire of.

Everything blends together impeccably and no element is so dominant that it becomes monotonous. ANEKDOTEN delivered one of the most artful blends of classic prog with a new spin on VEMOD and delivers musically exactly what the eerie cover art depicts. While considered a form of retro prog, VEMOD excelled at true originality above and beyond the influences. This is one of 90s prog's greatest moments IMHO. ANEKDOTEN would take the extremities even further on the following "Nucleus" before abandoning the harshness altogether in favor of a more psychedelic and progressive take on the style of the space rock revival of Radiohead. While those albums are interesting, to my ears VEMOD is one of the band's finest moments.

I remember still vividly the time that I started to write about prog for Dutch SI Magazine, in the early Nineties, and as a Tron-maniac I was asked to review a few interesting new bands from Skandinavia, named Anglagard, Landberk and Anekdoten. Listening to these bands turned out to be a mindblowing musical experience, what a wonderful, often compeling and Mellotron drenched prog this was, wow! This trio speerheaded the New Wave Of Skandinavian Prog, from Paatos to Beardfish, from White Willow to Wobbler, and from Morte Macabre tot Par Lindh Project, to name a few. After all those years Anekdoten has become my favorite Skandinavian prog band, and I was lucky to witness the band two times (De Pul and De Boerderij). In my opinion Anekdoten is a band that rises to the occasion on stage, more powerful, more compelling, and, last but nost least, a more lush Mellotron sound. On Waking The Dead, Live In Japan 2005 you can experience that unique Anekdoten sound in its full splendor.

Heavy and agressive with a thunderous rhythm-section, propulsive guitar riffs and floods of Mellotron violins in Monolith, From Within and Kiss Of Life.

Hypnotizing with twanging electric guitar and soaring Mellotron female choirs in Hole, and the previously unreleased track Moons Of Mars and The Sun Absolute.

Slow rhythms with a very compelling atmosphere featuring a melancholical undertone, often embellished with a lush Mellotron violins sound in Gravity and the previsously unreleased track This Too Will Pass.

The final composition Sad Rain (additonal bonustrack on the remastered CD version of their debut album Vemod) is 'a wet dream for Tron-maniacs', due to the intense Mellotron violins soaken eruptions, an obvious tribute to In The Court Of The Crimson King. Because Anekdoten started as a prog band playing King Crimson compositions, but the band succeeded to incorporate the King Crimson hints with lots of interesting own musical ideas, thumbs up for their incredible musical development. Anekdoten is not only my favorite Skandinavian prog band, but also one of my favorite post-70s and 80s progressive rock formations.

Highly recommended .... to be more specific, a must!

WOW!!!

You call it Heavy, I call it "Eclectic".

In many ways a refreshing going back to their roots. Anekdoten has been one of those bands with releases every several years (every 3-4), this one came after a whooping 8 years silence, and to my amazement a very good album indeed.

IMHO this Swedish ensemble had one of the most amazing debut albums over the past few decades with Vemod back in 1993, with indeed a heavy KC influence. With the exception of Nucleus they did drifted into a more Scandinavian melodic music (nothing wrong with that) as Gravity is one of their best releases overall. In spite of that, they would kept their sound very much intact and only characteristic to 'Anekdoten'.

This particular last release, I found it my self right in the middle of all their previous albums, as they do mix music from both aspects of their repertoire (Eclectic and Melancholic), maybe with a more Melancholic tendency (again nothing wrong with that), blow me away the first time I listened and has grown on me exponentially after several spins.

Mr.Theo Travis (from KC fame) has contributed with Flute, and together with the Sax of Gustav Nygren have expanded their sound even more this time around.

I personally over the past few years, have come to adore wind instruments on my progressive music addiction.

Is also nice to see that Per Wiberg is back on the spot (from Vemod appearance) on Organ, and and invited Marty Wilson-Piper on Lead guitar on the album name track.

Of course, the double Mellotrons continue their omnipresence, as from the beginning of their musical career, together with Nicklas's guitar solos.

UATGAG is in my opinion a typical Scandinavian/Anekdoten affair in every sense, and at the current time writing this critique, this album is one of my favorites from this great Swedish Band.

The shortest track clocked at 5:07 and most of the material is long enough to keep you entertain. The heaviest and most eclectic song is without a doubt 'Shooting Star' followed by 'Our Days are''

My favorite track is definitely 'Our Days'' mostly because it has enough textures of heavy/melancholic passages (with some passages really recalling Anglagard, with that heavenly Mellotron presence) but what in my mind makes this track so special and good in this release, is the constant signature changes with the addition of Sax for the first time, mouth drooling!!

Judging by the way Anekdoten release new material, is probably about time to have a new album, one can only hope for'

I got my self the Japanese/Arcangelo Edition, as have an extra CD with alternate mixes of 'shooting.., If it all' and Our Days'' (which are a great inclusion in my opinion)

Overall this album would be a great addition to any prog music collection and for the Anekdoten fan a real delight. 4 Stars

Fourth album by the impressive Anekdoten!!!

So far, I have only listened to their first four albums, and without a doubt this Gravity is the one I like the most of all of them.

Unlike in From Within there is no fillers to be found here maybe with the exception of the rather anodyne The Games We Play (Sigur Ros influences here), it is not as dense as Nucleus, and without a doubt the band sounds much more cohesive and mature than in Vemod.

I even like Niklas Barker's voice better on this album! It's certainly still the band's weakest point, but here at least he sounds in tune and doesn't bother at all.

So as soon as you like heavy prog with tons of mellotron, give Gravity a try! And if you've never listened to Anekdoten, it also seems like a perfect album to immerse yourself in their discography.

Best Tracks: Monolith (hypnotic and with incredible Mellotron work), Ricochet (I especially like the verses, performed with exquisite taste, and of course the great keyboard solo), The War is Over (beautiful acoustic guitar work) , What Should but Did not Die (impressive keyboard arrangements and an anthological crescendo for what is perhaps the most intense track on the album), Gravity (the best composition on the album altogether, highlighting a punchy bass in a great instrumental interlude )

My Rating: ****

Something about Japan - and perhaps more specifically the experience of stepping onto a Japanese stage in front of an audience of enthusiastic local fans - seems to bring out the best in Anekdoten. As with the earlier Official Bootleg, Waking the Dead captures them in the course of a Japanese tour - this time in 2005 - and just like with that album, the live context and atmosphere really helps bring their music to a level they've only fleetingly been able to capture on their studio albums.

This time around, Anekdoten dip their toes into some almost post-rock-esque sections, especially in their quieter moments, and between that and the setlist of more recent songs this album has enough of a different sound from the preceding Official Bootleg that the two releases complement each other magnificently.

Whereas From Within had Anekdoten teasing out the more ornate, gothic, atmospheric prog side of their sound, Gravity finds them leaning back into some of the alternative rock influences which had been more prominent on their debut but had been mostly dormant since, revisiting and updating a sonic territory they'd otherwise had somewhat moved away from. It's still recognisably Anekdoten, mind you, but an Anekdoten more willing to get a little quiet and acoustic than they had been for some time, an Anekdoten who sound a bit closer to the mainstream here than they would on any of their other studio albums.

A live double album from Anekdoten's early peak, offering excellent, raucous, heavy renditions of their material. Most of Vemod and Nucleus is here, as are a number of non-album tracks (a good chunk of which would eventually see release on From Within), and the overall standard of the performance is fantastic. Whereas the studio renditions of the track in question are decent enough, they don't capture the energy that Anekdoten has live, and I'd say that if you've previously restricted yourself to the band's studio albums you've only heard half the story, at least as far as this early phase of their career goes.

Anekdoten returned back with a modern mixture of prog, alternative rock, Canterbury and alternative pop influences. On average, the songs are calmer than before. The album does not bring anything revolutionary but shows that the band changes over time.

The first song "The great unknown" flows well and shows the band in a good shape. Canterbury influences with hard KC elements can be heard on "30 pieces". A great calm flute section can also be heard. "King oblivion" is a soft melodical song and one of the most catchy in their repertoire. "Every step I take" is a welcome instrumental trip with echoes of post-rock. "Stardust and sand" is another soft and semi- acoustic song to reflect. "In for a ride" brings an organ sound reminiscent of Caravan times.

Though not a bad album, it is not very memorable either. We must give Anekdoten credit for not resting on their laurels and providing an even album.