Band Biographies

 

 

Lars-Olof Ström - Vocals
Sven Lorentzon - Guitar
Mats Segerdahl - Drums
Andreas Niemi - Bass
Jörgen Oscarsson - Keyboards

 

"The Roots of Echo" was started by Sven Lorentzon & Lars-Olof Ström, April 1990, in Gothenburg - Sweden, originally just known as 'Roots'. They changed the name to "The Roots Of Echo" in the summer of 1990. In 1991 they recorded their first songs on an 4-channel porta-studio with the help from some friends. In 1992 they recorded some songs from a live gig they did. The song "The Garden" was recorded and later released (1993) on a collection-CD called "Life's A Joke", with Swedish psychedelic and Indie bands, released by "101", a small fanzine.

 

The album "The Roots of Echo" was recorded January 1993 and released at the summer the same year. This album was put together at "MVR-studio" in Fjärsås, (a very old and dusty 8-channel studio) and received great response from magazines in Italy, Belgium, U.K. and The Netherlands.

"Let your freak flag fly" was another collection-CD The Roots of Echo were on, with "Answer".

Garageland Records liked the band's music so much that they decided to finance The Roots of Echo's second album; "Söabu". This album was recorded in spring 1994, and had a more folk music attitude than the first album. "Söabu" was released in February 1995.

 

All this time they had taken help from a bunch of musical friends (including "Sinkadus" who had helped them at recordings and live gigs)

 

1994 - Played live at Gothenburg Art-Rock Festival (G.A.R.F.) together with Sinkadus. In the summer of 1994 Mats Svensson (who is now also with Sinkadus, & later changed his name to Segerdahl), who had earlier helped the band at live gigs, joined the band.

In autumn 1994 Andreas Niemi joined the band. Andreas had at that time recently broken up his heavy metal band "Akilles" to hang the bass on the wall, but Sven & L-O phoned him and after they heard him play they asked him to become a member of the band. Shortly after that they changed their rehearsal-local from the ceiling-room at Sven's home deep in a forest to a larger place that was a bit closer to Gothenburg.

The Roots of Echo had now developed an very original psychedelic sound, with a lot of guitar solos and a pounding rhythm section. In April 1995 they went back to the "MVR-studio" to record "Total live ninety-five", a raw three track cassette including the new songs "As time goes by" and "Guilt" and a new version on "Catch this moment". In May the same year Jörgen Oscarsson did the keyboard work for the cassette.

In May 1995 the band played live with Sinkadus again, but this time as two separate bands. Sinkadus took notice of The Roots of Echo's new drummer Mats and they later asked him for his help. Jörgen Oscarsson joined as keyboard player in the band later that spring. After contact from Phil McMullen they released "As time goes by" as a EP for Phil's "The Ptolemaic Terrascope" in U.K. September 1995. Over 8000 copies were made and sold on three weeks. This EP is completely sold out.

 

"Nothing Between You and the Sun" was recorded spring 1996 at "MVR" and because the band was short on money, most of the songs were recorded in one take and with a lot of improvisation. The album was released by the Italian company Mellow Records in May 1997, and is considered by many as The Roots of Echo's most progressive and powerful record ever.

 

April 97 - The Roots of Echo did a live gig for "G.A.R.F." again, at Dojan, Gothenburg.

 

1998 - Due to Lars-Olof's health problems at the time, Mats' heavy involvement with Sinkadus, and Andreas' and Jörgen's own projects, "The Roots of Echo" was dissolved.

 

The group re-formed in 2012 as a project in order to manage the group's heritage and aiming at some future plans of the resumption of business, initially as a collaboration between Sven and Lars-Olof, then as a non-profit project run by Lars-Olof on his own.

 

Discography:

 

 

I'll let the final editing be done by someone who is familiar with the proper format of biography entries on PA. The source of the info is given at the top of the post - or you can just credit it directly to Lars-Olof, since he has kindly provided all the corrections.

Just one more thing that I noticed now in the beginning of the text - it says "Initially THE ROOTS OF ECHO were". That is incorrect. Doesn't "initially" mean "from the beginning"?

My suggestion therefore is to change that sentence to:
"The last line up before dissolving was", or something that fits this sites standards when a band has had different line ups.

Alternatively, it could be changed into just me and Sven, it depends on how you usually write line ups in cases like this. If so, I did more then sing and Sven played more then just guitar.

1. "The Roots of Echo": http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=10534

The last track, [untitled], is listed on RYM: http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the_roots_of_echo/the_roots_of_echo/, but missing on Discogs: http://www.discogs.com/Roots-Of-Echo-The-Roots-Of-Echo/release/2902928.

The line-up info now:

2. "Söabu": http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=10535

Would you like to help us with albums' info (see 2 posts above)?

Thanks!
Of course, please see above post 

Many thanks, L-O, the albums' info updated.