DELAYED

After the magnificent album "Framtiden är ett svävande skepp förankrat I forntiden" (The future is a hovering ship anchored in the past) from 1972, ÄLGARNAS TRADGARD (Garden of the Elks) went into the studio again to record their second album. The first album was actually a loosely improvised studio experiment that turned out very well. They were trying to do as much as they could come up with in the studio, with Moog synth, medieval instruments, sound effects, bells and god knows what. "Framtiden är ett svävande skepp förankrat i forntiden" was actually nominated for the Swedish Grammy music price.

The band however split up before the second album was mixed, and it was put on the shelf, until now. It's incredible that we now, 27 years later finally can hear the album. When they were putting the album together, they decided to mix it the way they would've done it back then. I can only say that it's a shame that this album have been kept secret for so long. Even though this "new" album has many similarities to the first, it also has differences. "Delayed" has a clearer structure than the first album and it's also heavier at times. Even though it's hard to find any bands to compare ÄLGARNAS TRADGARD with, there are some reminiscences CAPTAIN BEEFHEART, HAWKIND and KING CRIMSON.

Of course I also have to mention the nice foldout CD-booklet with a beautiful cover artwork by Jan Ternald. Jan also did the well-known cover artwork for Bo HANSSON's "Ur trollkarlens hatt". The band ÄLGARNAS TRADGARD doesn't exist today, but some of the musicians are still active today in rather famous Swedish bands such as FLÄSKKVARTETTEN and TWICE A MAN.

This posthumous release is just as good as the sole debut album, however different it may be. Actually they will disband in 76 without having to managed to release these 74 recordings.

The only real two links you will find between these albums are that all tracks on this album are similar to the most out-of-place track Ring Of Saturn on their first album: this album is definitely more of a scoarching space-rock /psych rock than the debut that was more in the acid-folk prog realm. The other link is actually reverse as the second part of the Almond raga track brings you back to the debut album with its strong indian music flavour. The last track Childhood Trees veers into more ambient music with soft vocals monotonous chants not being really on par with the rest of the album , but does not alter the average album contents.

For those into heroic fantasy , the artwork of the booklet ies reminiscent of a cross between Roger Dean worlds and Pallas's The Sentinel artwork but done on computer imagery. Impressive fold out mini-poster but no real link with the music.

I couldn't wait to get this one after being so impressed by their debut. I called their first one a bit of a monster, I mean it was unique and not for the faint of heart. This one is called "Delayed" because the band had recorded it, but then split up before it was released. So 27 years later here it is. Quite the story. This one does have some similarities to the debut, but it didn't hit me the same way at all. I'm probably in the minority here, but for me their debut is easily the best of the two, and of course my favourite.

"Takeoff" has a great beat to it once it gets going. Pounding drums and some vocal melodies early. The bass to follow is throbbing. I have to say that the drumming is probably the most impressive feature of this album for me. The spacey ending seems to go on and on as it blends into the next song "Intersteller Cruise". Percussion is added a minute in. About 3 minutes in we get an uptempo melody with pounding drums. Sitar comes in, giving this passage a strong Indian flavour. A great rhythm after 8 minutes. Floods of mellotron arrive as the song calms right down before 12 minutes. It ends with a spacey soundscape with piano. "Reflection" is less then a minute of mellotron.

"Almond Raga" opens with drums and violin. Guitar comes in, and like on the first track it sounds distorted. I don't like it. The tempo picks up before 2 minutes. Violin takes over before 3 minutes followed by a pastoral section with an Indian flavour. "Beetlewater" is my favourite song on here. It has an eerie intro that is replaced by an uptempo soundscape that includes violin. It brightens somewhat before 2 minutes.Some nice bass lines as drums pound away. The violin continues to be prominant. "The Arrival Of Autumn" opens in a pastoral way.It starts to build 1 1/2 minutes in. The annoying distorted guitar is back until it calms back down. It drifts along with keys, drums and bass breaking through occasionally. "My Childhood Trees" is spacey with strange, psychedelic vocals to follow. Ominous sounding flute in the intro and after the vocals stop. Vocals return. This is a slow moving and haunting track.

If you want to be adventerous check this band out. They have a unique psychedelic sound.

ÄLGARNAS TRÄDGÅRD (Swedish, meaning Garden of the Elks) released just one album in the early 70's but recorded another one in 73-74. For some reasons the album was released as late as in 2001, aptly titled Delayed. I hadn't heard their music before, and I was positively surprised by this one. It's mostly instrumental, with some hazy, spacey psychedelia as in Saucerful Of Secrets -era PINK FLOYD (also comparisons to HAWKWIND make sense), serenity-meets-edginess à la 70's KING CRIMSON, and a certain folk-flavoured Scandinavian air to it all. BO HANSSON is mentioned too in the earlier reviews

The track lengths are missing, but they vary between very brief and very long. I yet haven't listened to this many times enough to give more detailed comments of separate tracks, but the closing song I do remember very well. it is based on an Edith Södergran poem and it's sung in Swedish (one may ask why it isn't titled 'Min barndom' instead of 'My Childhood'). It's a very fragile and atmospheric track. I came to think of the art film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovski, or more precisely, one of its most poetic, dialogueless scenes with similar eerie music (camera slowly moving above the surface of the water with all kinds of small things and organic waste in it, remember that?). And the falsetto, introvert singing reminded me of Jonsi of SIGUR ROS.

An interesting, deeply artistic album, though most likely not for everyone's taste.

Collectors of arcane ethno-prog esoterica will remember the first (and, for a long time, only) album by Älgarnas Trädgård as a haunting mood piece: Space Rock without the Rock, and closely tied to older, more terrestrial pagan art traditions. The sudden appearance of a second album in 2001, almost three decades after the master tapes were mothballed and the original group disbanded, must have come as a complete surprise, not least for the new album's 180-degree reverse in style toward a more accessible psych-rock style.

It's hard to even credit the same musicians for both efforts, the difference is so startling. The later album is more immediately appealing (because it actually rocks, and hard), but the music lacks the unique, supernatural eeriness of the band's uncanny debut. Too many other likeminded off-planet explorers, most of them located south of the Baltic Sea in Krautrock Germany, had already staked out similar cosmic rock territory. But the Scandinavians brought their own flavors to the table, laced with a generous dash of the same Indian seasonings common in northern Europe at the time: sitars, tablas and such.

The atmospheric electric violin suggests a familiarity with the spacier ragas of early Amon Düül II, circa "Yeti". And the quotation from Gustav Holst ("Mars, the Bringer of War", of course) links the band to the more earthbound symphonic rock trends of the 1970s. Only on the last few tracks is the band's original magic restored, in particular during the ghostly finale of "My Childhood Trees", a shifting seven-minute aurora of ancient Nordic mystery, with a spectral voice from somewhere above the Arctic Circle drifting into the album's long, repetitive fade-out.

The production is a little rough around the edges, sounding not unlike an impromptu live-in-the-studio recording. But the unpolished vitality of the playing compensates for any lack of refinement, to a point where the album appears almost implausibly fresh today (and thus would have been ahead of its time in 1974). Even after 27-years in limbo, there's enough residual enchantment here to bump my otherwise conservative evaluation up a notch, and send a belated shiver of psychedelic excitement down a sympathetic spine.