ARTIST: Kristoffer Ragnstam
TITLE: Sweet Bills
LABEL: Bluhammock Music
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 206kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 46m total
RELEASE DATE: 2006-09-00
RIP DATE: 2006-06-15
Track List
----------
1. Intro 0:42
2. Breakfast By The Matress 3:38
3. Man Over Board 3:32
4. Lonely Lane 3:18
5. #1 Money Hunter 3:54
6. Sweet Bills 3:46
7. Never Get Used To You 2:45
8. Born As A Lion 3:57
9. Too Close To The Curb 3:45
10. No One Told Me 4:07
11. If This is Life 3:36
12. Dr Give The World A Smile 3:53
13. Kayla 5:42
Release Notes:
While high-profile pop bands from Sweden were busily grabbing press attention,
their countryman Kristoffer Ragnstam was working under the radar screen, making
music that refused to fit the Scandinavian stereotype.
His sound was different - too different to ignore. Musicians took note, not only
in his country but in Germany and Japan. The media responded too, going
overboard with effusions that, at the request of this somewhat self-effacing
artist, we won't repeat here.
It's strange, when you think about it, because Kristoffer didn't play that many
gigs. In fact, he didn't even play any instruments, other than drums, and yet
managed to cut a solo demo that won him his first record deal. Soft-spoken, with
a wry sense of humor, he thrived primarily in recording studios, where he
apprenticed to staff engineers on sessions and then applied their lessons to his
own projects, working after-hours until crashing on the nearest couch.
On his U.S. debut, Sweet Bills, Kristoffer bundles the results into one of the
most idiosyncratic packages heard since the advent of Beck. Each track veers
unpredictably to the next: The wall-of-sound pop of "Lonely Lane," broadcast by
roaring guitars and thundering drums, gives way to the simmering funk of
"Doctor, Give the World a Smile." Mellow horns and backward guitar samples on
"Sweet Bills" explode into a complex groove that nudges surreal lyrics - "My
girl wants to be an astronaut/My boss wants to be a talent scout" - through
"Born as a Lion."
You can also sense a chronology to Sweet Bills. Echoes of sixties garage rock
permeate "Never Get Used to You," an eighties electronic dance hook slices
through "Man Overboard," and on "Keila" the music is timeless and the message
playfully twisted: "I've been waiting for you to call the last seven years,"
Kristoffer intones. "You see, honey, we've got a problem à"
As Kristoffer sees it, this overlay of irony and multiple musical influences
captures who he is, personally as well as artistically. "I'm honest with my
music," he explains. "No one pushed me. I got to where I am on my own."
It took him a while to start that journey, though. Kristoffer didn't really get
serious about music until he was fifteen years old. Growing up in KungΣlv,
slightly north of Gothenburg, he devoted most of his time to other diversions:
playing soccer and savoring the biscuits and cookies for which his hometown is
celebrated. Eventually, though, like musicians throughout history, he discovered
that girls seemed to take special note of guys who had a way with a song. With
that, he shifted gears.
Drums were his first choice. "It's funny, because I don't even like the album
that much, but I first noticed drums as I was listening to Money and Cigarettes
- the first one Eric Clapton recorded after he got clean," Kristoffer says. "It
was pretty boring, actually, but somehow the drums intrigued me. So I promised
my mom not to eat candy for a year, and she got me my first kit."
Characteristically, Kristoffer went beyond performance. He examined how the
drums were built, picked out some details he thought he could improve, and began
building kits on his own, in his mother's basement. His work appealed especially
to jazz players, but because of the expectations he placed on his own handiwork
it began to take more time than he could spare - up to three months - to finish
each assignment. (He did find time, though, to make his own kit, which he uses
onstage to this day.)
Kristoffer could barely play when he and a few friends put their first band
together. They couldn't play either, which is why the name they chose for
themselves, Blind, might not have been as suitable as, let's say, Deaf. "Just
imagine five guys who never even held instruments, trying to do our own songs,"
he remembers. "We had no success at all. But it was good for my self-confidence.
And it's also important that we never played covers. In fact, all I've