Helena is recording her second solo album (X): guide to the Aerosol Grey Machine Studio (II)

The studio has buttons and machines that you can only dream of, but still the machines would be nothing without Christoffer Lundquist! This is my view from the listening-sofa!!

This record is mainly done by computer so this is what it looks like when it comes to life.

I remember the first time I came to the studio and saw Christoffer , he looked like a brownie with his beard and running around in the snow with his clogs :o)

This violet button is my favourite lamp, diode, in the studio! Nice isn´t it ;o )

Helena Josefsson - H.J.

2008 World According to P, C & C (VII): TWATG 2008 released

"The World According to Gessle" was released May 2, 1997, it's now back, bigger and better. At least that's what EMI and Per want us to think. Are they right? Thomas Evensson, from TDR, got a little chat with Per himself regarding the re-release of this, among fans, widely liked album. The album was released May 9 in Germany and will be released May 14 in Sweden.

Per Gessle has been recording a new album in English since January 2008 at Christoffer Lundquist's AGM studio and they will keep on working until September 2008.

LJdM

The thing is that the album wasn't available at all anymore! I happened to notice this by chance at the EMI office in Stockholm and nobody could explain why it had been deleted. So I decided to put it back on the shelves, but of course with added material I know some people are interested in. First of all I wanted to make the re-release special. So basically I just asked myself what I as a fan, would want from an album like 'The World.' And the most obvious thing to me is 'behind the scenes' -material, like the original demos for instance. If you're really into an album it's always interesting to get to know how the working process got started and so on. On this release we're getting no less than 20 demos, of which only one has been released before, that being "June Afternoon," and that's not even counting the six B-sides from the singles that are on the first CD. The three Jonas Åkerlund videos of "Do You Wanna Be My Baby?," "Kix" and "I Want You to Know" weren't included but will be available somehow as downloads. It's not yet certain how though. Also missing is the Electronic Press Kit.

I haven't really listened to this album for many, many years and yes, to my surprise, both Clarence Öfwerman - who was with me during the new mastering - and myself loved it! I can hardly remember recording it though… Just fragments, bits and pieces. Don't ask me why… I remember that the basic idea was to use the Gyllene Tider-band since we just had done the very successful 'Återtåget' tour and the band sounded extremely tight at the time!! GT is still a brilliant power pop group if you ask me!! But it only lasted for five six songs if I remember it correctly. Then Christoffer, Jens and David from Brainpool came in and changed my life forever. These days I prefer to do my English work as the soothing sunny Son of a Plumber. But hell yes, someday I'll make the definitive ultra-catchy-power-pop-guitars-skweeked-to-13-sort-of-record! It would be nice. I have it in my system somewhere. It pops up every other Saturday night when I make silly dance moves.

I wrote many of the songs during the GT tour. To my (and to my family's) surprise I always seem to unwind from the crazy tour schedules writing new songs… I don't know why, it's always been like that. Maybe I get bored playing basically the same songs every night. I need new blood in my system… new stories, new truths, new lies.

TWATG was not "almost a Gyllene Tider album". Like I said before I only wanted to use the lads as backing musicians, I felt songs like 'Stupid,' 'Do You Wanna Be My Baby?,' 'Reporter,' 'Elvis in Germany' and 'T-T-T-Take It!' would fit this beautiful combo perfectly. Just the way it worked recording Roxette's 'June Afternoon' with these guys. But I was only partly right. Like I said, after a while we ran out of freash ideas.

There's nothing I can talk about at this point but you know me… there's always something waiting around the corner"

Per Gessle

Helena is recording her second solo album (IX): playing with water

Two days of recording this week. Day 2 included water pistol war with Christoffer Lundquist´s family and I and his youngest daughter Agnes played while Christoffer worked with his tweezers. We made a house to the wooden mouse Muffi and a king´s crown and a cloak for him. And in his little cardboard house we made a cave with a bat in it and a tunnel, and some stairs and so on. Until she fell asleep in the sofa listening to the drum machine going round and round and round!

Martinique surprised me by borrowing a car after his job, and by 22.00 he came to us in the studio to pick me up, oh what a great surprise! He brought some liquorice, fruit and water that tasted great because he knows that the water in the studio has a strange taste that reminds me of something that comes out of your bottoms. He had his new perfume on too! Then he listened to the three finished songs. To my delight he was very happy with them but unfortunately we didn´t get anything to listen to at home. Then we went home to Malmö as I fell asleep in the car…!

Now I don´t have any time booked in the studio until June 2nd but then we will work for three weeks straight. The dead line is June 20th, when everything will be mixed and finished! In the mean time Martinique is making the artwork for the album!

I want to show you what the studio looks like! It is an old stable that Christoffer and his wife, architecht Ylva Lundquist, have turned into a studio. The house on the picture is where the family lives, and on the left side you see the barn (the studio).

With a symbol of good luck on the door!

Here you can also see the drum-room.

Helena Josefsson - H.J.

Helena is recording her second solo album (VIII): from the hammock

Visit my first blog! You find it in the menu of my Official Website. I would like to tell you a little about how the new album is proceeding! So stay tuned!

I collected loads of inspiration before the recording- first flamenco dancing in Jerez, Spain!

And then skiing in Funäsdalen, Sweden! And now I´m so energetic it hurts!

The first session was three days at the beginning of February at AGM. April was singing time.

Two days of recording this week. This is what I do when Christoffer Lundquist needs to go for a ride on his moped to clear his head- I can sit in the garden and look at all the flowers!

Here you can see my view from the hammock! The birch, the golden flowers and the studio entrance, with Christoffer´s moped outside.

It is only Christoffer and me now in the studio, he plays all the instruments except for the drums that Erik Hjärpe has prepared. We had so many instruments on “Dynamo” that now we want to do the contrary, as few sounds as possible! We finished three songs and they felt energetic and simple. We were surprised to find how little sounds you need to make it feel complete!

Helena Josefsson - H.J.

Comments by fans:

Hej Helena! Vad kul att du bloggar. Jättebra skrivet och härliga bilder! Hoppas att vi ses snart, kram Fia

Sofia Josefsson, from Klagshamn, Malmö, SE

FANS: OUR MAP OF THE MOUCHE'S WORLD

I have found many fans over the world in the official Helena Josefsson Forum, in the HJ Fanclub Portal, in the official websites, in myspace, in youtube, ...

There is no Official fanclub but all these fans could be in artificial different sections of a big hypothetic fanclub. If you are a fan of Helena Josefsson, you can be sure that there are much more fans out there.

LJdM

2008 World According to P, C & C (VI): Let The Right One In - Movie with Gessle song wins top award at New York film festival

Swedish Director Tomas Alfredson receives a cash prize of $25,000 and extra marketing power for his coming-of-age film "Let the Right One In" by winning the Founder's Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival that concluded in New York City today.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008)
Låt den rätte komma in

• Director: Tomas Alfredson.
  Producers: Carl Molinder, John Nordling, Lena Rehnberg.
  Screenplay: John Ajvide Lindqvist.
  Starring: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl, Mikael Rahm.
• EFTI / Sandrew Metronome, 2008

Winner of the Nordic Film Award and the Kodak Nordic Vision Award
at the Göteborg Film Festival, 2008.

The film, which features a song recorded by Per Gessle, will not be released in Sweden until October 2008. During a question-and-answer session, The Daily Roxette asked Alfredson about the Gessle song "Kvar i min bil," which – as Per had told before – is given a prominent place in the film. In one scene, the lead actor is shown putting the the 45rpm single on a record player so as to listen to it. The director explained that the male half of that group (Per) had had a popular group (Gyllene Tider) back in the '80s, the time period in which this movie is set. Looking for a song that fit that era, but not wanting to use an instantly recognizable song, he asked Per (who he said he was an acquaintance of), if he could write a new song in the same style as those earlier GT hits.

Novelist John Ajvide Lindquist adapted his best-seller for the screen to tell the beautifully touching tale of the first romance of 12-year-old Oskar and the girl next door, Eli (who also happens to be a vampire). The Tribeca jury commented that the film was exceptional "for its mesmerizing exploration of loneliness and alienation through a masterful reexamination of the vampire myth." The film already has North American distribution in place and Variety also writes that a US version is in the works.

LJdM

Well, currently I'm very pleased to be involved in Tomas Alfredson's movie 'Låt den rätte komma in.' It's a brilliant flick and will kick ass everywhere.

Per Gessle

MOUCHETUBE - May 08: SOAP's playlist

• Son of a Plumber's playlist
  

Alberto Fuente - LJdM