Tedeborg has paid us a visit on several occasions over the years and always with work that is as cutting edge as it gets, solo or with artists such as reggae project Babylon North, Climb That G*dd*am! Mountain and the duo Misterioso II. (Aren’t they wrestlers?)
He’s been creating alternative rock music based on poetry for many years, focused on the work of Swedish poets.
Channeling poetry into music is hard work as we’ve often seen in the past and the majority of the artists doing it today (including Resmiranda, Le Lac Long 814 and Bulletproof Poets) are all Swedish, often working from poetry by French or Polish individuals as well as their own countrymen.
After releasing the album ‘You are not an object, but I am a subject’ earlier this year with his post-rock project Climb That G*dd*m! Mountain, Tedeborg now presents three new settings of poems by the Swedish poets Dan Andersson and Göran Greider in a “German rock format”!
That’s about as experimental as it gets and not exactly a shoo-in for Scandipop, or even Gaffa. But we’re here.
It is Dan Andersson’s words that form the basis for two of the EP’s tracks, namely the title track ‘Das bin ich’ (‘It’s me’ or ‘Here I am’) and ‘Nana Li’, which I assume is a name, possibly one of endearment, and both translated from Swedish to German by Willi Grigor.
Are you keeping up?
The opening track ‘In mir’ (‘Inside me’), based on a poem by Göran Greider, has its roots in the experimental mix of influences that are usually associate with Tedeborg .
You never know what to expect with Tedeborg and it kicks off sounding like it might be a song lost and found in the annals of Traffic in the 1960s. You might even start looking around you for an elephant’s eye.
Then it goes off into a style I’ve never encountered before, I can best call it Kraut Pop, before the real McCoy emerges as the outro together with a few muttered words of spoken German.
By comparison, ‘Das bin ich’ is almost Eurovision standard, complete with swirling synthesisers and a vocal statement that might have been made by Big Brother over a tannoy.
Then ‘Nana Li’ completes the trilogy with piano accompaniment from Alexander Sandstedt and what sounds like a plea from Heathcliffe to Catherine Earnshaw up on the wiley, windy moor for her love.
There is never a dull moment with Tedeborg. Sample some of them here.
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tedeborg
