Lugnoro – Annorstädes (2012)

Band Lugnoro
Info: Annorstädes
Years: 2012
Style: Progressive/Psychedelic/Stoner Rock
Info: MP3 CBR 320 kbps
Info: Sweden
Time: Ozium Records
????? Tracklist: 71:37
Info: 165 Mb

Lugnoro is one of those sweet gifts from the Swedish underground rock panorama that the fruitful interaction between bloggers and internauts helped in unearthing.  The existence of the 5-piece Lugnoro, from Göteborg, had been suggested by Scandinavian good friends out at the Sludgeswamp after the release of the band’s debut EP Tellus (2009).

After that substantial, +52 minutes-long EP, shared for free on the band’s webpage, Lugnoro became the very first band entering the roster of what has become by now one of the finest reference Scandinavian labels for stoner, desert, psychedelic and retro-prog rock, Swedish Ozium Records, side by side with the older Transubstans Records. Lugnoro started out in 2007 and experienced several changes in line-up, especially before the making of Tellus in 2009. The new album’s line-up is the same as the tellus one, i.e., founder guitarist Emil Rolof, vocalist Björn Hansson, organist Mikael Edebro, drummer Carl Bauman and bass-player Filip Lange replacing former bassist Kim Stockfelt.

So another Swedish retro-sounding rock band? Yes! It is true that nowadays it is so common to listen to vintage –smelling rock in various declinations, or shades, all the range from flower-power-styled to psych to occult rock. Bands seem to pop up continuously and, incredibly, even get attention by magazines like Terrorizer, while fans are waiting from too long for new stuff coming from Witchcraft. Well, Lugnoro does not belong to the retro bands reported on Terrorizer, nonetheless they rule hard.  So the release of the début full-length, Annorstädes, via Ozium Records during April 2012 was a cool news indeed. Maybe because of their musical choice, Lugnoro don’t seem to be bothered by time. So if the guys stuffed over 53 minutes of rock in their debut EP Tellus, in Annorstädes they exceeded 70 minutes.  Another feature worth noting is that amongst the eleven tracks in the new album only one is coming from the Tellus Ep, the cool track Familjen. All the rest consists of brand new and unreleased music pieces.

Lugnoro play some impressive style of retro-sounding, keyboard-driven heavy psych-blues hard prog rock. Their riffs possess the bluesy groove and the raw heaviness typical of Led Zeppelin as well early Black Sabbath as although the melodic lines developed during their long jammings actually adopt solutions and follow patterns recalling hard progressive rock of the roaring 70’s in the vein of Deep Purple, King Crimson, Uriah Heep and so on.
Lugnoro’s style is therefore absolutely “classic” or, if you prefer, absolutely not innovative. There’s no trace of modern music here, as these guys are so good in being “pristine” that you may forget that you are listening to stuff recorded between 2008 and 2011.  Lugnoro’s sound is heavily, heavily based on keyboards, in particular Hammond organ and mellotrons, as well as on bass and guitars. Lugnoro are surely not the only modern retro-sounding band employing  Hammond organ. Let’s mention, for example, Italian Wicked Minds or the Swedish hard rockers Bigelf. However the use of keyboards in Lugnoro seems overwhelming. So it may not just by chance that the band started the new album basically with a Hammond organ solo as intro (Organism) to the first big keyboard-driven track, Barndomen.

Actually in many occasions the intricated interaction of organ and a remarkable jazzy, pulsating bass makes the real prog core of the song/jamming. Mid- to up-tempo, guitar riffs are nested into that proggy core and contribute to the infectious dynamics of the tracks, or else alternate with organ, bass, and sometimes with drums, in frenetic sequences of cool, funky to psych-bluesy solo jammings.  Percussions are intriguing as well. It sounds jazzy in its often frenetic tempo changes and is definitely subdued to the overbearing keyboards and strings. Yet drumming contributes powerful blows as well as soft brush touches when it is the case, and the production is such that nothing coming from each musician is missed. Vocals too have a great role in Lugnoro. The intricated structure of the jammings and the songs in general is so solid that Lugnoro’s ballads would easily flow as instrumental only. But the addition of the great vocal parts make these songs killer. Vocal parts are both solos by Björn Hansson and choruses in different styles, ranging from folkish Crosby-Still-Nash & Young-styled falsetto (e.g., in track Sjalalik) to baritonal singing (e.g., short refrains in Familjen). Björn Hansson’s voice is not particularly “hot”, deep or refined, but is so lively, intense and natural in its small imperfections that it is able to impart Hansson’s singing the spontaneity of live exhibition without necessarily employing that (forcedly) dissonant style heard in Magnus Pelander.

One of the features that sounded “old” to me in Lugnoro’s album is the fact that some intervals are included between the longer tracks that are either dominantly acoustic (like the melancholic piano-driven track Annorledes) or weird-sounding (like, for example the grotesque polka in “Alfons”) that was not that unusual to hear as fillers in old albums by hard-sounding bands. I noticed this because I remember that when I was listening to the old albums looking for “heavy rock” I was skipping those “weird” melodic interferences … As I mentioned above, production in this album is top-notch. However the album is far from sounding too polished. Lugnoro’s music sounds “pristine” both for the musicians’ religious affection to the orthodox sound of the 70’s and for a certain degree of rawness retained by the mixing/mastering process. To the technical strategies one should also add the sense of improvisation permeating the frequent jammings. Like in well-known jam bands, these features are surely able to bring the freshness of live exhibitions into the album.

Lugnoro’s new album Annorstädes is available from Ozium Records.
Get hold of Annorstädes CD and of the digital version of Tellus EP from Lugnoro’s Myspace page. Then, wear your old bell-bottomed jeans and your flowered vintage shirt, and have a feverish, two hours-long full immersion in the heavy rocking 70’s …

Tracklist:

1. Organism (2:22)
2. Barndomen (8:57)
3. Själalit (9:03)
4. Alfons (1:19)
5. I gamla spar (6:37)
6. Annorledes (2:06)
7. Familjen (8:12)
8. Illvilja (11:35)
9. Annorstädes (5:37)
10. Förlust (6:53)
11. Sagan om Skönt (8:56)

Björn Hansson (vocals)
Emil Rolof (guitar)
Filip Lange (bass)
Mikael Edebro (organ)
Carl Bauman (drums)

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