HORFORSTAELSE
LISTENING COMPREHENSION (MANUFACTURED RECORDINGS)
Label:
MANUFACTURED RECORDINGS
Born out of the instant high of first hearing the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop", Dan Personne and Klas Bjorkman threw out their hard rock records and formed a band together with creative/doer Anders Sjolander in suburban Stockholm.
Taking advantage of Sweden's close proximity to London, they shuttled back and forth to explore punk and new wave and scoured Rough Trade for the latest sounds.
This gave birth to Horforstaelse, including new members Mats Wigerdal (formerly of minimal synth legends Kitchen & the Plastic Spoons), Orjan Magnusson and Olle Ofverberg in 1980.
"Forlast Javel" (which roughly translates as "overeducated bastard") is one of the keystone DIY punk 45s of the era.
Casual ranting over a dizzying bassline and a scrappy keyboard, Horforstaelse channels bands like The Fall or The Desperate Bicycles but through an intangible Swedish filter.
The band moved a bunch of copies of the record through its own distribution network, but as the story usually goes, the recor d garnered little attention.
With the punk era starting to wane and Swedish labels increasingly prioritizing English-language bands, there was no one willing to take a chance on Horforstaelse.
Thankfully for us, the band went into the studio again in 1982 to record 8 hitherto unreleased songs, making up the backbone of this collection.