The new "black companion" of Lars Bygdén is the song of sadness and hope

Tuesday at Midsommarkransen. Four more, although in the northwestern villages, it still feels like less degrees. On Lars Bygdén's kitchen table is a copy of "Dark Companion". The shape of the bird on the cover spreads its black wings, seemingly ready to rise. He began recording the record five years ago. On the last day of the studio in Östgötagatan, his wife had to go urgently to the hospital.

– There was a relapse into cancer. Ulrika was pregnant with our second child at the time and had started hurting herself again. The birth was terrible.

The first song of the album goes straight to the point: "Baby is gone / far in his dreams, I've changed / but I'm always the same / I will not, it's the way I was raised / and this day ends with the break of our hearts ".

"At home, there was a disease of genius and more and more, a sloping hill.We received the first diagnosis almost 10 years ago.At the same time, we are also in the middle of everything, even if It seems strange, it was a joke and good, comfortable.In the midst of all these pains, we were able to lie in front of the television and laugh at laughing "Farmer looking for his wife" at the hospital. manually adjusts to the situation.

Some songs of the new songs were already working with Lars Bygdén in his previous album "LB" (2012).

"Since then, I've been working with them until now and I've done it over and over." But not all the texts on the disc are written based on what has happened to us. also has political songs on that colored by the silly and sad world in which we live now.

In one of them, "Scandinavia" – a conscious spelling – He advocates that the low dullness marks our era as a dream of the already lost future. He sings: "The end is getting closer / our chances are diminishing / your awareness is becoming clearer with every sentence / the fall of Scandinavia / Scandinavia collapses / nobody listens / when I'm not. ; calls ".

– As soon as I listen today, I hear something other than when I wrote the words, they talk a lot more about the last period we had. The entire album is of course very influenced by this.

Lars Bygdén summarizes "Dark Companions", eleven songs that obscure in many ways. Darkness is a kind of thread that connects the collection of songs. Still, there is no theme theme like Pink Floyd's "The Wall" – a band and a double-disc that has followed him since he was ten years old.

He is proud of the end result and thinks his wife loved the record. His soundscape describes it as a marriage between Swedish "rhythmic" folk music, the "British depressive music" with which he grew up, and the American singing / songwriting tradition – a melancholy genre to which Bygdén had long been associated. In addition, he slid each song of his new record into a thin layer of electronic components. Use oscillators, filters and ring modulators that he has not yet fully published in his analog musical universe. "Resurrection now!" Soon turns into a gigantic Bowie movie with string shadows, directed by Emma Ahlberg Ek, created for a production of Albert Broccoli.

"For me, the music and the soundtrack have always been much easier to obtain than the lyrics, and the music often comes from within, like a gift from above.

Bygdén writes on his website how expressions such as the nerve, presence and honesty are mixed in songwriters But when the reality imposes in everyday life, it suddenly becomes very relevant and he composed the songs of "Dark Companion" for themselves.

Has song writing been more important to you these years?

"That means I could go to my room, and Ulrika wanted to do it too, I almost escaped sometimes to escape." The place was a refuge, it's something durable and familiar .

Can the music be painful?

– Yes, the last "Blackstar" of David Bowie is the record that I played the most. He was incredibly present and spoke to me a lot because he talks about his cancer. I always listen a lot. Maybe you can call that from the therapeutic point of view, he thinks strongly.

Have you ever had the ease of writing and talking about what happened to your family?

– Yes, I've been outspoken from the beginning. But I also want the disc to feel. I feel very welcome and then it must be felt and heard. And it was not only Ulrika who became ill, we had a relationship and a life together with two children in the middle of this illness. I wanted to sing about it too.

He noticed that it was easier for women to talk about what his family had lived and lived. Much of the help and support comes from the closest friends of his wife.

"They became my friends now, considering what happened," he said, adding once again that his situation was absolutely not unique. Everyone comes early or late in different ways in contact with cancerous diseases, a role in the younger years than others.

What do you think this record will represent for you in the future?

– a lot. I like to love what it's all about, I'm good at it. And I already have the feeling, when you and I sit here, discuss it, that this record will make sense for others. That would be very good. I hope people dare and can listen.