Through numerous versions the elviramadigan.com site has been a vital part of the whole phenomena which is now an established artform under the name "Elvira Madigan". For those unaware of what Elvira Madigan really is, one might need to learn quite a great deal to understand the artistic importance the name carries today. But for starters, one needs only to grasp that Elvira Madigan consists of only one person.
Only one person is involved in the writing, recording and producing of the albums released up until today. Only one persons visions and blood, sweat and tears goes into the creative process and it all started out of mere accident. Since only one person runs this website (and has done so from the beginning) - namely "the artist himself", - namely me, I might as well start telling my little story from the top. So here goes...
- From the juvenile vessel ("unknown" as "Andalucia") and its' sudden departure from a scene it surely never really joined, did the first ever thoughts of an unshackled, intruigingly artistic and completely unhinged creation come to life. Well, that is actually jumping a little too far back in time, but keeping those years of toil and frustration in mind and it becomes easier to understand why things ended up the way it did. After that band split up - a band which I had personally put all my faith in - I was rather eager to start a new band right away. But this was during the time "grunge" was at its' peak after having basically killed of the vibrant metal scene in the western world. (Side Note: I remember one of the few gigs we had with Andalucia together with three grunge bands. They all played "I'm still alive" - or what the heck that song is called - with Pearl Jam, and the headlining band (no it wasn't us...) even played it twice!)
Anyway, during those days if You chose not to play grunge, then it was hard finding people who weren't hellbent on playing only Death Metal. And at this point in time I knew for sure that Death Metal was not for me... Heck! I wanted to be a bassist playing like Yngwie Malmsteen! Haw! And as much as I laugh at those stupid ideas today, I must somehow thank the fact that I did. For after a couple of years, I had neither bandmembers or means to do something with all my riffs and songs I had put together for a longer period of time up until then. This eventually lead to me giving up every single dream of becoming a "rock star" - a la Mr Malmsteen.
In late 1997 I was more frustrated than ever over the fact that I seemed to write an enormous amount of material without means of expressing it. I had invested in a studio in the last few days of "Andalucia" but since I was only playing bass (with "the fingers" so to speak, and not with plectrum) at that time I found it rather hard recording electric guitars and especially when alot of my more serious material was based on scales. I do say "serious" because I had recorded some 70+ songs with more ridiculous lyrics. -Songs one throws together in an afternoon and manages to record it completely the very same day.
What is more important during this time is the fact that my interest in music started to expand drastically and my focus on songwriting escaped the scale based riffs and solos and focused more on bands like the latter "Marillion" but also on Black Metal, Folk, and non-metal acts like "Tori Amos". I was also completely fed up with all my material I had written up until then. Don't get me wrong here, since I liked the melodies and riffs and felt they had potential, it was just that I grew more and more aware that my songwriting wasn't really my own. I did - as most others - adopt known formulas to make music. I wrote practically all my songs on structures like "verse - bridge - chorus - verse - bridge - chorus x2 - solo - chorus - end), and this bugged the crap out of me! All my lyrics (in English) were all the same: I more or less unknowingly picked up phrases I heard on a dayly basis - rewrote them slightly and used them in my own songs thinking they were mine (this all happens subconsciously of course). Being a quite busy recordconsumer myself I am sad to say that this un-originality regarding the lyrics goes for about 95% of all bands out there, metal or not. Phrases like "spread your wings" and "fly away" or "sail away" is used so frequently I suppose noone today can say who used them first. As for popular music; It can hardly escape anyone how the same cheezy "love" phrases are practically never excluded in the lyrics. They are all obvious part of an unwritten law or agenda, and I just wondered who the hell wrote those laws in the first place? And how come everyone seems to blindly follow them without question. I knew my intentions with music was never that. Whether I had known it or not I defenetly had never intended to do something else than my own creative music.
With this enormous revelation in mind I sort of dropped everything to start from scratch. And thus... Elvira Madigan was born. I just didn't know it yet.
Since I had given up all ideas of living out of music, or even releasing an album it was rather easy to take a large step aside from what I commonly wrote in those days to start writing music only inteded to please my own taste. It would be the perfect journey for me alone in order to just explore what I could do creatively with music without any thoughts of what anyone else would think. More or less without knowing it, Elvira Madigans whole concept - which stays true to this day - was formed here. If I felt like a riff or melody suited more than one song - I would just go with it and use it in as many tracks as I wanted (I do keep this only within the albums though). The genre of music wasn't even something I thought about. The music was going to come out the way it did and whether it was going to be Black Metal or at times not even Metal at all was not given one single thought. I started ferociously expressing myself and before I knew it, I had recorded a first set of songs that I - only for fun and for my own shelf - put down on a demotape called "Varsel". We are now at the end of 1998 and I sat with a conceptual piece of extreme avant-garde music that was fiercy underproduced, cold and sung in Swedish - and it was awesome!! I did for the first time feel I had really accomplished something. I used spare time (and designing/printing posibilities) on my current day time job to fool around with the name Elvira Madigan and just for the fun of it started making democovers and even albumcovers. Nothing was for real though but I had a blast and somehow through this began to think about perhaps doing something with my newly found apparition on tape. But it would have to wait.
I had had such a good time recording and thought the result was so much better than I could have ever imagined that I without thinking much about it started the second recording session immidiatly after having finished the mixing of "Varsel". What I recorded the entire year of 1999 was to be the album now known as "Blackarts". At this point - even though the album is an established part of Elvira Madigan discography - I didn't even think about making a CD. In the autumn of this year I was convinced to start my own website - since I had picked up on basic html programming. So from here on Elvira Madigan made the leap from being played solely in my own livingroom to being available for all. A crude site with some rather poor mp3-samples hit the web close to the winter in 1999 and suddenly I started getting praise for what I had done. I mean, this was music that I thought -although highly melodic - would be too extreme for people to like, much due to the wide range of genres featured.
Without contemplating much, I continued recording along the very same path in early 2000. I somehow realized that I was actuarly heading somewhere now I understood I would have to do something with my material. I had my little project name and featured it on the web with lyrics, music and everything that comes with that, but I didn't have anything to sell. As I was now starting my third recordingsession (which would spawn the highly acclaimed album "Witches...") I felt I had quite some impressive stuff in my backpack I had to deal with before finishing what I was working on. I didn't want to end up with album after album only featured on the web without any possibilities to get a copy on a CD. And "Blackarts" was such a formidable piece of art with its' extremely conceptual music that I knew that album would have to be the first one out should Elvira Madigan ever go into printing. A trip to England - to for the first time see one of my favourite bands "Skyclad" had me promoting Elvira Madigan as my own band and it became more and more obvoius something was needed to be done. It dawned on me that I had landed with some sort of responsibility and was not only working my butt off in the studio for my own ears only.
So I made some crude promos of the album and send them out to a few companies, but before even getting eventual replies I had by summer of 2000 applied to start my own recordcompany since I figured noone would be interested in dealing with such a hardheaded tyrannical individual as yours truly. See I though "Blackarts" was good enough as it was and had no plans of rerecording it if a company was interested in inking some sort of deal. The obvious lack of funding felt more like an chunk of enormous charm instead of a liability. I was also hellbent (and still is!) to call all the shots in Elvira Madigan or I wouldn't devote myself to this extent to the art at all. I mean, had I come this far all by myself and had ended up with a result that was exactly how I wanted it I surely didn't see a need for "external interference". And once I had figured I could do this all by myself - managing a small recordcompany that is - I felt there was no need whatsoever with a standard recorddeal!
In the autumn of 2000 (a full year after being finished mixed) the selffinanced digipack version of "Blackarts" was finally available for anyone who wished to spend cash on my "band". Needless to say I was stunned after getting raving reviews in many of the web-based fanzines. The first ratings were all 7/10 or 9/10. In one Russian 'Zine it even got awards as best newcomer and best self financed album. I had started this whole thing only to write and record music fitting myself and I was met like this! Keep in mind that the mastering of the album was somewhat messed up so the soundscape wasn't as rich as need be. Heck, I was stunned. I even went back to England again to sell the CD at the first "Bloodstock" festival at great personal financial expense. I called this my little "promotion tour" and it also carried me to "Sweden Rock Festival" which - contrary to the trip to England - became a smaller triumph.
Even though I was well on my way in profiling Elvira Madigan as a quite interesting artistic entity right now, I never really thought as if I was part of any scene. I didn't compare myself to any other recording artist since I was doing everything for the sheer fun of it, and out of my own (rather slim) pocket. I didn't photgraph myself properly in order to promote Elvira Madigan (OK, I had some really crude images that I never really liked which I was forced to produce for webzines... But I had just cut my hair off and never liked the way I looked). I didn't have an alias at this time or a really cool autograph. Remember, I had realised several years earlier that I was never going to be a professional musician so I never considered how my real last name not really works well internationally or the fact that I would be signing autographs. Whenever someone wanted to get their copy of "Blackarts" signed I was shamefully unprepared with a pen to sign and always felt quite surprised.
Somehow my intentions with my art had come through with an enormous precision. Many seemed to graps instantly what I was trying to do. I suppose there were more metalheads out there who - whether they knew about it or not - were frustrated just as I over how alot of imagination was beginning to slip out of the music scene. Band after band playing Power Metal got signed and the productions were always rich and smooth without anything original (note that I am using the past tense rather wrongfully here, since all this applies today as well). It's almost like the more the industry pays the bands, the less creative and original they become. Personally I am a huge sucker for underproduced stuff as long as the intitial intentions are graspable. I own demotapes from the early Death Metal days of bands that sound poorer on the CD:s they eventually came to record. I never wanted to see Elvira Madigan lack in creativity and it dawned on me that my first demo "Varsel" was good the way it was. I had - up until just before leaving the mastertape of the album "Blackarts" for manufacturing thought that I'd always rerecord that album one day. But well on my way to create one of the most essential pieces of the Elvira Madigan discography I realized that would never be done. Partly because I had so much new material waiting to be put on tape but mostly because I loved that first set of songs the way they were. So I quickly added all the main tracks to the "Blackarts" albums bonussection and started calling the demo "the selftitled - unreleased album". And that was how a demo became an album!
Well it seems I did take a little step aside here, so let's return to the era of time we last covered in the Elvira Madigan biography. I am away on my first promotion tour where I rent stalls and sell my CD:s. It is quite an original idea since I can't see any other simular "salesman" (sure, many sell studs and patches but noone is selling their own CD). I am promoting an album that is about one and a half years old while at the same time I know I have something quite else smouldering on tape at home of which there only needs some additional work. "Witches - Salem (1692 vs 2001)" is finished mixed in the autumn of 2001 and once it hits the market everything changes in my musical world. Here and there people found out about Elvira Madigan through the album "Blackarts" but once "Witches..." gets out the raving reviews multiply beyond control and people have a hard time understanding just how small my project really is compared to the major releases. But before I start sending the CD out I am a complete nervous wreck and am in doubt people will like it as much as they liked "Blackarts". With hindsight one can easily see I was proven utterly wrong, thankfully. But I myself felt "Witches..." was such a more deep and involving album that most people would never grasp it. It starts off with - not one - but two instrumental "introductions" which is more or less unheard of, and the album itself is more diverse than ever and by no means trendy or made to fit a market. But once more everyone understands me completely and I almost get royal treatment on the web or while away on my second promotiontour (which this time only takes me to Sweden Rock Festival).
My first licensing deal pops up out of nowhere and shortly afterwards a get several requests for licensing. However, the Death Metal historical value of Stockholms gets the better part of me as I ink deals with "Sound Pollution" and the newly started "Black Lodge". Well, we even begin our cooperation before the recordcompany hits the streets! It seems Elvira Madigan is something they want as an initial part of their backpack while starting up. As soon as I am convinced that they have no intention of corrupting my creative process I feel nothing else but excited and happy for the attention I get on their behalf.
Now the era of re-releases begins as "Witches..." gets remastered and repackaged as well as re-released in the spring of 2003. It feels enormously gratifying to not having to spend time and effort on promoting everything myself. I have also in January finished recorded the covers album "Angelis Deamonae - Wiccan Aftermath" which is the direct result of a drastic need for pause due to a worn out creator at the time "Witches..." was finished. It is though unfortuanly subject to delay for release due to the re-releases. But it is a rather understandable situation since EM gets repromoted at a larger extent and is met for the first time by a huge part of the metal press as well as record-consumers. And it would have been a strange situation launching this act with an album featuring only covers knowing what I had already recorded up until now. So I am at piece with the situation although the gap in time between "Witches..." and "Angelis..." might seem a little long by a certain group of people who were subjected to the first edition releases. Anyway, in the autumn of 2004 "Blackarts" gets re-released as well. This album is completely re-issued compared to "Witches..." which only got a smaller face lift (due to it's already high standard). "Blackarts" is re-mixed in the newly rebuilt Madigan Studios and re-mastered and re-packaged. And I finally get to see the album as it was intended to appear in the first place.
In January 2005 "Angelis Deamonae - Wiccan Aftermath" - the somewhat delayed coversalbum finally hit the streets. And this is the point in time when I write this, so I await patiently to see how it is recieved.
PS: In April of 2003 I started recording the new album!
