Editor’s info:

Mats Gustafsson and David Stackenäs deliver a fir-soaked album of "Swedish Mountain Blues" just for you.

Excerpted from KEN VANDERMARK'S Liner Notes: "Listening to the music on this album by Mats and David, and considering its reference to the Blues (in title at least), I am left to ponder how strongly Black American Blues music is ingrained into the cultural DNA of even a middle-aged, white, middle-class citizen of the United States. Also I am forced to realize how foreign those methods of expression might seem to artists born into European history. Perhaps this subconscious content of American Blues is as significant a component in the difference between the sound of American improvised music and its European counterpart as the issue of "time."

...so I think that this set of pieces is about a feeling, if it is meant to be connected to the Blues. And the feeling here is bordered by the somber baritone hymn that begins and ends the album. Inside that frame are a series of heartfelt statements made by close European friends of mine- but even though they're close to me I realize that I experience their music as a foreigner. When I listen to this material it's colored by American ears, and no matter how much time I spend in Europe with European artists I know that I will always be the American in the band."