Gather Jan Schaffer, George "Jojje" Wadenius, Björn J:son Lindh and some other heavy dudes, give Ralph Lundsten free hands to steer this ship. Can such an all-star attendance fail? The result that this Swedish music elite came up with 1978 was named Discophrenia. But is it disco? Is it good? Is it top of the pops, crème de la crème? And, not least, can you dance to it?
Ralph Lundsten was born in 1936 near Luleå (nothern Sweden) and is one of Sweden's leading innovators in electronic music. He started his journey in this genre already in the 50's and built his own studio, Andromeda, where most of his music has been recorded. His studio is now located at his home in Tollare, Stockholm, where he has lived in his pink villa Frankenburg since 1970.
Ralph has done everything from difficult, avant-garde, minimalistic music to new age to ballet to symphonies, both with electronic and classical instruments. On some of his albums he invites guest musicians, as the above mentioned, which expand the sound in the music. Ralph's discography is large and his music has reached outside of Sweden. Within his relatively narrow genre he is, in my understanding, a pretty big name.
Personally, I've got a somewhat strange relationship to Ralph's music. In my CD collection, I have probably a dozen of his albums I bought during my teens. I don't remember how I discovered him, probably I bought one of his records based on an enigmatic cover that attracted me. I liked "deep" music at that time and it seemed to me that Ralph might give me what I was looking for. Exactly what I wanted I could not define which made the search a little harder. I thought so-so about every Ralph album I bought, but all the time I had the idea it was close to this mystical thing I was looking for, so "the next album ... there I will find it." And so I bought another one of his albums, thought it was OK, but not more, saw a glimpse of this shimmering light again, bought another one in hope of salvation, then another one and so on ... Suddenly I had lots of Ralph Lundsten albums in my shelf, more than of any other artist, and people thought I was a real Ralph Lundsten fan. But the truth was I really didn't think he was better than many other artists I was listening to. Sure, there were a lot of beautiful creations and it was different than many other albums I had, but honestly, I thought it was too much new-age over it. Eventually I found a CD I fell for, and that perhaps was what I was looking for - Cosmic Phantasy - a musical journey into cosmos. Then I bought no more Ralph Lundsten albums, except today's theme which was hard to resist when I found it on a flea market for a reasonable price, on vinyl.
Discophrenia is not disco, at least not the way we usually define disco. It is an instrumental album throughout, except for a woman's suspected moaning on Luna Lolita, maybe Ralph's own Love to Love You Baby? On some songs, you'll get quite a funky sound, such as on the title track, and with some good will you can hear some Talking Heads in one song or two, mainly thanks to Ralph's use of a synthesizer sound that's also commonly used in many of TH's songs. Personally, I like the parts best where Ralph steps back and let his fellow musicians play the lead role, then you get really beautiful and groovy creations, such as Spring Fever. The opening track Andromedian Nights is also a nice song.
Ralph often creates playful music, I have in principle nothing against playfulness in music, but in Ralph's case, I think he often takes it too far. It's as if it's playing/joking with a musical touch, instead of music with a playful touch. The music ends up in the background and you just hear a musical jester, unfortunately, often with a different sense of humor than I have. For example, Cat Symphony with Jojje Wadenius on bass and guitar. This could perhaps have been something really good, but since the guitar has to imitate a cat meowing you loose a lot of the music. Or am I boring?
Many of Ralph albums are compilations, and many tracks appear on several different records. However, I think, but am not sure, that most of these songs (if not all) are recorded for this album. I let it be a little unsaid. The mentioned Andromedian Nights is on the later album Cosmic Phantasy and also some of the other songs on Discophrenia I have seen on later albums, but not at any earlier ones.
So, an album that is a little different than many other Ralph has done, as it is a bit funkier, relatively many of the "mainstream" rock instruments are used (although they also show up on some of Ralph's other albums) and is a visit to the then-modern disco genre, showing an openness to new influences that should be admired and respected, even if the result is not so much disco. There are some nice songs that I can fully appreciate, but also a lot of stuff that I don't particularly like. Not a must-have in your album collection, in my opinion. For fun I took a look on what prices the album generates on auction sites, and noted to my delight that prices around $ 100 are not uncommon. And my album is in perfect condition. A good financial investment, in other words. And it's always fun with albums released on Harvest.
And can you dance to the album? Yes, sure you can, I guess the question to ask is whether there is music you can't dance to.
Tracklist
Side A
1. Andromdian Nights 2:46
2. Discophrenia 7:10
3. Luna Lolita 3:20
4. Cat Symphony 3:56
Side B
1. Robot Amoroso 5:50
2. Spring Fever 6:10
3. The Celestial Sphinx 4:07
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