Bo Hansson: Music Inspired By Watership Down

BO HANSSON: MUSIC INSPIRED BY WATERSHIP DOWN (1977)

1) Born Of The Gentle South; 2) Allegro For A Rescue; 3) Legend And Light; 4) Trial And Adversity; 5) The Twice-Victory; 6) The Kingdom Brightly Smiles; 7) Migration Suite.

Even after ʽRabbit Musicʼ, the furry bunnies from Richard Adams' novel still plagued Bo's mind so terribly that he had to dedicate his entire next album to the little guys, making this his second record completely «inspired by» a literary work. The original Swedish release was called El-Ahrairah, after the name given to one particular trickster rabbit in the book, but for the interna­tional market, it was apparently thought that a more explanatory title was in order — or perhaps  the record industry people thought the name sounded too Arabic for the eyes and ears of the Western public, and would trigger visions of hijacked planes and terrorist attacks.

Regardless, the album never charted even with a «safe» title, and its total lack of commercial suc­cess was one of the factors responsible for Bo's subsequent withdrawal from the music scene. Indeed, given that the age of prog rock's «coolness» was long gone, in 1977 you had to conform or combust, and it is quite evident from these tunes that Hansson had no wish whatsoever to set aside his personal muse and suck in any of the arena-rock, disco, or New Wave influences. In­stead, he just used up the last drops of credit he'd earned from the success of Lord Of The Rings to do the same thing as always — and then faded away.

The few tepid reviews I have seen of this album were mostly dismissive, with «nothing new» being the most often repeated motive. This is surprising, because, from a general point of view, ever since making his mark with the Tolkien tribute, Hansson had kept on making «nothing new» records on a steady basis, and if we are to maintain accuracy, El-Ahrairah actually sounds more different from Attic Thoughts than the latter does from Magician's Hat. For one thing, the com­positions tend to be a bit louder, angrier, and more relying on electric guitar playing than ever before — possibly to capture some of the dynamic spirit of the book, but possibly also because he wanted to brush away the illusion of creating «progressive elevator muzak», and put together some tunes that would force the listener to pay more attention.

Indeed, on the opening multi-part suite ʽBorn Of The Gentle Southʼ, the composer pulls all the stops — tempos, tonalities, moods shift constantly like the wind, going from slow soul-burning Floydisms to spinning polkas with psychedelic guitar solos to grand gospel passages to vicious blues-rock blasts to whatever else is imaginable. Whether all these ingredients are cohesive enough to form an impressive whole is up to you to decide; personally, I happen to feel that none of the ideas are given enough time and space to blossom properly, but then, I could probably say the same of quite a few classical concertos and symphonies, so let's just say that I find the suite easier to pay attention to (because of its dynamic jumps), but just as generally unmemorable as any average Hansson composition on the previous albums.

The best tracks, in my opinion, are ʽLegend And Lightʼ, where there is an interesting contrast between Bo's solo piano passages (merging music hall with avantgarde jazz) and the grand an­themic reso­lutions in the «chorus» parts, making the track a «teasing» experiment worthy of Zappa; and ʽThe Twice-Victoryʼ, whose main stately theme, slightly reminiscent of the spaghetti western style, is probably the most successful stab at grandiosity on the album — too bad it is never given enough time and space to bl... oh, okay, never mind.

Unfortunately, I am at the disadvantage of not actually having read the source novel (there's only so much fantasy that I can digest, which is not very much), so it is hard for me to understand how these musical themes truly relate to that entire rabbit business. Even more unfortunately, it is hard for me to visualise any concept to which this music, as a whole, would be applicable. There is Bo's usual strain of sorrow and melancholia stretching throughout the entire work (those are some fairly morose and somber rabbits indeed), but that is not nearly enough to blow one's mind — although I have to admit that out of all four albums, this is easily the one that tries to invoke the spirit of grand tragedy on the most regular basis. If only these invocations didn't usually end up sounding like «Pink Floyd lite», the album could have been 1977's dark masterpiece — as it is, it's more like 1977's dark coffee-table.

Bo Hansson did make one more record later on in his career: the Swedish-only Mitt I Livet came out in 1985, never got an international release, never came out on CD, and remains a little-heard ob­scurity (so I have no way of ascertaining whether it is in the same style or if he finally decided to make a transition to synth-pop). Twenty-five years later, he died, and to this day, he remains generally revered in a small circle of connoisseurs — a curious figure, capable of inspiring chi­valrous devotion and agonizing boredom, sometimes at the same time. Whatever be the case, he may not have written the best Tolkien soundtrack ever, but one thing is certain: he did manage to forever change my casual perception of rabbits.

Bo Hansson: Attic Thoughts

BO HANSSON: ATTIC THOUGHTS (1975)

1) Attic Thoughts; 2) Time And Space; 3) Waiting...; 4) Waltz For Interbeings; 5) Time For Great Achievements; 6) The Hybrills; 7) Rabbit Music; 8) Day And Night; 9) A Happy Prank.

For what it's worth, Attic Thoughts is little more than a second installation of Magician's Hat. Same variation of short tunes and lengthy multi-part epics, same freedom of thought and direc­tion, same unpredictability of influences — and the same quiet inobtrusiveness, making it excessively hard to remember what you have just heard, or to experience any particularly strong emotional responses. «Tastefully pretty» and «slightly moody» pretty much does it.

The album was recorded with more or less the same backing band as Hat, and this time around, released in the same year in Sweden (as Mellanväsen) and abroad. Bo's influences were again diverse and scattered, one of them being Watership Down, the weird novel about rabbits by Richard Adams — eventually, he'd devote an entire LP to this work, but for now, just one two-part suite (ʽRabbit Musicʼ) should be sufficient. However, the overall effect remains the same — that of a slightly weird, magical «other» world where, truth be told, nothing much ever happens, but then, why should anything happen? Your average magical world can be just as boring as your average non-magical one, and I suspect that this is exactly what Bo wanted to show us: a «realis­tic», «uneventful» musical universe, completely free of any pretense at «rocking».

As far as actual musical texture is concerned, of course, «uneventful» is pushing it. Many of the songs feature multiple key, tempo, and mood changes — ʽWaltz For Interbeingsʼ being the most impressive example, I suppose, where bits of genuine waltz are interspersed with fast fusion passages and something that I could only describe as Bo's futuristic preview of the lambada. All of it occupies the space of three and a half minutes; the longer compositions, like ʽRabbit Musicʼ and the title track, naturally feature even more changes. However, I would still assess them as fairly «uneventful» changes — they never radically shift the mood, or rev up the energy levels.

Nor is it all that easy to get overawed by Bo's omnivorous nature. Okay, so ʽTime For Great Achievementsʼ glues together a possible theme for a spaghetti-western with electronic psychede­lia and a little more jazz-rock, but what is the meaning of this fusion? All the individual compo­nents sound nice, and make for decent background muzak, but why is it exactly in this sequence that they should be listened to, and would the effect be diminished/spoiled if we changed it all around? I have no answer for these questions.

In the end, Attic Thoughts seems like it must have taken even more effort on Bo's part than Hat (more ideas, more movements, more influences), but the lack of focus stays the same, and once again, I am a little sad that he did not use any single piece as a chief influence — Lord Of The Rings, with its conceptual organization, made a little more sense than this disjointed, messy, tepid collection of «snippets», inoffensive as it is. Nevertheless, this is perfect «progressive elevator muzak», and I do not regret even one second of listening — I only wish I had something more meaningful to say about it, but I don't, and apparently, neither does anybody else (most of the reviews of this album that I'd browsed through made zero sense as well).

Bo Hansson: Magician's Hat

BO HANSSON: MAGICIAN'S HAT (1973)

1) Big City; 2) Divided Reality; 3) Elidor; 4) Before The Rain; 5) Fylke; 6) Playing Downhill Into The Downs; 7) Findhorn's Song; 8) The Awakening; 9) Wandering Song; 10) The Sun (Parallel Or 90 Degrees); 11) Excursion With Complications.

This is one of those classic situations where one tries to correct the balance between accessibility / entertainment and complexity / intellectualism and may end up pushing the slider too far in the opposite direction. On one hand, Magician's Hat, Bo's second foray into the world of progres­sive instrumental exploration, takes reasonable precautions to protect itself from the vicious sarcasm of critics crusading against starry-eyed idealism and fanboyism — namely, although quite a few of its tunes could have easily been slipped onto the previous record without anybody noticing, there are no direct references to Lord Of The Rings, and the compositions are open to any sort of unrestricted personal interpretations. That is probably good.

What is probably not so good is that Magician's Hat sounds awfully scattered and even less focused than its predecessor. Some of the reviewers define it as a «folk-prog» album, others de­scribe it as moving away from folk influences and more into jazz-fusion territory, still others just say that «this is great music that takes you to another dimension» without even trying to specify what sort of dimension that might be. The logical truth is that Magician's Hat is all these things — «folksy», «fusionesque», «otherworldly» — and more; and also, unfortunately, that this is not the kind of diversity that makes a whole lot of sense. As pretty as these soundscapes are, the album has not managed to override the «pleasant background music» tag that my subconscience has slapped on it during the very first listen.

Case in point: the epic-length ʽBig Cityʼ which, in its original form as ʽStorstadʼ on the Swedish edition, ran for 11 minutes, then was cut down to 7 on the international market release, then, finally, was restored back to full duration on the CD edition. I'd like to call the track «epic», but that would mostly refer to the sheer running length and the number of different «movements» — if that is enough, so be it, but normally, «epic» also surmises the idea of power, rising and falling dynamics, build-ups, crescendos, climaxes, etc., whereas ʽBig Cityʼ just sort of... trots along, sometimes a little faster, sometimes a little slower, mutating from blues-rock to choral folk chant to bossa nova to samba to fusion to a bit of avantgarde, being all over the place but fairly low-key most of the time. Not only does it not give out the impression of a ʽBig Cityʼ (more like a bunch of very small ones that you pass by in an old car at half-speed), but there are also next to no memorable themes — it is like a mediocre jazz album, with professionally set grooves and com­petent, but never too enlightening solo improvisations.

As we move away from the lengthy suite and into the realm of shorter tracks, things do not get better — because giving the short tracks separate names does not change the fact that the rest of the album is essentially just more of the same stuff. Every now and then, you do meet up with an interesting theme (ʽPlaying Downhillʼ has a curiously constructed brass/organ jazz melody that seems almost mathematically explorative), but, like fireflies, the interesting ones light up and fade away just as quickly as the uninteresting ones. Hansson has a ton of ideas in store for the album, but he gives poor ones as much space as rich ones, and almost never takes the time to prove that melody so-and-so actually needed inventing.

Some might see this as a challenge, and set themselves a worthy goal of learning to hum all the 20+ melodies of Magician's Hat, so as to easier win friends and influence people. I, however, seem to suffer from attention deficit syndrome in this situation, and keep on seeing all this as the result of dissipation of focus — professional instrumental noodling whose lack of conceptual purpose strips the music of the necessary energy. You know it's not really a good sign when the album's most memorable moment is basically a musical joke  — in this case, ʽExcursion With Complicationsʼ, which begins as a somber bluesy march, dominated by doomy organs and stern, electronically treated solo guitar, and then transforms into a New Orleanian piece of carniva­lesque boogie-woogie, thus ending the album with the author's tongue sticking out.

The album may hold up to repeated listens, I guess, if one deals with the fact that this is «prog-rock» with the «rock» component surgically extracted and dissolved in acid — as was the case with its predecessor, you'd better get yourself all comfortably relaxed to enjoy its smooth, inob­trusive hooks, atmospheric echoes, and tasteful, but uneventful soloing (including lots of guitar parts, which are now at least as prominent as the keyboards). Unfortunately, few of us will pro­bably have the time to determine just how much Magician's Hat reflects subtlety of vision rather than lack of vision. And it goes without saying that, having originally come out in 1972 (under the Swedish title Ur Trollkarlens Hatt), the album would be very quickly quenched by Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells — where most of the pieces of the puzzle would logically come to­gether, instead of being lazily scattered around, as they are here.

Bo Hansson: Music Inspired By Lord Of The Rings

BO HANSSON: MUSIC INSPIRED BY LORD OF THE RINGS (1972)

1) Leaving Shire; 2) The Old Forest & Tom Bombadil; 3) Fog On The Barrow-Downs; 4) The Black Riders & Flight To The Ford; 5) At The House Of Elrond & The Ring Goes South; 6) A Journey In The Dark; 7) Lothlorien; 8) Shadowfax; 9) The Horns Of Rohan & The Battle Of The Pelennor Fields; 10) Dreams In The House Of Healing; 11) Homeward Bound & The Scouring Of The Shire; 12) The Grey Havens.

«Inspired» is the right word. If all of these compositions pretended to the status of an actual sound­track to Lord Of The Rings, it'd be a Lord Of The Rings in which Frodo would be a som­nambulant lunatic, Tom Bombadil would be a decrepit old organ player, stoned out of his mind in a basement, Lothlorien would be the name of an opium den, The Battle of the Pelennor Fields would be carried out by Grateful Dead fans in a mosh pit, and «leaving for the Grey Havens» would be a euphemism for a heroin injection. But as it is, the music does not pretend to anything — it simply happens to be inspired by LOTR. And some elvendust and magic mushrooms.

In all honesty, these pieces of music that the Swedish multi-instrumentalist Bo Hansson put together for his first solo album do not have much to do with Tolkien, and the title might even be a little misleading: for one thing, people who have never joined the club of J. R. R. admirers, or people who actually find Tolkien's significant influence on 1960s-1970s music somewhat embar­rassing (remember Plant's lyrics for ʽRamble Onʼ, eh?) are quite likely to be turned off by the title, thinking that this is just some silly slobbering fanboy tribute. Tribute it might be, in name, but in actuality Hansson is too busy concocting his own magical mystical world to grovel and kowtow before somebody else's.

The world is not characterised by a staggering amount of diversity. It most closely resembles the efforts of Pink Floyd circa 1970-72, when they were already out of their wildest psychedelic / avantgarde phase, but were not yet ready to flood the world with their newly awakened social conscience, and were mostly content with exploring the possibilities for strange ambient beauty. Hansson, playing most of the instruments himself (Rune Carlsson is handling the drums, and a couple of additional sax and flute players are also available from time to time), sees himself as a mood-brewer: these are smooth, quiet, repetitive instrumentals that invite the listener to relax and soak in the atmosphere. The actual melodies are so straightforward and simple that you will be humming them in no time if you set your mind to it — much like Floyd's melodies, come to think of it — but the simplicity is meaningful and seductive enough to forgive the lack of flash.

Hansson's keyboards are the essential link: originally, he was a major Hammond player (as part of the late-Sixties duo Hansson & Carlsson), and here, too, the organ remains his instrument of choice, although he's also added the Moog to his inventory (whose first notable appearance is impersonating a nasty wight in ʽFog On The Barrow-Downsʼ). Whatever simple melody is play­ing at any given moment, there is almost always a quiet baroque (or pseudo-baroque?) keyboard «floor» under it, and together with Hansson's respect for the echo effect, these are his major world-building ingredients. He does not manage a sound as vast as Floyd do on their better tunes (like ʽEchoesʼ), but he is not hunting for that — his space is fairly well shut in, so if you want my Lord Of The Rings association, I'd say that the majority of these tracks should be stripped of their titles, sewn together and renamed «The Crossing Of Mirkwood, Pts. I-X», because that is exactly how it all feels to me — an endless, monotonous journey on a narrow forest path, barely looked over by some feeble rays of light: boring, perhaps, but also hypnotic in some strange, undescri­bable way.

Every now and then the music picks up the pace a little, but really, even ʽThe Battle Of The Pelennor Fieldsʼ, despite the quirky «treated» electric guitar part that presages Mike Oldfield, sounds more like a merry Celtic dance than a fierce combat between the forces of good and evil. «Evil», in fact, tends rather to be impersonated by «scary» fiddling with the Moog, from the already mentioned ʽFogʼ to ʽA Journey In The Darkʼ, while «beauty», be it ʽLothlorienʼ or the romantic gallop of ʽShadowfaxʼ, is associated with simple, clean, sometimes slightly jazzy electric guitar licks. All of it is very homebrewn and not a wee bit «epic»: as we get to ʽGrey Havensʼ, for the Grand Finale we are offered nothing but a stern couple of sliding electric licks (to mirror the movement of oars?), some quietly bubbling organ parts, and Carlsson's usual «muffled» percussion, to avoid any direct references to a «rock sound», if possible.

Considering how unassuming the music is, it is curious that it even managed to reach the ears of a large audience in the first place. Hansson originally recorded and released it as Sagan Om Ringen in Sweden in 1970, but later on, it caught the attention of Tony Stratton-Smith (the guy behind the success of Genesis), and by the time it hit the UK and US shelves in 1972, Hansson was already a minor celebrity in the prog-rock ranks. Maybe it is this quiet, ascetic nature of the album that made it stand out even back then, when most people were being so flashy and bom­bastic — anyway, it is a good thing that Tolkien's agents never let him carry on with the idea of adding voices to the record, because I believe that any singing here would have spoilt the overall effect. As it is, this is just one of those albums that will go down easy with a cup of camomile tea — not «stunningly beautiful», but «quietly becalming» in much the same way as something like Brian Eno's Another Green World, just on a less radical level. Thumbs up.