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HAPNA 047CD
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Sjunga Slutet Nu (trans. "Sing The End Now"), the new long-awaited project by Hans Appelqvist, consists of both an album and a film. The work is about the angst and silencing of death and the meeting with the final end. The film and album have the atmosphere of a fairy-tale that feels both natural and original, a world where talking levitating spheres seem as ordinary as man. In it, we meet Theodora, an elderly woman that lives in a lonely house by a lake somewhere in Sweden. We also meet her friends: the six-years-old boy Vissen and the levitating sphere Sot that often stays close to Theodora's house or rests in the pile of flour that lies prepared for him in the kitchen. Both the music on the album and the film originate from the same world. Part of the dialog, background sounds and musical scenes of the film are used to deepen the atmosphere of the album. The structure is complex -- threads are picked up and woven together in a way similar to the free, nonlinear narrative of dreams. Once again, Hans Appelqvist invites us into one of his oddly-constructed worlds, where you don't know what is dream and what is reality, and through this, he makes us face ourselves.
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HAPNA 035CD
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This is the fourth full-length release for Sweden's Hans Appelqvist, his third for the Häpna label. Hot on the heels of his last record Naima, released in November 2006, Hans has a new album ready, entitled Sifantin och mörkret, containing 12 new tracks and a beautiful video for "Tänk att himlens alla stjärnor," made by Andreas Nilsson (The Knife, José Gonzales and The Soundtrack Of Our Lives). The music shows Hans from a new side, the album being more open and spontaneous than previous works. Animal noises, doors creaking, children shouting, delicate acoustic guitar, and rollicking instrumentals, Sifantin och mörkret is a patchwork symphony. It oscillates between the sweet and grotesque, the nice and the ugly, harmony and terror, light and darkness. As Appelqvist lyrically proclaims, "Me, a cuckoo. Of all the great things in Africa my eyes have met, one I can never forget. On the savannah a rhinoceros stood proudly, gazing in the distance. Its belly ripped open in battle with the one that always wants more."
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HAPNA 031CD
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This is the third full-length release for Sweden's Hans Appelqvist, after two previous release on the Komplott label. Naima is an entity who in different ways is present to the persons on the album. Sometimes she interferes with their lives and speaks directly to them, sometimes her presence is only communicated through her musical theme, "Naimamelodin" (Naima's melody). Somewhat pretentiously expressed, the album is an answer to a longing for more fixed references. In 2004, Hans Appelqvist released the album Bremort which got a lot of attention and among other things won Swedish radio's "Pop Record of the Year" award. The record was staged in a fictitious small city in Sweden, where one as a listener could follow daily life during three days for some of the people living there. Hans Appelqvist has previously released Att Möta Verkligheten on Häpna.
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