Lalle Larsson: ragazzi interview

News:
19-02-2009:
A great interview with Lalle Larsson noted for his incredible keyboard playing and also his affinity for great guitar players. Only thing missing from this interview for me was the "Cosmic Monstrositors" tape which featured players like Todd Duane, Dave Kilminster, Milan Polak and Mario Parga. Full interview... here are some guitar related highlights. Check out the demo tapes too, featuring top players.



Lalle: "I started playing the piano at a very early age since I grew up in a musical family. After my short junior high school career as a metal drummer, I got my first paid gig as a pianist when I was fifteen years old, comping a Swedish female schlager/country singer. After that I began getting more gigs as a piano player, and when I was 16-17 years old I toured around Sweden and Denmark with a rhythm & blues band. At seventeen I went to the european American Institute Of Music in Vienna, I stayed there for two years and I was offered a teaching job right after graduation. During these two years I met people like Todd Duane (Electrocution 250) Milan Polak (J.A.M) and Phi Yaan Zek. Me and Todd recorded the track Schizoid for Mike Varney's Guitar On The Edge compilation CD in 1992, which later led to the Electrocution 250 album. At the time we were supposed to have done an album on Shrapnel Records, but that never happened. When I got back to Sweden in 1993 I formed my first jazz-rock band Ominox. I paid for some studio time and Mike Varney wanted to release our recording on his US label - Legato Records. But unfortunately his label went bust right before the CD was done, so that never happened either. No labels in Sweden were interested at the time, so I was pretty much left on my own with this thing. It was the beginning of the 90's and Grunge music was popular. I spent the next few years practising, composing and worked as a hired musician around my hometown, and that's pretty much where it all started."


Lalle: "Yeah, Electrocution 250 is really a continuation of the cartoon shred demos I did with Todd Duane in the early nineties. We were influenced by Todd's spectacular virtuoso cassette demos from 1991-1992. Around that time we were offered a deal with Shrapnel Records but for some reason that never happened. Almost ten years later we were offered another deal with Swedish label WAR music who paid me to go to the States and record with Todd in year 2000. Peter Wildoer recorded his drums over here in Sweden. But with our usual luck WAR music went bankrupt so we were on our own again. We had all the tapes but we had no label. We sent out this CD to some of the biggest labels of this kind of music, but noone showed any interest whatsoever. We were really lucky that my old buddy Matt Williams had just started the small UK label Liquid Note Records and decided to release E-250. Luckily it turned out to be quite successful for an underground album like this and it was licenced by Marquee/Avalon in Japan."

ragazzi: "Will there be another Electrocution 250 album; I like this kind of music very much."

Lalle: "I'm glad you like it. If a label would show interest and if there would be some sort of budget involved then it might be possible. We have talked about it, but I don't know...it is what it is and I'm happy with just one E-250 album."

Lalle: "Yeah, that was another LNR project. At the time the idea was to bring in some of the hottest jazz-rock musicians in Europe and also have some guest artists on there. We each wrote three tunes for that album, me Richard and drummer Sebastiaan Cornelissen, the music was more in the traditional fusion genre I suppose. We then brought in Brett Garsed and Shawn Lane as guest soloists. Tragically it became, as far as I know, Shawn's last recording before he died only 40 years old. He had been sick for quite some time. It was a real honor to be on an album with him, but unfortunaly he was in really bad shape at the time. I went to Holland to record all the backing tracks live, the guitars were overdubbed later. It was a fun recording. Richard and Sebastiaan are both close friends of mine."

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