Gustaf Kjellvander was born 1980 in Trelleborg, Sweden. When Gustaf was 2 years old he and his family immigrated to Seattle, Washington USA where the Kjellvander family resided until the end of 1991. His parents got divorced and his father relocated to Houston, Texas. Gustaf, his two brothers and his mother moved back to Sweden. The newly minimized family spent a year in the rural community of Mörkö, in the southern part of the Stockholm archipelago, before moving to the Malmö/Lund region of southern Sweden, where Gustaf has lived ever since.
Gustaf started writing music when he was 12 years old as a means of coping with the boredom, frustration and alienation he experienced upon his return to Sweden.
Gustaf is no stranger to the Swedish music scene. In addition to making a number of guest appearances on albums, playing the singing saw, the Theremin etc, he has released two full-length albums and one EP. Gustaf’s first two records, The Bored Beyond Belief EP & The Invasive Confusion LP, were released under the name Sideshow Bob while Gustaf was still in school. Consequently the songs reflect the thoughts and dreams of a teenage outsider just coming to grips with the world at large. Gustaf’s second LP was a joint venture with his eldest brother, Christian. Together they were and are Songs of Soil. The critically acclaimed Songs of Soil album “The Painted Trees of Ghostwood”, released in 2000, was an effort on their part to make a dark, but at the same time, naïve record.
The Fine Arts Showcase is Gustaf’s solo-project and includes a variety of musicians from the Malmö-region. On “Gustaf Kjellvander Proudly presents…” Gustaf is backed by, among others, Patrik Malmros (Dipper) on drums, Dan Englund (the Songs of Soil band, Lazy Grace Frontier) on piano etc and Jesper Gunge on bass.
“Gustaf Kjellvander Proudly Presents The Fine Arts Showcase and the Electric Pavilion” will be released in the spring of 2004 in the UK on the Must Destroy label where, among others, the Darkness reside.
The album sounds primitive and melodic, as chaotic as it is beautiful. Recorded and mixed in ten days at Min Studio/Old Yeller in Malmö the soundscape pays as much homage to the Phil Spector Wall of Sound as it does the DIY production techniques of The Olivia Tremor Control, Hazel Adkins and countless punk-rock bands.
Gustaf’s songs are based in the John Lennon school of songwriting. His lyrics are oftentimes reminiscent of Lou Reed or Leonard Cohen, battling imagery that goes from the visceral to the spiritual in the blink of an eye – honest, poetic and even psychedelic.
Gustaf is inspired by all kinds of music – from the music made by his cohorts in the Malmö music-scene to old Swedish folk tunes to electronic dance-music. There is no dividing line between where the artist ends and the art begins.
Forget everything you just read and let the music speak for itself!
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