Alvaleken
When Mats Edén contacted us and asked if I was interested in releasing a solo album with his tunes, I of course answered ‘Yes’ without thinking about it anymore. Mats has a huge catalogue of his own tunes in more or less traditional style, and a driving and personal playing style that always provides engaging listening experiences. In other words: an absolutely perfect album for the Taragot label.
An added bonus with recordings with Mats is the togetherness – both the purely professional with discussions about recording, sound quality, quality of tunes, etc. but also the more social, with all Mats’ stories and creative observations.
In this time of coronavirus, during which the album was created, we had to give up a lot of this as it was not possible to have a physical studio recording. But the alternative that Mats suggested was perhaps even more exciting: he makes recordings at home with his little Zoom recorder, and sends them to me as they get ready; I listen to and have a kind of producer-at-a-distance function, and at the same time do sound processing. Thus, the entire production process was stretched out over time, but gave us the opportunity to get more recordings to choose from.
Tellef Kvifte