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ST MIKAEL ÄR TILLBAKA! Se den nya S.T. Mikael videon på vår MySpace sida! Recensioner av "Mind of Fire": This basement acid tripper exists briefly in the real world of vinyl! Folk rocky melodic elements flow with waves of heavy fuzzphase leads. A weird detached haunted vocal echoes over the band and the whole thing seems to teeter on the brink of psychedelic oblivion’s. Not revival either. One of the big unearthings in resent memory. Joyride thru an altered state! – Monster time! - Paul Mayor, X-tabay/Parallel World, USA This is so mind twisting, soul swirling, upper psychedelia that your third eye takes you on a cosmic journey through the dark ages of Serpents, glimpses of Gyrax, the land of Fauns, the mystic Orient, dark forests, angels of doom and the dreams of Eternity...this is some of the places and events the Saint brings you to on his masterpiece. I give you a 100 % money back guarantee if you don’t love this album! - Jorn Andersen, Rock Garden, Norway Incredible mind blowing psyche! The best album of the last years...only 150 copies made and destined to the highest ranks of collectordom! -Walter Geertzen, Belgium. ST Mikael...distorts instruments other people don’t even dream of using and displays a cunning understanding of vocal phrasing and harmony as well as playing the hell out of his guitar in a really nice, understated way... -Ptolemaia Terrascope, England ST MIKAEL: The Unknown (XMMS-2 1991) Fantastic Swedish Psych...one of the best of the last year! - A Trip With Mushrooms, Netherlands ST MIKAEL: Claustromania (MS-3-XMLP-1 1991) Soulful music clothed in flashing psychedelia! His best, the highest ranks! – Länstidningen, Sweden. Features a bunch of atmospheric psychedelic pieces, with phased vocals, melodic mellotron pieces and guitars on a slow burning fuse! Plenty of wig lifting material here...” -Freakbeat, UK ST MIKAEL: Psychocosmic Songs (XMLP-4 MS-4 1994) ”His 4th LP makes new references between the electric and acoustic instruments, which contributes to the new consciousness condensing the moments of insight!” - Rockerilla, Italy ST MIKAEL: Soul Flower (SUB XMLP-11 1996) VISIONS OF THE UNKNOWN THE STORY OF ST MIKAEL Mikael Sundtsröm (aka S.T. Mikael) was born in Södertälje, Sweden March the 27th, 1963. His father was a jazz swinging plumber and his mother was an innocent forest girl. He was a lonely, introspective boy who developed a bizarre imagination and an obsession for everything odd, mysterious and supernatural in life. His head was filled with images from Sci/Fi-Fantasy and Horror movies and books, but he also built his own dream worlds with creatures, characters, phantoms and prehistoric images in his drawings, comics and short stories. At 15 he picked up his mothers old guitar and started improvising and recording music. At the age of 19 - in 1982, he tried to find members for a group, but it took him until 1985 when he joined a garage-combo called ”Dickie Dickhead and the Outcast” as a lead guitarist. Although it brought many laughs and good fun into his heart and the fact that they developed from ”the worst and unintentionally most absurd band in town” to a serious and expressive experimental rock band, he left after two struggling years to form his own group. The trio ”The Twilight Souls” , was where he could sing and play his own compositions. He tried to fuse heavy rock and soul music with psychedelic influences which can be heard on the title track of his ”Unknown”-album. During this time he searched for the psychedelic experience and took his first dose of LSD. Because of exhaustion and inability to secure any gigs the band broke up in 1988. After this he gave up the rock´n roll band dream, understanding that there wasn’t anyone in town that had the same psychedelic ambitions as he had. With no expectations for the future he continued working with his ideas and primitive home recordings. In 1989 he moved to Stockholm where he met Stefan Kéry, a psychedelic connoisseur, and gave him a cassette with some of his many recordings. To Mikaels great surprise he found that the tape was received with great enthusiasm and an album was soon made out of that very tape. The album was titled ”Visions Of A Trespasser” and was released early 1990 in an edition of 150 copies only. The album cover featured a colorful, organic vortex with images of beings of the galaxy in it painted by Mikael. Each and every record had differently hand painted labels. The album was mainly distributed among friends. It showed his very personal style of music covering all kinds of musical directions, all laced with the psychedelic sound. Among these ”not-meant-to-be-heard-by-others”-recordings you will find unbelievable sound’s from tea-balls, spoons and boilers. Except for the 3 studio tracks which was recorded together with a friend, he played everything himself - singing through his guitar-amp and using a pitched guitar for a bass. In March 1991 he released his follow-up, ”The Unknown” , an odd home cassette- collection with new old haunting songs. The album was distributed the same way as the first one. After forming Xotic Mind Productions Stefan Kéry let him go into a 8-channal studio and Mikael built up a whole new album all by himself (the only way he knew to work) step-by-step, beginning with the drums and nothing else but except a good memory! The result: ”Claustromania” (meaning: manic obsession for locking oneself in, which derives from the introspective state of mind he always go into while creating!) . The music is filled with pulsating, organic expressions, always emotionally gripping with his soulful voice. The album has a circular concept: The songs about other worlds, man against infinity and the human mind, soul and spirit are linked together with small musical inventions building a story that never ends, ending the way it started, starting the way it ended. The composition also reflects his past life of loneliness and emptiness that now has been replaced by a new existence of love, happiness and possibilities. Mikael says “Claustromania” also is an homage to LSD which helped him make the transformation possible. His creative years had only begun. In 1994 Mikael wrote a book with novellas in the horror-fantasy tradition crammed with drawings done during the last 15 years and drawn, copied and shaped 4 volumes of comic-fanzines - all still available in Swedish only! He acted in a 16mm film and in his own 3 fantasy video films as well as taking acting- and dancing- lessons! During the years he has been invited to participate on other Xotic Mind projects, like playing sitar on Adam Axelzons well-received ”Eura” album and with sitar and Tablas on the ”Gnostic Mass”-LP by The Entheogens, an improvisation-group he joined together with Adam Axelzon, Måns ”Word of Life”Månson and Stefan Kéry, among others. In January 1994, people Xotic Mind released S.T. Mikaels new album ”Psychocosmic Songs” which was even better received than any of his previous LPs. The LP was recorded in a modern, high-tech studio. This time the tracks was a mixture of acoustic and electric singer-songs painted with sitar and tabla jams, heavy fuzz guitar sessions and airy, pulsating sounds done in the same step- by-step method like Claustromania! Although it is serious and soulful in tone, ST Mikael himself says he misses the playfulness and vitality which is more prominent in his home recordings. In the spring of 1994 ST Mikael was living in a rented house with a beautiful garden of fruits, berries and flowers. For the first time he found an immediate presence of self confidence and also a more emotional and limitless way to express himself. In changing direction from somewhat stylish compositions to more improvised-on-the-spot creations he found that the happiness of a live-performance could be caught on a Pot-induced multi tracked solo recording. During 1994 he made a huge collection of organic home recordings, far away from any inexperienced studio-technician, planning to release some of the material as a new album. With the addition of the extended studio track ”Summer In My Life” , which was recorded by an experienced crew and with additional musicians like Adam Axelzon. Xotic Mind released it in 1996 as a double-album - titled Soul Flower. As always - with a homemade painting on the cover. It can be seen as a rock opera without a plot, an invitation to a small living room full of impressions of many far away places. During the years that passed since that album, St Mikael seemed to become more secretive and reclusive, but was still making homemade music. Some of this music, still stretching out in many different musical directions, has been done freely and spontaneously in an extremely relaxed and happy environment, and has been compiled into the home-made double CD, "Mind Evolution", which is not really an official album. Since the turn of the century, Mikael has renewed his lifestyle, has found love in Cheska, an American woman, and has travelled around in Europe, and recently in the USA. The projects of the future are also piling up! Among the first: Behind the Veil, a CD-collection with 11 of his best songs from the vinyl albums of the 1990s. Included is a rich booklet with full color pics of all the album covers and also photos, plus lyrics of the songs. Check out the album cover to this one! And now there’s a brand new album on Subliminal Sounds (part one in a series of two new albums) ! Five new songs he recorded in December 2006, has been melted together into a hot CD with Fire as the theme. According to Mikael, he has had a great time recording it with Fredrik Björling as the technician who also plays drums on some of the cuts. Reine Fiske from Dungen also helped ST Mikael with bass! And if that’s not enough! Anyone with the slightest interest in reading fantastic and twisted comics should check out ST Mikael’s new comic book projects! First out is Daughter of the Full Moon: A 40-pages, pencil-drawn, philosophical horror graphic novel. And then we have the crazy project including 30 books/ adventures, featuring a childhood creation of ST Mikael’s: Horror detective Klas-Iker! Told with a snappy style and childish imagination, you can see his work involving different stories about monsters, ghosts, aliens, dreams and weird trips later this year on the web at oldesoul.com. |
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