We started out in Kristian’s basement in the mid/late 1980s in Norway, playing covers by AC/DC, Rush, Molly Hatchet, Queen, Cream, Eric Clapton, the Eagles, etc.
Around 1987, Øyvind had the idea for our first original – we still call it “The first one” (“Ener’n”, in Norwegian). Really good riff and groove – we were excited! Then Kristian came with his idea for a second original shortly thereafter – we still call it “Toer’n” (the second one). When we had the third original pretty much worked out, we decided to tie the three together into one concept piece. Erik and Henrik had been classmates and had German together where reading Berthold Brecht’s “Wenn die Haifische Menschen Wären” was on the curriculum, so having that still fresh in mind, we decided to write lyrics about a world under water where the sharks were the tyrants and a brave little fish started plotting an escape… We had fun writing that story, and it still has affection value to us.
Erik moved to Oklahoma to study and become a pilot. Henrik took a year off to study music at Musicians Institute in Los Angeles. Kristian became a dad, and Øyvind kept the music flame alive.
In the early nineties, we still managed to play together 4-5 times a year, and developed some shorter bridge parts for the concept piece, plus a few more separate songs – Erik and Henrik now also contributing with original compositions. In 1992, we managed to complete a recording of our material. Øyvind had a portable 4-track Tascam tape deck. We used one microphone hanging over the drums, and one placed inside the kick drum, and recorded the drum tracks like that – and microphones to catch the two guitars and bass. As we only had 4 tracks available, we “ping-ponged” several recorded tracks onto one, and that way free up more tracks total where we could add vocals and solos. Vocals were recorded with one microphone, and Erik & Henrik singing – both in harmony and separately – only that one mic for balance and blend of the two voices in one take on one track. For Kristian and Øyvind, it was quite a “WOW”-feeling to hear the initial originals with vocals, as we had only jammed them as instrumentals for years. We named the concept piece: “NOTHING FOR SOMETHING (The life and death of Little Fish Tom)”, but between us we have always just called it “The Fish” (or “Fisken”, in Norwegian). The album got the title “Aqua Mortalis – when things get fishy”. The concept piece clocked in at 27min (27:04), and was followed by 4 more originals:
1) “Firer’n” (the fourth one) – renamed: “Buttons on Drugs”
2) A Pile of Buttons (play of words on the last names of the two composers – Stabell (Henrik) – close enough to “stabel” which is translated to “a pile” in English, and Knapper (Øyvind) with the direct translation of “buttons” in English.
3) Tales from Spooky Forests
and
4) the Nutkicker Sweet
Kristian put together a CD for us in what he called the “Pocket Records” (he then lived in Lommedalen – which could be translated as “the Pocket valley” from Norwegian), making a backup of the Tascam 4 track tape to DAT tape, transfered to Cubase on a “286 PC”, and burnt to CD. Our CD was never distributed, but a welcome surprise for the rest of us, and something we all have kept and cherished as a reminder of our great ideas, and not so great recording of said ideas..
Fast forward 20 years…. We had not played together for some 15 years, being busy with jobs, families, etc. But Øyvind had a dream and followed it through! He built a small studio on his property, furnished it with a midi drum set, as space was a bit small for Erik’s full drum set, and called the rest of us to bring our instruments and amplifiers (and beer…). We quickly got back in the groove, but also played a lot of other cover songs we enjoyed: more Rush, Metallica, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Kansas. But also Ener’n, Toer’n and Treer’n that made up the more guitar-based songs of our concept piece. And lo and behold, we still loved those songs. So, we decided that with the better equipment. Øyvind’s studio, and his now trained sound engineer ears and knowledge (and with the ideas we have gotten from watching Rick Beato’s series “What makes this song great” on YouTube – kudos, Rick!), we should record the concept piece again – the way it could have been 30 years ago if we had the equipment, knowhow and skills.
Most of the original compositions are as they were, but we have removed 2 parts from Ener’n that we were not completely happy about now, and made adjustments to some of the arrangements – adding a few bars from Toer’n into Ener’n, adding one bar from Ener’n into Treer’n (making the 25-27min piece more coherent, and perhaps you as the listeners may recognize some twists recurring in songs later on in the same full piece), changing the dynamics of half the verse on Toer’n, coming up with a vocal part to Ener’n (we had only played that one as an instrumental up until February 2021), and “spicing up” the arrangements with some different textures of guitars (i.e. a stratocaster doing some clean parts behind or over the other instruments, a tambourine to propel a bridge part or verse a bit more, etc etc).
And now we make videos to accompany our songs – which will all be posted on YouTube (go to VIDEOS in the menu) for your viewing and listening pleasure – adding another dimension (and more humor) to our music!
“They’re not sailing on water
– it‘s peanut butter dip“