Lindahl, Peter (In The Labyrinth) (February 2004)

An Interview With In The Labyrinth's Peter Lindahl

I became aware of In The Labyrinth (ITL) through Richard Stockwell at Cranium Records in New Zealand. The main composer and multi-instrumentalist with ITL is Peter Lindahl, from Sweden. I played ITL frequently on my radio show (now called "Third Ear") in Australia and found that the freshness of the compositions stood up to repeated listening. I contacted Peter Lindahl to tell him that I really appreciated his music. After chatting together over the net for some time, Peter and I decided to do an "email interview" for "Third Ear."

I'd like to thank Peter for the huge amount of time he devoted in providing me with detailed and frank answers. Peter did this to assist me in presenting a special about ITL for a radio station run by volunteers servicing only 40,000 people. But his answers were so interesting, that I thought they would be worth sharing with the larger prog community. Here's an edited text of that interview.

~ Andrew Holborn

Part 1:

Andrew Holborn: Peter, Let's talk first about a few tracks from the three In The Labyrinth CDs. On The Garden Of Mysteries , "Trans Turkish Express" just made me feel like dancing with its mad, swirling rhythms, whereas "Moorish Waltz" is one of your tracks that creates a really soft feeling in my heart.

Peter Lindahl: Hi Andrew. First I'll have to thank you for all the interest you have shown in my band, In The Labyrinth, and me.

"Trans Turkish Express" portrays my visions of Turkey and maybe my lust for traveling around in Asia. Like many of the tracks on The Garden Of Mysteries, it evolved out of having been just a tag on another song. That's how I often work. I like to be spontaneous with my music, avoiding boundaries, getting stuck in genres and being confined by what is right and what is wrong. There's a lot of coincidence with ITL. For me, it's very important that the soul should be present in the creative process. I use my experience of course, but I try to go by sheer intuition, letting styles come and go; likewise themes, melodies and musical structures as a whole.

"Moorish Waltz" would probably have been my first pick of The Garden Of Mysteries. Like "Trans Turkish," it developed out of another track. (They nearly always do!) I like to see what emerges when things are mixed in an unexpected way. In India, for instance, you can never know quite what to expect! Maybe I'm a mixed soul having been brought up abroad and that is why I'm a world musician. I don't really feel at home anywhere. I just belong to the whole planet, which I love with all my heart.

Back to "Moorish Waltz," I should briefly explain that there are certain South American elements in that one, mostly from the Andes alongside of the Oriental influences. Bo Hanson's music also hugely inspired me for that one.

AH: You mentioned the importance of soul and emotions in the compositional process. Peter, can you tell me more about the way you compose your music and how you and the other musos work together to create the final sound we hear on your three CDs.

PL: The way I get compositions into my head is usually just from being inspired and having the time to experiment and express myself in my studio. The rest is all very hard work, even if it's usually a lot of fun. Making a recording sound the way I want it and imagine it takes a lot of effort from my side. Composing and arranging is usually good fun, but production is less of a gamble and should be dealt with very seriously to get the utmost quality out of a recording.

I love interaction and all that this word stands for, both between precisely arranged parts or harmonies within a song and on a more improvised level where musicians create things together.

On our first album The Garden Of Mysteries, I played most of the instruments myself with the occasional assistance of fellow musicians such as Mikael Gejel, Stefan Ottman and Helena Selander. Helena always did a great job with her high-pitched harmonies. She has her own projects on the side, which is more Western-world oriented.

Our second album Walking On Clouds became less of a one man band thing though, as I started to cooperate with Håkan Almkvist at that stage and also decided to get in as many musicians as possible into the production.

Next, our third effort, Dryad made me return a bit more to the solitary way of making music. For the next (could be?) release, the long-time project Samas Antaral, I will continue that way, building on top of pieces of music that were recorded by Stefan, Helena and several others plus myself way back in time. More recently made recordings and some brand new ones will also be included.

AH: Two of my favorite tracks on Walking On Clouds are "Kali" and "The Caravan from Sheeba."

PL: "Kali" was first recorded back in 1997. It was quite different then and later on a lot of sampled instruments were swapped for "real" ones. When I got around to showing Håkan the basic track, he was really enthusiastic like I've seldom seen him before or since, and it seemed to trigger him off to some of his most splendid performances on bass, sitar, tabla and lead guitar. I still really enjoy the things he put on to that track!

Another effort of Håkan was to refurnish the entire album, changing the order of everything. My intention had long been to place "The Caravan From Sheeba" first, but he wanted more vocals up front so I agreed on that, thereby making "Kali" the initial track. The mid-bars of the song were spoken by Stefan Ottman. The three written verses that I had were otherwise sung by me, but here it felt appropriate to have Stefan read out the lines like a narrator. He did it really well, but perfectionist as I am, I asked him to do it again after a year or so. I wanted him to make it more fluent for the sake of the tranquility of the text. This particular verse describes the huge grassy park of Calcutta in India where fireflies twinkle and scintillate like little stars in the calm of the night. All around and beyond that, you can hear the wild, crazy traffic of the bustling city. I wanted that to come out, the contrast between opposing elements which so often prevails in India, especially up north.

Håkan made a really fuzzy guitar solo using his E-bow magnet instead of a plectrum and all his boxes connected in the noisiest way ever. I added some sound effects at the end, trying to combine them to create an image of big cites in India, though, in fact, those were taken from both American archives and from several other places not connected to India. Here you have traffic jams, kids pulling carts, dogs in a wild chase, thunder, among other things.

I started writing "The Caravan From Sheeba" back in 1991 and finished it in '99 with a lot of changes occurring along the way. Initially it was intended for the cassette, which we released privately here in Sweden in '94. The title of this was Mysteriernas Trädgård, an exact translation of The Garden Of Mysteries. Mikael Gejel and I wanted to close the cassette album with "Sheeba" but I decided to put it aside to give it a better destiny since I didn't feel at ease with that early carnation of ITL and was beginning to feel it was time for me to make an exit.

One thing that worked wonderfully from her first go at it was Helena Selander providing the section towards the end with her angelic voice. This way it hopefully got a bit closer to Ennio Moricone's film scores and perhaps also those of Nino Rota. Also, my father contributed to "Sheeba" by playing the cornet, a medieval wooden trumpet at the very end. It's mixed up with sampled brass to make for a broader sound. I recall him nearly not making it because the cornet is so hard to play.

There gradually came a whole lot of versions of "Sheeba" before it finally turned out the way I wanted it. There is one take with the mellotron playing most of the lead and I remember trying a lot of bell sounds that didn't fit in all too well. On the final version you can hear mandolins and (sampled) santoors taking the lead; at times, oriental woodwind sections and occasionally viola da gambas and (sampled) cellos. I remember having only one string on the gamba at the time. I didn't even tune it up to a normal pitch. But it seemed to work anyhow.

AH: "Nargal," on your third CD Dryad, seems to me to break new ground musically. There seems to be a stronger classical component to its structure. The instruments you've used, like bells, create different textures to other ITL tunes. Obviously, there's a darker atmosphere in this composition, too.

PL: "Nargal" is a figure of great evil in a saga written by Stefan Ottman and Mikael Gejel back in the eighties. This fairytale is called Samas Antaral. The song is divided into two parts, the first based on a riff that I made up sometime around the mid-eighties and the second deriving from a separate track called "Gar Skuorras."

Stefan wanted a classical element (as he nearly always does) and at the same time, a brutal atmosphere verging on insanity. So we hammered out a terrifying mid-section on my keyboards using harsh sounding (sampled) cellos and double bass strings. Later on, I doubled these with viola da gambas and Håkan tripled parts of it with his electric guitars.

One detail that both Håkan and Stefan'tried to get me to alter while we were laying down the tracks was to exchange the mandolins and santoors for a flute in a couple of bars where everything loosens up a bit, since he reckoned these notes should be played in legato and were more suited for a wind instrument. It didn't work out too well though, so we scrapped that and just had Helena pull off some of her longest notes ever! She had to do it in two overlapping cuts to bind it all together.

One bloke who participated among the string sections was Mikael Lövroth, a violinist with whom I virtually don't have any contact these days. He's well imbedded inside the arrangements, just to add a slightly more live feeling. It's the same with my gamba. It's kept more or less in the background, except at the start where I combined it with an electric guitar, which both together play the melody.

One hassle with "Nargal" was that it was really hard to get a good bass line into it. First I used a synth bass, playing it very mechanically, then Stefan and I worked out a complicated and melodic bass line which I thought was lacking in rhythm and temperament. So Håkan finally succeeded in making something between the two of them using his electric bass.

One detail, which you may find interesting, Andrew, is that the classical section that introduces "Nargal" once used to be at the end of the song. It was Stefan's idea to switch it all around and I admit having been very skeptical, mainly because I felt I wasn't quite up to the effort. It would be a timely and complicated process, considering I did everything on reel-to-reel tape at that stage back in the mid-nineties.

Part 2:

AH: Peter, can you tell me about your time in Australia.

PL: I lived in Australia, as you know, in the early to mid-sixties, making this really something special for me. It's as if a part of me has returned; not physically, but through musical vibes. I feel at home being on your show!

To be more specific, my places of habitat in those early years were around Western Australia, in Perth and small towns like Mandurah, Katanning and Kwinana. I remember the winters in WA when the teachers burned Mallee roots in the fireplace to give us and themselves some warmth. We used kerosene heaters in our house in Mandurah. At night I wore pyjamas and had my hot water bottle. In Sweden everyone has central heating and windows are fitted with two sheets of glass. It was in the middle of the Beatles era, the Beach Boys were riding the surf and the whole scene was just so incredible! It was a really inspiring time for me [and Peter still finds himself inspired by Pet Sounds- AH].

But, before we got down to OZ, traveling on'that ancient cargo ship from Sweden, I was faced with the culture and music of the Middle East while passing through the Suez Canal in Egypt. To me this was a bit of a mind-blowing experience.

I guess that ever since, I have been affected by the Orient and it's been inevitable that my wife and I keep returning to countries like Turkey, India, Thailand and Malaysia. It was especially in Turkey that I picked up a lot of the vibes essential for ITL. The Garden Of Mysteries, our first album, owes very much to that country. Later on, India also played a vital role. This can be heard on our second release, Walking On Clouds and partly on our third, Dryad.

AH: When did you first start playing musical instruments?

PL: First time was in third grade primary school back in 1962. This was in Perth, Australia. Every pupil was given a musette, a sort of plastic recorder sounding a bit like a cuckoo. Then at the age of 15, on returning to Sweden, I received a Spanish guitar from my granny. But before this, somewhere along the journey back to Scandinavia (in Aden, I think), my parents bought a simple tape recorder manufactured by Aiwa and it was this that set me off on exploring all sorts of instruments later on, as well as developing my engineering skills.

AH: Did you have formal tuition in any particular instrument?

PL: No, I never had any. I'm self-taught in the sense that I recorded my music, listened to the result and criticized what I'd done. That's how I developed. Also along the line, I performed in a lot of different outfits, which I guess enhanced, my musicianship, too.

AH: How did you develop expertise in the use of so many instruments?

PL: Well, I don't consider myself an expert on anything really. But the achievements I made on a rather wide range of instruments is once again simply a consequence of fiddling around with the tape recorder and a need to investigate the possibilities of sound. I liked to mimic or give the impression of a whole band, which is something I still do. And I love to arrange songs. This is why I had to pick up on so many instruments, to broaden the scope. Since I did nearly everything myself I had no other alternative. Or else it would just be my guitar and my voice, endlessly.

At times, I have to come up with a specific instrument to fit in with a certain style, meaning I have to get an almost instant result from very little practice, since there isn't much time for that with all these deadlines constantly knocking on my door. Yes, they do seem to pop right out of the sky!

Like with the Indian shenai for instance, an oboe like instrument, which I used on one track of our second album, Walking On Clouds; this was a very brief affair. I had never played it before and I actually haven't played it since, unfortunately! The thing is to keep oneself within certain limits. To play like Bismila Khan, the king of shenai, is out of the question! And if I play on my viola da gamba, I do it within my range, what I can cope with. As long as I get the feel and there is magic in the instrumentation of a piece, then I'm pleased. Well, nearly! As you know, I do bring in other musicians every now and then into my stuff, not least to mention, Håkan Almkvist.

AH: Do you need to practice to develop and maintain your skills or do you just play for fun regularly?

PL: It should always be for fun! But regularly? No, I can't manage that! My time is pretty tight with all the maintenance work that has to be done in my studio and everything surrounding it.

I'd say it's like when you've learned to ride a bike, you know how to do it. It's in your system. It's a matter of taking on the challenge and not be scared. If I can't handle, let's say, my Turkish saz for instance on a difficult passage, I can always swap it for my twelve string acoustic guitar and make that work, too. Or do it on both layered on simultaneously.

I should maybe separately say a word on my samplers and synthesizers, this being a world to its own. During the eighties and nineties I spent a lot of time developing my skills on these instruments. I created my own libraries, too, like sampling the sound of a Persian santoor or the Turkish darbouka to name a few.

And the mellotron, which is absolutely unique, has been up front in my productions ever since the mid-seventies (with an exception during the "synthetic" eighties). The mellotron deserves a lot of practice, as it is not an easy instrument to play on, at least not in my opinion.

AH: Finally, what do you wish for musically, Peter? What musical projects are you working on now?

PL: I'm working on three projects: one being another album by In The Labyrinth, as yet not titled; the second also by ITL, in which Stefan Ottman displays his song writing capabilities. This is Samas Antaral. The third is a solo album covering some of my more rock-oriented stuff.

Participants in the ITL project (besides me) will be: Helena Selander, Håkan Almkvist, Fereidoun Nadimi, Miriam Oldenburgh and several others. Also, there are some newcomers such as Styrbjörn Bergelt on ancient Nordic instruments (kantele and bowed harp), Marcos Chappalli (violin) and Alejandro Vega (saxophone).

Stylewise, there is a pretty broad mix of genres combined together; hopefully, seamlessly just like the other albums. One thing, I'm trying to improve though is to allow for more contrasts in orchestration and in volume (amplitude). The thing is, I want to vary the density of the sound more so that sometimes you only hear one or two instruments playing and then there is an entire orchestra. Truth is, one needs a lot of confidence to make this happen! The big sound is no problem for me but portraying myself "all naked" - that can be!

About the solo album: It's pretty much psychedelic. In fact, there are a lot of influences from the Beatles, also from Brian Wilson (and the Beach boys) and naturally there should be a similarity to ITL somewhere. The title of this will be The Mystic One. Some of the lyrics are a bit dark, but others romantic. ITL members Håkan Almkvist and Helena Selander participate among other musicians. Håkan did several parts quite recently on his sitar. Besides this, there is material for at least two more pop/rock-oriented albums.

Several of the songs on The Mystic One derive from compositions that I made way back in time. My indulgence in pop and rock dates back to earlier than I can remember - maybe the late sixties. In some ways, ITL has been more of a side project to me; not meaning I take it any less seriously, but I've always seen myself mainly as doing pop music. That's what I was brought up with.

I also have some smaller plans including the completion of some relaxing music that I've made. Eve Rest is the name of one of those projects and another one is called Cloudburst.

Perhaps all this will stay within the vaults, so to speak, nothing ever coming out. Only time can tell! The urge to be heard and seen isn't really all that important to me any more. Creativity is what keeps me going, the need to express things and to experiment. And since I prefer not to label my music by any special category, I believe I'm making it a lot harder for myself (and ITL). This I am aware of. But that's the way it is. My destiny in a way, I guess, is doing things the hard way!

AH: Thanks very much Peter for being so generous in your responses. All the best with your upcoming ITL and solo releases. Perhaps we'll meet in the flesh one day, or maybe our spirits will merely mingle in the ether of many years of emails and in the warm heart of your musical compositions.

Discography:
The Garden Of Mysteries (1996)
Walking On Clouds (1999)
Dryad (2002)
One Trail To Heaven (2011)