”I`m usually very anti-nostalgic when it comes to music. The focus of my radio show 8 1/2 is on new music, and lately I`ve been playing for example the artistic pop of Joanna Newsom and Destroyer.
But when the NME-magazine published a 20th anniversary re-issue of their compilation tape C86 I thought, okay, I`m being nostalgic for once. The result is that I will probably play my CD86 everyday for a long time.
It`s a collection of different songs from 1986, many bands only released one single. This is like a world kept secret in many ways. Some of the bands have just great names, like Half Man Half Biscuit or The Boy Hairdressers. Many of them are really obscure but I kind of like all the stuff on the album.
I was a real addict concert-goer at the time and have seen most of the bands too. The Pastels were important. I saw them live and it was just incredibly noisy and chaotic, almost rubbish.
This brings back so many memories. There were even more obscure bands than those on the compilation and my own band, The Bridge, was one of those. We were very indie-sounding and couldn`t really play our instruments.
It`s great for me that the cd exists now. I used to have many of these on records but I sold my collection. It`s important to play this just by myself. A few friends know some of the songs but not many.
The music hasn`t really got anything to do with my current band, Treeball. But I will be doing a solo album too and was thinking that maybe I could use the sounds and the attitude that these bands had.
Nowadays I guess I`m regarded as a kind of a professional but my heart still lies with this scene. It has the kind of spontaneity and excitement that music should deliver.”
Laura Andersson
Treeball-album I Dream of Eclectic Sheep can be downloaded free from www.treeball.com, 8 1/2 on Thursdays 19-21 on Radio Helsinki
