The little book at the left, The Art of Rock. Posters from Presley to Punk is a sad book. They didn’t live happily ever after.
Yes, pieces of cardboard not meaning much for the twenty fist century music lovers/ makers/ promoters. Apart from the nostalgic collectors, no one cares anymore for the amazing graphic achievements of, say, a Jefferson Airplane poster (always my favourites) or a Velvet Underground visual concept.
Who pays attention to a booklet today? I will not start another discussion about music losing physical support, about collapsing sales, dying labels, legal and illegal downloads, iPods, and airplay; there are oh so many professional guys covering the topic. My concern is minor and personal: when people talk about the visual history of music, people refer to MTV, Madonna and the 80s. Which I think it’s wrong. Tell me a music video that could equal in popularity Rolling Stones’ tongue. A video abbreviates and biases the musical impact (you hear a song and it leaves a certain impression on you; then you see its video and – hocus-pocus – it’s like hearing another song for better or for worse. Did this ever happen to you?). But the poster or the booklet respects and encourages the approach of the sounds. On one hand, it stands for itself, on the other hand, its advertising side could be seen as an artful prelude to an exclusive love-affair between you and the music. The poster is there to stir up your desire, not to consume your thrill. Sadly enough, I’ve seen lots of videos eclipsing or masking or defending the music; they’re nothing but subtle ways of despising the qualification of the sounds alone to defend themselves, to raise passions, to build empires and to tear down the walls.
Long live Velvet Underground’s banana!

I do not like tourism. I’m against it.
If I enjoy a place, I do not feel like leaving it the next day, I tend to stay there longer, I tend to instill it. If I like a building, I tend not to take pictures – I find it rude and useless.
The good maps are the big colourful fully detailed thin-papered ones with pictures, descriptions of the museums, local history and industry, tiny streets in tiny letters; useless to say this kind of map is perfectly worthless when you’re outside in an (always a bit) windy location: one needs a steady atmosphere and a double hotel bed to keep it unfolded. No, I cannot read a detailed map, let alone fold it the right way when done with it.
Being a tourist occurs a strange feeling of precariousness; you’re tired and messy most of the time, you are bound to wear the same comfortable “tourist-clothes” regardless of the time and space, all passer-bys are better dressed and better-smelling than you, they all look careless, hands in their pockets, they know what they’re doing and where they’re heading to, they talk on the phone and carry their babies without paying attention to churches and bridges, they meet friends in the park and they despise your camera and your strange accent. Seeing you, they’ve never been happier for having a routine and you’ve never been more miserable for not having one; you miss your make-up box, your high-heeled red shoes, your own steady breakfast in your very own bed.
Tourism? That’s a vocational job. Most of us collapse under its burden. And we won’t even admit it. Just a few are somehow pleased with it. Just a very few truly satisfied. Not me.PS: Fleetwood Mac’s “Beautiful Child” is full of enigmatic harmony. I always liked the song. It could turn a timetable in something meaningless, colorful and friendly.

The boy was 8 and he was brought into Court, and he had no mother, and he had no father:”So, you enjoy stealing…”
“No.”
“But you DID steal.”
“Yes.”
“When was the last time you stole?”
“Last week.”
“What did you steal?”
“A rabbit.”

Helena makes that kind of music you want to follow, you want to see growing, spreading, raising debates, questioning, fighting and beating clichés, puzzling conventionalists and captivating those who have an intense (and intuitive) sense of music; you somehow want to take this music upon yourself and make it circulate faster, make it reach everybody, not tomorrow, not in a few hours, but now. It rarely happens to start my mails and conversations with: “you gotta hear this”, but ever since I have listened to Helena’s first single “By Your Side”, I was compelled to change my greeting-habits; and after listening to the whole album, I’ve realized that, for some reason, I took Helena’s music very personally; which is a thing that doesn’t happen often, if at all.
However, better tell you more about this amazing album that, from today on, is out in the open.
So I will start with an attribute I tell everybody and write everywhere: she’s otherworldly. And everything else has its roots in this first description.
Now you will probably tell me that every artful gesture coming from every artist must have an otherworldly touch in order to make (and support) a difference; and I won’t argue with you. But. Founding your art on bewitching premises, as Helena does, takes an extremely well-controlled creative force. It’s about a very rare ability of faultlessly juggling with your own creative impulses and slippery imagination, merging them with only half-understood intuitions and totally unknown throbs coming from some nebulous “other side”. And so, Dynamo is a “visited” place, full of slushes, whispers, insinuating noises; and there’s no one there to help you out, because Helena has already become a fairy and, like all fairies, she turns ambiguous and ambivalent, provocative and passionate, comfortless and cruel, tender and ticklish. You’re lost, and you like it. It’s first class escapism.
One could, of course, point at a certain fashion of ingeniously combining elegant, ethereal sounds with red-blooded spirit coming directly from the early Kate Bush (especially “The Dreaming”, the classical “Wuthering Hights”, “Man with the Child in His Eyes”, “Army Dreamers”) or from her latest eclectic and graceful masterpiece Aerial; or, again, from Björk’s earlier music, before the electronically distorted sounds to become the Icelandic artist’s favourites; or, moreover, from the never used-up 70-80′s R&B influences wonderfully recaptured by, say, Antony and the Johnsons, my favourite New Yorkers. Yes, they are all to be guessed in the background of Helena’s album. However, as far as I am personally concerned, I couldn’t help but hearing in her “Pirate King”‘s noisy presence as well as in the whole airy fairy-tale-ish atmosphere of the album, the legendary Sgt. Pepper and his “Lucy in the Sky of Diamonds”, “Good Morning Good Morning”, “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” and therefore I would speculate here Christoffer Lundquist’s propensity to Beatles and conceptual albums.
Speaking about Helena’s genius-producer, I ought to mention (and salute) his latest predilection to oboe that already saved a Roxette track (“Reveal” that is) and is going to make “Sleepyhead” one of the most touching and realistically positive songs to be heard. As a matter of fact, as far as a dilettante (like me) could discern, Dynamo is arranged with excellency; infinite attention paid to details, but always to the benefit of the general (oh so smooth) view, nothing thick, nothing loose, nothing overwrought, no excesses, just subtleties and adequacy.
The album seems literally (consider the geographical position of Aerosol Grey Machine Studio!) and imagistically (consider the lyrics and Helena’s presence!) plucked off the Nature; which provides on one hand, a rough freshness and, on the other hand, an unexpected, sophisticated mythical dimension. My favourite “Where does the unused love go?” and the artful “Air hostess” are, perhaps, the most “urban” songs on the album, “In the Woods”, “Meadow”, “Ghosts”, “Big Bad Wolf” and “The Moon is a Grain of Sand” are almost-almost displaying a cosmic fusion with Nature and a careful playing with the equivocal Powers Out There, while “Never Never”, “Waterlily Love”, “Sleepyhead” and “By your side” descend deep inside the (often underrated) woman’s labyrinthine soul; they uncover the essentially ambivalent approach of one’s self and of others; there is, yes, tension in the album; and infinite tenderness too; the most melodic parts are delivered in twisted, unexpected, refined ways (“Waterlily Love”, “By Your Side”) while the most dissonant and heavy ones are displayed with a childish candor (“Pirate King”, “Big Bad Wolf”). Still, the album is not an incomprehensible paradox, but a smooth, coherent fundamentally existential statement. And it is, yes, more than music. And that’s why I am grateful. So grateful.