Description
It’s fascinating how easily today’s music geek can dig up documentation and lengthy interviews about how classic albums were made: who played what, how it was recorded, and how long it all took.
Take Daniel Lanois, of whom we are fans. Back in his heyday, a record he was involved in could take years to reach the pressing plant. Think Peter Gabriel’s So or U2’s Achtung Baby. Classics, and for good reason.
Without making any comparisons, Monkey Business also took three years to complete. Two years of recording, spread across 2023 and 2024, followed by another year of post-production. Not because Teemu Åkerblom plays every instrument himself. It was more a case of one weekend here, another there, until someone eventually said, “Oh shit, we haven’t touched this in five months.” And then, little by little, an album emerged.
We eventually handed the recordings over to Bjørn Harald Lund Bø to have a go at the mix. He edited and changed a few things along the way, and that’s how we ended up with the combined artist name: Björn Åkerblom!
The original plan was, once again, fun, fun, fun. Find some moods, experiment a little, and let Teemu play everything, which anyone who knows him will tell you he’s perfectly capable of doing. Start with a keyboard chord he likes, add some bass, mess around with guitar effects, and finish off with the drum fills.
Honestly, I’d mostly forgotten these tracks by the time we got around to finishing the album. That’s what happens when you work with music 24/7. So putting them on again was a real treat.
There’s the great theme of “Masterpiece”, discovered while noodling around with the arpeggiator on the Moog One. Then there’s “Disco Time”, a catchy little Daft Punk-meets-Air affair with vocoder. “Rosso Ranch” and “In The Green” bring the breezy jazz vibes, while one of our personal favourites is “Requiem For Cold Coffee”: a drum-machine pattern arpeggiated on the Korg Poly-61, with some fantastic acoustic bass on top. And then there’s the funky “New Rhythmical Thing”.
Enough babbling. Have a listen and see what you think.
The album also comes with a bonus 45 (well, you do pay for it, after all). The A-side features the funky shuffle “Hot Stock”, while the flip offers the slightly oddball “Jazz Rave”.
As for the physical edition, we’re keeping things handmade and a little unpredictable. Reused sleeves, flipped inside out, printed and numbered, with an insert. The 45 comes in its own printed inner jacket, housed in a thick, open-centre sleeve with a numbered label.
Just 50 copies, first come, first served. The earlier you order, the lower your copy number
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