Adam Skogvard

The band's second gig in this incarnation took place in Gagnef at the Rundgång Festival on September 7. The brand new track "Arrow" was thrown in at the very end of the set which in other parts was the same as on the previous gig. They seemed to go down relatively well considering the fact that they had an audience who probably didn't know the band at all.

Here's what Erika Fahlgren of the local newspaper Dalademokraten thought of the gig;

An exotic mix
Stockholm based Book of Hours played earlier on the night. The band is quite original playing an exotic mix of heavy bass and ethereal vocals. Recorder melodies and typically swedish "kulning"* brings a medieval flavour to the elements of the suggestive rhythms of Björk and the instrumental vocals of The Cocteau Twins. A positive surprise.

*"Kulning", Herding calls, is a special high-pitched vocal technique, a vocal means of expression, mainly used by women in the grazing pastures in Scandinavia.

The band recently had a gig in Stockholm at Club Alcazar. This was Anni's and Adam's first gig with the band and it went very well. Mostly new material was played which seemed to work fine.

Believe it or not, but the band managed to achieve what they had set out to do in the recent studio-session. In went four musicians with some music and a bunch of mixing ideas and out came four musicians and four completed songs! This was their first recording with Anni and her voice has brought a new dimension to the Book of Hours sound.

Some brief notes on the songs;
"Where the ocean meets the sea": Mattias and Henrik had already recorded the backingtrack for this song in 2000 and basically the only thing that was done to this song was dubbing Adam's guitar and Anni's voice plus adding a few bits here and there.
"Dissonance": This track was recorded from scratch. It has an intro which is comprised of the use of computer sound processing, which in a way is a new feature for Book of Hours.
"In-between": This song is a bit of a departure for the band in the sense that it was entirely put together on computer, and originally not even meant to be a song at all! All that was done in the studio was recording Anni's vocals to it and mixing.
"Anomy":This is the second song that was recorded from scratch, and much effort was put into capturing the right performance.

These four songs are intended to be on a four track EP of some sort (in the order presented above) planned for release in the summer. Keep visiting this site for more info as time goes by.

After intense rehearsals the band is getting ready for the upcoming recording session due to take place Feb 28th - March 3rd, once again in FS-studio in Söderhamn. Three new songs are supposed to be recorded plus adding Adam's guitarplaying and Anni's vocals to a backingtrack recorded by Henrik and Mattias in September 2000. The result will hopefully be a 4-track EP released in the early summer.

Vocalist found!

After spending the last months of 2001 trying out vocalists Book of Hours finally found their (wo)man in Anni Thulin, a very gifted classically trained vocalist. She is most welcomed by the guys in the band and her ability has unveiled pointers to paths previously untread by the band.

The quartet is now getting warmed up for a four day recording session at the end of February/early March. The plan is to finish material for a possible new release in the early summer.

Well spent waste of time?

The recording session at the end of May was the band's studio debut with Adam on guitar. They recorded the backingtracks for the 13 minute piece "Movements", a new improved version of the previously recorded "A day of Release" and the finishing parts of a track called "Listless". However, the session did not run too smoothly, much due to the fact that they had to use a different studio engineer. When reviewing what they had recorded they also decided that they needed to rearrange parts of the music, as they felt it didn't hold up to the severe scrutiny they treat their compositions to. As the band still is in desperate need of a vocalist no vocals were put on tape during the session.

May 26-27 will be spent in the FS-studio in Söderhamn. The boys in the band are hoping to record backingtracks for three new songs plus adding some stuff to the recodings made in September.

The three new songs to be recorded, "A day of release", "Listless" and the lengthy "Movements" have been rehearsed for the last months and are coming to shape nicely. Adam will also be dubbing some guitar over Per's to the existing backingtracks for the song "Where the ocean meets the sea".

The track "A day of release" was recorded with Per back in September but has undergone such vast improvments during the last months of rehearsals that they have decided to record a new version, which will be much more contrastive and organic than the "old" version.

The remaining two tracks from the September session, "Dawn" and "Shades of glass" are so far the only songs completed but there is hope that they will find a new vocalist to add the final touch to the new recordings in order to finalise the follow-up album to 1999's "Art to the blind".

Adam Skogvard is the new guitar player in the new improved Book of Hours!

Current rehearsals are spent breaking Adam in on old material in paralell with creating and fine tuning new stuff.

More info on Mr Skogvard can be found on the members page soon.