AGUSA
Psychedelic folky Swedes take ‘flute rock’ into a new dimension.
“WE JUST WANT IT TO SOUND LIKE SCANDINAVIAN TROLLS, BEING NICE BUT STILL QUITE SCARY, IN THE DEPTHS OF THE FOREST.”
The greaTesT psychedelia grabs the listener by the synapses and swing-chucks them into a thrillingly alien, kaleidoscopic world. Sweden’s Agusa have clearly studied the genre with more diligence than most, the result being a fresh strain of psychedelic rock that is both blissfully nostalgic and oddly timeless. As bassist and co-founder Tobias Petterson explains, conjuring that sound is far from an exact science.
“The songs are all worked out in jams between us. Sometimes it can be funky, sometimes it’s reggae, but then we shape it up and bring it back into the Agusa fold, so to speak,” he says. “We all know what we sound like, you know? Sometimes we’re far from it and sometimes we’re very close to it, but we’re all working towards the same end, but from different angles. It’s very difficult to explain. We just want it to sound like Scandinavian trolls, being nice but still quite scary, in the depths of the forest.”
Key to Agusa’s warped woodland vibes is the omnipresent flutter of Jenny Puertas’ flute, an instrument that hardly requires an introduction in the prog world, but one that seldom gets due recognition for its magical qualities and importance to prog’s sonic vocabulary. Agusa began life as a studio project specialising in what Petterson defines as “organ-based heavy progressive”, with the bassist doubling as flautist when the mood took him. Once it expanded into a full live band, his longheld fascination with the sideways woodwind instrument took over and since Puertas’ recruitment in 2015, Agusa have become proud purveyors of the more succinctly named “flute rock”.
“I have an obsession with flute rock,” Petterson notes.“I collect all kinds of progressive flute music. The flute has its own frequencies, of course. It’s very light and also a little bit magical, it reminds you of childhood or of ancient times. It has the sound of shivering. It’s been my favourite instrument since I was 20 or something. I would even say that The Beatles and Metallica would’ve sounded better with the flute!
[Laughs] The flute always adds something.”
Now that Agusa has been released into the wild, its creators are gearing up for as many live shows as they can logistically handle, given the meagre financial benefits of playing music this gloriously pie-eyed. Clearly in favour of giving value for money, Petterson promises that if you do catch Agusa live, the music on the new album will already have evolved into something new.
“We’ve rewritten everything from the studio versions for performing live,” he chuckles. “It changes all the time. At every new rehearsal there is a new riff or a new melody or a new break or whatever, so it always differs. Sometimes what we do is too progressive. Sometimes we rehearse with three people and the other guys don’t know about it, and then we play live and it becomes very difficult because everything’s changed. But I guess that’s exciting too.”
Agusa make no bones about their obsession with music made between the late 60s and, as Petterson states precisely, “late 1974 or early 1975”. As with their previous albums, Agusa could easily be marketed as a long lost gem from the early 70s Vertigo Records catalogue, such is the unerring authenticity of the band’s shimmering, all-analogue sound. Ultimately, you can’t fake this kind of mindbending musical trip and while Petterson is understandably cagey about the influence of illicit substances on his music, he does concede that they have played a significant role along the way.
“To be honest, I’ve tried singing and writing and recording and rehearsing during an LSD trip,” he grins.“I would say that everyone should do what they please, but if I’m going to perform it’s better if I only use beer! The music is difficult to play. But I’d say that mind-altering experiences have definitely helped out with writing some of the material. But those experiences can make even very poor music sound good. I once listened to John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads 80 times in one sitting and even that worked!” DL