Cover artwork by Daniel Higgs. LP pressed on black virgin vinyl and presented in a tip-on jacket with printed inner sleeve and free download card. The inner sleeve features printing on the inside pocket and the back side of the LP jacket is printed in four different colors.
The Beauty of Creation and Destruction (or Death to The Skull Defekts)
In January 2005, I had just finished a couple of weeks’ worth of shows in the UK playing guitar with a band called Kid Commando. We had released one album and a few 7”s in our six year lifetime and toured like mad. We were a live band and consisted of three very different personas, it’s a wonder we only got into one fist fight during our time together.
When Kid Commando went off the grid, I had already started talking to local drum hero Henrik Rylander of Union Carbide Productions about playing together. I had seen him play his intense feedback stuff solo and knew he was into weird, challenging shit. So – we quickly formed a band called The Skull Defekts with some important friends and played our first show opening for Sunn O))) in Gothenburg in March 2005. The aim was to make circular, ritualistic, monotonous rock music and to record and release as much stuff as we possibly could.
It took us about three years to find the final formula with our old friend Jean-Louis Huhta taking percussion and electronic responsibilities and Daniel Fagge Fagerström on vocals and guitar among other things. Huhta had been in Anticimex and had a great denim suit so he was an easy choice. Fagge had spent his 90ies in the most violent hardcore band I ever knew, called 8 Days of Nothing, so he had a natural place too.
We did some special and one off projects with friends as The Skull Defekts, and me and Rylander recorded and played shows as a duo, doing deep drone electronics. It was confusing to some, not to us though. Same energies, same band. We had a something that felt timeless and monolithic.
The Skull Defekts did a few albums, a bunch of singles and tapes and toured Europe, China and finally the US in 2008 where we met up with Daniel Higgs in Baltimore. I had met him at All Tomorrow’s Parties a few years back and Fagge once swapped shoes with him in Spain. He joined us on stage the next night at The Black Cat in Washington DC. Higgs was a member of the band before any of us even knew it. It felt so natural to play together that we decided that the five of us should make the next Skull Defekts album. In the end of October 2009, Higgs came to Stockholm and there we recorded Peer Amid in three days. The US tour that followed was the absolute highlight of The Skull Defekts. No bullshit. It was truly magic. Zomes opened for us on all dates. We all became friends and recorded the 2013-3012 12” together at Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket, RI on a day off. We felt like we were forever.
