One of promotional photos for Tobiasâs solo album Passiflora taken in April 2008 at the Omberg mountain in Sweden by his friend Emil and the album cover.
Passiflora was never officially released, but several songs from the album were available to listen on his Myspace page, including Lucifer et Lucia, The Breeze, House of Affection and Savant Garde. Unfortunately, the only songs to have survived online to this day are House of Affection and a live performance of The Breeze (often wrongly attributed to Magna Carta Cartel who indeed accompanied Tobias in the studio and on stage but werenât involved in the writing process). Tobias played his first solo show with the help of Martin, Arvid and Simon from MCC on March 27, 2008 at the Linköping Konsert & Kongress where he opened for Swedish singer-songwriter Christian Kjellvander. He then went on to do a few more shows at small clubs & local festivals mostly in Linköping. Passiflora was set for a release sometime in 2008 but, for reasons unbeknownst to me, it never saw the light of day.
Hereâs the story of how the album came to be as told by Tobias himself, taken from his website:
âI was born in Linköping, twenty miles south of Stockholm on March 3rd, 1981. Growing up together with my mother and a thirteen year older brother meant exposure to a lot of music, ranging from jazz and the classic sounds of the sixties in one ear, and seventies punk rock, new wave, heavy metal and the contemporary pop of the eighties in the other. All these different influences mixed with the more extreme underground metal I got obsessed with as I met adolescence in the early nineties has coloured my writing a lot. My record collection of references reaches from Abba to Venom, from Beatles to Bauhaus, from Jimi Hendrix to HĂŒsker DĂŒ, from Pink Floyd to Possessed and lots more. I started playing guitar when I was eight years old, when my father taught me how to play âTutti Fruttiâ and âBrev frĂ„n Kolonienâ (Cornelis Wreesvijk). With my new found knowledge and the message that most songs consists of the same chords I began trying to pick out all the songs I listened to at home, my first project being Kiss âAliveâ. And some years later I began forming bands and trying to get them floating, which proved being really hard. And with no functioning band, there were few reasons to stay in LinköpingâŠ
Upon moving to Stockholm in 1997 and the formation of my first ârealâ band Repugnant a year later, all my efforts from now on were put into a musical career. During our six year existance we had four figure sales of demo cassettes, seven and twelve inch EPs. In 2002, we recorded our one and only full length album âEpitome of Darknessâ, which was posthumously released in 2006. The band was officially put to rest in April 2004, after almost two years of almost total inactivity, apart from some smaller tours. Repugnant went through several line-up changes. Myself being musicwriter in chief and not always a very democratic initiator of the band, often lead to clashes with the other members. Something that unfortunatly kept occurring in the band that proceeded Repugnant, Subvision. With the intention of making something different than the death metal that I had become synonymous with, I wanted to create music with a slightly more melodic/pop edge (the wish was to make something along the lines of Voivodâs âAngel Ratâ album from 1991, which is known as their pop/goth album). I formed Subvision in the end of 2002 and throughout our five years of existence, we released âThe Killing Floor EPâ (2004), full length album âSo Far So Noirâ (2006) and did loads of live performances.
After nine years living in Stockholm, I decided to move back to my town of birth Linköping in September 2006, hooking up with my friends in Magna Carta Cartel (to make a long story short). Following a period of writing during the fall, and demoing and rehearsing during the winter/spring, the recordings of a new album commenced in the early summer of 2007, a production which eventually ended in December the same year. Initially intended as the second album by Subvision, it was decided in early 2008 by the other guys and myself that âPassifloraâ was to be my solo debut. And here we areâŠâ
Influences: Tom Verlaine, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Morrissey, Johnny Marr, The Doors, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Syd Barrett, R.E.M., Echo & The Bunnymen, David Lynch, U2, Ennio Morricone, Angelo Badalamenti, HĂŒsker DĂŒ, David Bowie, Blondie, Black Sabbath, David Grohl, James Hetfield, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, John Frusciante, Robert Smith, The Misfits, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeuz, Rick Rubin, Phil Spector, George Martin and many many more.
Sounds Like: âAll the sad variety of hellâ
2087
titsay
areudirty
stormborns
