The REAL hidden, late-career Libaek treasure: White Midnight - Sven Libaek (1983)

EDIT 11/01/2015: When I posted this a month ago, I uploaded the wrong song. I had accidentally uploaded The Settlement; an original Libaek soundtrack composition which can be found on the I Love Australian Movies LP. A nice track  to be sure, but not of the quality of White Midnight, which has now been uploaded to the player below.

Sven Libaek produced so much wonderful music during his career, but at some point in the late seventies his output suddenly became very schmaltzy and unremarkable. Gone are the exciting, idiosyncratic soundtracks, replaced with easy listening orchestral cheese. I see these late-career records regularly in my travels and sometimes I can’t resist buying them, despite knowing full well they’re going to be terrible, due to my deeply ingrained love of Libaek.

Every now and again, I find that these records harbour a song worth listening to or even, in this case, a flat-out excellent example of the Libaek genre. 1983’s Love Is In The Air is a collection of pedestrian covers played by the Sven Libaek Orchestra and is unlikely to be included in the Libaek classic canon. However, buried in the middle of the second side is White Midnight, a song written by Sven and originally recorded in 1965 by The Saints (not the well-known Australian punk rock band) on their obscure Australian skiing record, Ski With The Saints, which Libaek produced for CBS.

This track, despite bearing sonic hallmarks that make it clear it was recorded in the eighties, is pure golden-era Libaek, sounding like it could be a condensed section from Australian Suite or an excerpt from one of Sven’s soundtracks. Have a listen and be the judge: is this a lost Libaek gem, or what?

I'm selling a couple of Libaek singles on eBay.

If anyone's interested I'm selling some singles on eBay, amongst them, a few Libaek records: the Thatcherie single from the Inner Space soundtrack, the Boney Title Theme single from the Boney soundtrack and the Andy Sundstrom Northern Territory single composed and produced by Libaek and previously featured on this blog. I've also got a bunch of 7" singles released by Secret Chiefs 3 in 2007 and a Ween single from White Pepper, if you're into those sorts of things.

The Unique Sound of Andy Sundstrom - Andy Sundstrom/Sven Libaek (1963)

Earlier this year I wrote a post about a single by Andy Sundstrom from 1963 playing a couple of songs composed and produced by Sven Libaek. I have now come across the EP from which this single was taken thanks to Urban Bowerbird reader Rex. The Unique Sound of Andy Sundstrom features the two songs from the single - Northern Territory and Theme From Black Orpheus - and two more Libaek-penned tunes; Free Fall and Theme From An Unwritten Movie. Although I didn’t realise this after hearing the single, Sundstrom plays these songs not on a guitar, but on a balalaika. This has added a whole new layer to the music for me and makes Andy a bit of a pop oddity. Whoever thought that balalaika surf-pop from the early sixties Australian music scene even existed? Two of the tracks, Northern Territory and Theme From An Unwritten Movie would be recorded by Sven with his usual jazz ensemble of the time and included on The Music Of Sven Libaek released four years later. The third track, Free Fall, was written by Libaek and performed by Australian surf group The Atlantics on their Bombora LP from 1963. (I’m not sure who played it first - both recordings came out in 1963).

Back cover liner notes: Three years ago ANDY SUNDSTROM came to Australia as a crew member on the 38 foot ketch “Sarong”. He had a guitar under one arm and a balalaika under the other. He wasn’t planning to stay too long, as all his family live in Denmark, his country of birth. However, he fell in love, with Australia, as do so many other visitors and migrants - and he’s still here! He hasn’t wasted his three years here either, on the contrary, he has established himself as one of Australia’s leading entertainers. 

ANDY’S speciality is the balalaika and in playing it he has been referred to as the “fastest man on strings”. However, his first CBS disc was far from a fast one. It was a haunting melody simply entitled “THEME FROM AN UNWRITTEN MOVIE” and although it was not a hit for ANDY it certainly made a stir among the public as well as disc jockeys and show business personalities. It was NORTHERN TERRITORY that really established Andy as a top pop artist with his balalaika. His beautiful rendition of THEME FROM BLACK ORPHEUS also became extremely popular with the public. All these tracks you will find on this E.P. and in addition, his latest entitled FREE FALL, a virtuoso surfin’ number.

This collection could easily have been entitled - “The Best of Andy Sundstrom”, but THE UNIQUE SOUND OF ANDY SUNDSTROM seemed more appropriate. It is indeed a unique sound - this strange haunting and brilliant way of playing that rather unusual instrument the balalaika, with a pop flavor. ANDY has created a new branch of Australian entertainment business. A branch that is growing in popularity every day.

Label: CBS, produced and composed by Sven Libaek

Released: 1963

Players: Andy Sundstrom - balalaika, guitar (no other musicians credited)

EDIT: Urban Bowerbird reader "randbasic" emailed me a reconstructed version of the artwork for this record. It looks great.

EDIT 25/09/2016: Here's a short article talking about Andy's work on this EP from Australian Womens Weekly in 1962. 

Mediafire. 

Seasons Of Love - Gerard Kennedy/Sven Libaek (1972)

I first saw this album on the old Votary Records trades page, listed as ‘for Libaek completists only’. It’s a fair assessment of this LP - Libaek merely provides accompaniment for Australian seventies television star Gerard Kennedy as he recites Rod McKuen-style poetry over a smooth jazz backing. It may be instructive to focus on the music and the poetry separately:

THE MUSIC, BY SVEN LIBAEK. Sven’s compositions on the LP are quite good, if a little innocuous (it is intended as background music after all). There are some great moments though, which is not surprising as this was recorded right in the middle of Libaek’s golden era - he would go on to record the soundtrack for Inner Space a year after this release. None of the musicians are credited, but I am pretty confident that the usual suspects are playing on this record: George Golla on guitar, Don Burrows on flutes, John Sangster on vibes and percussion and so on. Many tracks also feature the addition of string sections which tends to bring out great stuff from Sven. The frustrating thing is that there are very few moments on the LP where the music is brought to the forefront and given a chance to be heard. Autumn is one such track, where we get a chance to hear haunting flute lines cycle over orchestral strings with a cool jazz underpinning from the rhythm players. The twin, harmonising sax lines bookending Spring are another lovely touch. A few themes are repeated and developed over a couple of tracks which adds some depth, and was not something that Sven usually did. But unfortunately, any moments of Libaek goodness invariably get interrupted by Gerard Kennedy’s awkward, artless spoken word.

THE POETRY, BY GERARD KENNEDY. Let me be blunt; the poetry on this record is bad. Really bad. Really, really bad. I think I could state without risk of hyperbole that this is the worst poetry I have ever heard. Gerard affects a bad boy, outsider persona for the poetry, but also injects a strange sort of cutesiness that, while not necessarily at odds with the material, fills me with an intense sort of simultaneous rage and embarrassment. Embarragement?

Throughout Seasons Of Love, Kennedy’s turn of phrase is embarrassingly unselfconscious and pretentious - I could pick almost any line from the album to illustrate this, here’s a random sample: ‘[Let’s] put up a maze of love with walls a thousand thoughts thick’ from I Think I’ll Build A Wall or “You moved [...] proud and graceful like a young gazelle picking her way through the forest.” from The Quiet Time Of Reason. There are really only two themes that are touched upon in the poems (if I was being kind, I’d call it consistency): Gerard describing how he is an outsider (Travel Broadens The Mind, I Am An Island) or musings on wanting to find love, but being too much of a free-thinking bohemian to be able to love just one woman (all the other tracks). Gerard is always alone, even in a crowd. The rain is his brother, and the wind is his friend.

Of course, Kennedy can’t be blamed for the abysmal standard of the poetry because despite the strongly personal nature of the verse, he didn’t actually write it. The poetry itself is credited to one Warwick Randall. One website I read even suggested that ‘Warwick Randall’ was a pseudonym for Kennedy, but from what I can ascertain, Randall is a real person. He has a couple of books of poetry to his name, is credited as working with Kennedy on a number of television shows and wrote for Melbourne broadsheet The Age in the early eighties. 

The fact that Kennedy didn’t even write the words that he delivers with such hammy enthusiasm only adds to the weirdness of this record. Did Kennedy recognise his limitations as a poet and outsource the job? Did he think that his friend was a criminally under appreciated poet and wanted to bring his work to a wider audience? Perhaps Gerard just wanted to portray himself as a tough yet arty nonconformist but didn’t actually have the poetic skills required for an LP of this nature and so turned to a lesser known, but confident poet whom he happened to know through work? I have so many questions about the execution and production of this LP, but I suspect that everyone involved with Seasons Of Love instantly forgot about it soon after it was released.

...And yet, I keep listening to this LP. I tend to eschew the ‘so bad it’s good’ school of music appreciation (I prefer music that’s ‘so good it’s good’) but there’s something about Seasons Of Love that keeps me coming back. There’s something mesmerising about this seventies wannabe alternative pin-up boy effusing cringe-inducing poetry (that he didn’t even write) over a backdrop of sweet, smooth jazz from a composer who was at the top of his game and probably wrote this material in his sleep. If nothing else, it’s a fascinating cultural artifact - when, where, could this have ever been considered cool?

Label: Festival

Released: 1972

Players: Gerard Kennedy - spoken word

Sven Libaek - composer, arranger

Musicians uncredited.

Mediafire.

Bush Theme/Lonely Australian Landscape - Sven Libaek (1966)

Here's another gem from Urban Bowerbird favourite Sven Libaek. These two tunes are taken from the nature documentary soundtrack Nature Walkabout, however these are quite different versions to the tracks that appear on the LP. These versions are shorter and have faster tempos than the album versions and a few changes in orchestration and arrangement. The two tracks also seem to be played by a more stripped-down version of Sven's usual ensemble - there are no saxophone, flute or trumpet parts, just piano, guitar, bass, vibes and harmonica on Bush Theme. I am unsure why different versions of these songs were released on the single - is this a standard practice? I have a 7" single from Libaek's Inner Space soundtrack (Thatcherie/Sounds Of The Deep) and it contains exactly the same versions as featured on the LP. Weird.

I always felt that Bush Theme was one of the weaker tracks on Nature Walkabout and I think the increase in tempo and the concision of this arrangement improves it immeasurably. Lonely Australian Landscape on the other hand is one of my favourite of Sven's compositions and I like it even better with this pacing and arrangement. It takes what is already a great melody and gives it an incredible urgency and energy.

Label: Festival
Released: 1966 (I assume; that's when the Nature Walkabout soundtrack was released.)
Players: Unsure, but here's an educated guess: Sven Libaek - piano 

George Golla - guitar
John Sangster - vibes, percussion
Ed Gaston - bass
Derek Fairbrass - drums
Richard Brooks - harmonica

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Para Ti/Warmer - Bryce Rohde (1963)

This is a single released in 1963 by Bryce Rohde, probably best known for his work in the Australian Jazz Quintet. I found this single at a second book shop in Leongatha with a bunch of other jazz 45s that were all from 1963. Both tracks on this 7" are great and have something of a cool, almost exotica, bossa feel - it reminds me of the sort of stuff they reissue on Trunk Records. This single was released by CBS during the reign of Sven Libaek who produced both tracks.

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Northern Territory/Theme From Black Orpheus -Andy Sundstrom (1963)

(EDIT: I have found the EP from which this single was taken. It contains an additional two tracks Free Fall and Theme From An Unwritten Movie. Check it out here.)

To follow on from the previous post, here is a version of Sven Libaek's song Northern Territory recorded by Andy Sundstrom in 1963. Libaek's version of this track can be found on The Music Of Sven Libaek and based on the liner notes of that LP, was presumably featured on some sort of documentary about the Northern Territory. I can find very little information on who Sundstrom actually is, but he recorded a couple of folk LPs with Leonard Teale back in 1969 and 1970. He's clearly a guitarist as these two instrumental, guitar-based tracks attest. Northern Territory is a jaunty, tremolo-number with a distinct western feel. The B-side, Theme From Black Orpheus is an exotica-tinged, melody driven Brazilian bossa nova taken from the soundtrack of the 1959 movie of the same name.

EDIT: Found some information on Mr. Sundstrom on the back of an LP he did with Leonard Teale. Here it is verbatim:

Andy Sundstrom was born in Denmark. He studied almost every string instrument imaginable, paying particular attention to the guitar and balalaika. Most of his early youth was spent playing in various bands. He decided he wanted to travel, and with a friend, two guitars, a balalaika and $60 in his pocket he left Hanover, Germany. After 10 days the money had been spent, then the boys ‘played’ their way to Italy, Marseilles, Spain. Andy continued the journey alone to the Canary Islands, and from there helped sail a 38-foot ketch to Australia where he settled for several years. Andy has now returned to his native Denmark, and recently travelled extensively throughout Europe furthering his musical career.

Label: CBS, produced by Sven Libaek.
Released: 1963
Players: Andy Sundstrom - guitar

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The Music Of Sven Libaek - Sven Libaek (1967)

This LP seems to be one of the lesser heard of Libaek's albums from his golden era in the sixties and seventies. I can't imagine why - it's a fantastic set of music as good as (or better than) his soundtrack work which has enjoyed such a resurgence in appreciation over the last few years. In any case, the majority of the pieces on this album are from film and television soundtracks composed 'in the last year or so' and then rearranged and rerecorded for this album. The liner notes don't mention which soundtracks, but the titles give clues: Gold Coast Fanfare, Lake Moondara, Northern Territory and so on.

EDIT: I've noticed from the liner notes of the Nature Walkabout soundtrack that some of these earlier works are mentioned. Man And A Mural was from the soundtrack to an 'award winning art documentary film' of the same name which was produced and edited by Nature Walkabout producer  Bill Copland. Done Away With was part of the music Sven wrote for a 'TV play' of the same name by Pat Flowers. Versions of Northern Territory and Theme From An Unwritten Movie were released on a 1963 EP by balalaika player Andy Sundstrom on CBS when Libaek was at the helm as A&R man. I recently tracked down this EP and wrote a post on it here.

The compositions are played by that great team of Sydney jazz players familiar from countless other Australian recordings of the era: Don Burrows, Errol Buddle, George Golla, John Sangster and Derek Fairbrass amongst others. This is a superb album which deserves to be placed in the same league as Libaek's best.

Postcript: The excellent ABC podcast RareCollections recently ran a two-part interview with Libaek containing a lot of great information from Sven. Check it out here.

Label: Festival

Released: 1967

Players: Sven Libaek - piano, guitar

Don Burrows - alto sax, alto flute, flute

Errol Buddle - tenor sax

Eric "Boff" Thompson - trumpet

Richard Brooks - harmonica

George Golla - guitar

John Sangster - vibes, glockenspiel, bongos

Ed Gaston - bass

Derek Fairbrass - drums

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