Gunds

This is the third full-length release by Lars Pellarin (Printer, Pellarin & Lenler), and his tribute to the vanished name of his Danish birthplace. Following the same format as his first album on Statler & Waldorf, 2004's Athen, it seems a series of albums with a city theme is developing. This time it's Gunds - the area north of Roskilde where Pellarin grew up, not far from the only nuclear power plant in Denmark as well as the strange hill Bolund, which sits in the muddy fjord like a giant grass turtle, still asleep since it's birth during the last Ice Age. Pellarin had his first job in the cafe at Vintappergrden - a rebuilt farm where huge buses full of elderly Germans arrived to look at dried/plastic flower decorations exhibited in the large quiet barns. Mozart would blast out at hearing-aid volume during the few hours of the visiting stampede, while the rest of the time it was silent: just Pellarin and the mice. As a child, Pellarin and his friends used to build caves in the foggy moors of Gunds, and many of the pieces that ended up on this album suit his memories from that time. Now that the municipality reform of 2007 merged Gunds with Roskilde, the name has disappeared. The CD version of the album comes with a video created by Stefan Mylleager for one of the pieces. The long-term audio-visual collaboration of the two has developed into an expansion of the band Pellarin with a confident visual aspect. Contrary to previous Pellarin albums, Gunds features two tracks with vocals - one of them a traditional song performed by Jesper Henriksen, who previously worked with Rasmus Mbius. The other vocal element on the album is a Middle Eastern chant-like section in the track, Iran.