AGONY STREET
Songs For William
(Silverton Records)

 

The death of Klas Qvist was such a jolt of bad sudden death karma that I have been trying to process for the past 60 days ago, since I only found out on March 3rd, 2022 when in fact Klas died on July 5, 2021. Apparently, my dear Swedish friends and associates tried in vain to keep the sad news from me, which they did for almost nine months, but I thank them anyway. Even though Klas wasn’t answering my emails after we last spoke on May, 27, 2021, just weeks before he was gone, I never dreamed he was actually dead.

I was a big supporter of his 3 albums he made when he was known as Citizen K and thankfully I featured extensive interviews on mwe3.com with Klas on each of them. In a posthumous twist of fate, those three albums, released between 2009 and 2018 will be reissued as Klas Qvist’s Citizen K albums as we move further into the 2020s. I had several emails with Klas discussing his last music which he was busy preparing for release on a new for 2022 album by his early 1990s era band Agony Street. Never before released, yet reissued on CD and download early last year, the second Agony Street, Songs For William is an excellent example of Klas doing his best impressions of post-Beatles rock at its finest. Featuring Klas Qvist, writing, playing and harmonizing together with his co-founder and producer-songwriter Gudmundur Bragason, Songs For William features one huge pop song after the next and is a must for both Beatles fans and fans of KQ’s music on the Citizen K albums. Two tracks recorded in 2019 were added as tracks 16 & 17, supplanting the original 15-track, 1993 album.

After spinning Songs For William, it’s clear that both Gudmundur and Klas are each excellent singers and songwriters and, even though the album was recorded way back in 1993, the duo work together in a magical way on Songs For William. Although Klas is featured even more heavily on the first Agony Street album 119 Agony Street, recorded in 1991 yet never released on CD, 1993’s archival release of Songs For William is actually the first CD release of their label Silverton Records. I could easily see fans of Jeff Lynne, Traveling Wilburys, Brian Wilson and any of the really great pop tunesmiths of post-Beatles rock tuning in. The fact that no Agony Street albums were actually released when they were recorded is underscored by the musical genius that penetrates these two reissue treasures of pure pop genius.

Klas Qvist and Gudmundur Bragason made a great team and the sheer exuberance of the first two Agony Street albums offers a stunning sonic revelation. If these albums were in fact a training ground for the future Klas Qvist, they also offer a great look at their group partnership and musical perfection. Also on board are some of Sweden’s finest session players. Songs For William is the first CD release on Silverton Records and for fans of Beatle-esque pop and rock it’s a solid winner.

In the fleeting few months before he died on July 5th 2021, Klas was positively upbeat about the reunion of his early band Agony Street with his co-conspirator Gudmundur Bragason. In my last email with Klas from May 27th, 2021, he sounded quite excited about the third Agony Street album, which was nearly finished at the time of his tragic sudden death as well as the 30 new songs he had recently written. Four weeks later he was gone. Those were the days…

 


 

mwe3.com presents an interview with
Klas Qvist and Gudmundur Bragason

The following interview with Klas Qvist is based upon various compiled emails between me and Klas that were done in early to mid-2021, with some just several weeks before he died. The interview with Gudmundur Bragason was done in April and May of 2022. {editor, mwe3.com, May, 2022}

mwe3: Klas, I was hoping you would tell me something about your band Agony Street, but we hadn’t spoken in a while.

Klas Qvist: Robert, I was going to write to you about this last week, but simply forgot. Last Friday, ”Farmhand’s Anthem”, taken from the Agony Street album 119 Agony Street, originally scheduled for release in 1991, came out on YouTube. The album will be available for download and streaming on February 28, 2021. The song ”I Never Told A Soul”, also from the album, will come out on YouTube Friday the 21st of February. Dig it and spread the word!

mwe3: When can I get to hear the Agony Street tracks? From what I heard so far it sounds very 1960’s retro style of music. So tell me about the very first Agony Street album 119 Agony Street, which you put out digitally early last year, and also there’s actually a new Agony Street album on your new record label that is coming out in 2022?

Klas Qvist: Hmmm. I’m a complete disaster when it comes to We Transfer and other services, even the download part. I always end up using the least flattering part of my vocabulary. I’ll forward your request to Gudmundur, since he also must have a final say, and we’ll see what we can do about it.

Glad you like the stuff. It was our first major try at psychedelia. We didn’t have a real drummer back then and the drum machines sounded, to put it mildly, very drum machine-ish, but it was all intentional. We didn’t want to pretend that we had real drums. Recording drums was also a challenge in those days since we only had eight tracks, meaning that we had to set some things in stone quite early in the mix.

We added real percussion onto some of the tracks, Gudmundur pounding a cigar box and stuff. But that came later, while we recorded Songs For William in 1993, also due for release in the not too distant future.

mwe3: Tell me more about the very first Agony Street album and your new Silverton label. There’s also a new Agony Street coming?

Klas Qvist: Robert. January 31, 2021 is also the (digital) release date for 119 Agony Street, the album we finished back in 1991 but never released. The label, Silverton, was originally an old Swedish record label, releasing music on 78 RPM. I think their last output was in 1944, and a mutual friend of mine and Gudmundur’s suggested we reactivate the name and logo, of course after checking with the owners of the logo, who gave us thumbs up.

So… Agony Street – 119 Agony Street is now available on Spotify, Tidal and iTunes. Take a listen. Would you like us to send you a CD of it? Just tell us and we’ll send it. Hope you like the record. It is what it is – recorded between 1990 and 1991 as some sort of anti-hip-hop manifesto. That’s how you must look upon it, as far away from hip-hop and dance you can possibly go. It’s done on 8-track, which makes it sound slightly out of fashion, but that’s fine to me. Have a good listen and please tell us what you think.

There is a new Agony Street album coming out early next year if things go as planned, which they pretty much have lately. There are three unfinished tracks to go and you’ll probably hear some stuff before 2022. The studio activities were put on hold for over a year because of the pandemic. Then, earlier this year, both Gudmundur and I bought Zoom 4-track recorders, enabling us to record a lot more things at home, tracks that a mutual friend in Stockholm glues together with drums and percussion and God knows what, and he does a lot of good mixing as well. This will hopefully make it a lot easier for me and others to move forward.

I have circa 30 fresh songs that I will begin work on when the Agony Street record is done, well, maybe even before that, long as I can separate one project from another, which I can. The album title will either be Persona Non Grata (Gudmundur’s suggestion) or Wide Awake And Hungry, my slightly more diplomatic suggestion. There are indeed a couple of songs with lyrics related to recent events, but most of the stuff is fairly upbeat. One song is based on a dream I had in which I heard something that sounded like an unreleased Beatle track.

mwe3: I have not heard the two Agony Street albums from 1991 and 1993 but I’m ready to do so. Some unforeseen tragedies impacted all my work for months on end, but I did get a CDR of 119 Agony Street, but without the track names!

Klas Qvist: Yes indeed! That of course reminds me that I ”must” send you a couple of CDs of the Songs For William album – with names for each track and all. I don’t remember what tracks you have. If it’s 119 Agony Street, the tracks are as follows:
1. Fabulous Years
2. No Substitute For Rita
3. Choose Me
4. More Than Fourteen Years
5. Please Come Back
6. I Never Told A Soul
7. Love Of My Life
8. Farmhand’s Anthem
9. Father Jones
10. I’ve Just Seen Her Go
11. Easy To Say
12. Better Left Unsaid
13. What You Will Find
14. The Legendary Itzak Goldmayer Recording
15. Dancing With The Crowd From The Sun

If it’s Songs For William, and I guess it’s not, since it’s the one I’ve promised you for ages to send, the tracks are as follows:
1. Another Sleepless Night
2. A Song For William
3. You’re In Love
4. Right Place, Wrong Century
5. A Perfect Day For A Breakup
6. Thirty-nine Tank
7. Plastic Revolution
8. Voices From The Other Side
9. The Voices Inside My Head
10. Therapy Hill
11. Be My Wife
12. Believe Me
13. I’d Bet They Wish
14. I’ve Heard It All Before
15. Looking For Grand Mal

Both albums are available on Spotify and elsewhere. But that, I guess, is a poor replacement for physical copies. I’ll send you Songs For William. The 119 album is only released digitally so far.

mwe3: I am greatly looking forward to seeing and hearing Songs For William, the second Agony Street, which as you said, was released for the first time ever on CD, also I can’t wait to hear the first album too. Also there’s a new Agony Street album coming out in 2022? Wow, that’s almost too good to be true.

Klas Qvist: There’s a CD coming your way with the whole Agony Street 119 Agony Street album on it and a piece of paper with the cover on it, since we haven’t actually produced a commercial CD of the album, and neither I or Gudmundur are the most professional when it comes to home printing of covers.. For very obvious reasons. I’m blind, but my eyesight is better than Gudmundur’s. I, at least, can tell the difference between night and day, which makes me the winner of that particular race. lol Better than nothing at all, you know.

We’re also in the studio, recording stuff that eventually will end up on a brand new Agony Street album. It’s a very interesting process since Gudmundur and I live circa five hours from each other. I record backing tracks at a friend’s house near Gothenburg and he records his contributions at a friend’s house just outside Stockholm. But it works! We do it thanks to that ol’ Internet everybody keeps talking about. Modern technology at its very best.

mwe3: For Beatles fans, your albums as Citizen K and now again with Agony Street is simply the best when it comes to unwinding with a favorite blend of Cannabis. I wish Sweden will soon have recreational Cannabis.

Klas Qvist: Those were the days! The time you’re talking about, the early 1980s, it was the time when I began to understand where it was at… That The Beatles used certain substances in order to get the dream juice going, and I also heard Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and CSNY for the first time. Get the picture?

Common belief among Swedish people was that if you had as much as a joint, you’d end up shooting heroin. I think they call it the gateway theory. So, it was in that climate you entered?

I don’t know much about the legalization campaign for the time being. I haven’t changed my stance on things, but I haven’t smoked the stuff for years either. Sometimes, I really feel like doing it, but the last couple of times haven’t been that enjoyable for me. It has nothing to do with the substance itself. It boils down to how Swedes prefer to get stoned. It’s always grass along with alcohol, and that is out of the question for me. I don’t mind a little wine or beer, but not together with grass, since I think grass is close to sacred. ”So why not smoke grass and let the others smoke it along with whatever they choose to drink?” you might ask. The answer to that is that I can’t stand being sober around people who tend to get shitfaced as the night rolls around, and it even messes up my high.

Annika, my true love, knows my stance, but she’s anti, which means that if I’m going to smoke, I’ll have to do it while away from her. Not a very good idea. She has softened her views a lot since we met, and she’s a great, great fan of all the above mentioned acts for crying out loud, but still, you know…

I sometimes dream that I’m receiving a huge chunk of cannabis that I save somewhere in the house. I think that’s how close to the stuff I’m getting right now. Who knows? In months to come, it might sound totally different.

mwe3: You realize you got some great reviews and airplay for your Second Thoughts and the III album and I enjoyed the radio show you did with Abe Perlstein out in California. Plus, I just remembered that SeaOfTranquility.com loved your albums. That’s rare praise as they can be critical.

Klas Qvist: Robert. I think it was you who first guided me towards Sea Of Tranquility. They wrote some very nice things about Second Thoughts, and a while later, I started following Pete Pardo on YouTube. His rants are superb and I like his lists of favorite albums by various artists, favorite album of the year etc.

I’ve often thought about contacting him, simply to tell him that I like his work, but I’m not a comment junkie on YouTube. I simply prefer discussions on a one to one basis, if you know what I mean, like the ones you and I have for instance.

I’ve understood, from one of Pete’s more recent rants, that the folks commenting his work via the YouTube channel, are basically bastards, picking arguments with him and stuff simply for the sake of it… or maybe since they don’t have a life worth mentioning, which I really can’t stand. I guess it’s the sign of the times. I just wanted to thank you for leading me towards the publication in general and Pete in particular.

mwe3: And of course 2021 will be remembered as the year of the vaccine…

Klas Qvist: And the vaccine? What can I say? I won’t encourage anyone not to take it as long as anyone encourages me to take it. I’d never take any kind of injection if the person offering me the needle, at the same time, insists on limiting my freedom of speech. It’s all about personal responsibility I guess, but it’s never been in my nature to take poison as an act of solidarity, not even if David Crosby was the one serving me the cocktail.

By the way, I saw a clip from CBS Sunday Morning the other day where Crosby, Stills and Nash did some promo work for the Deluxe Edition of Déja Vu. The interviews weren’t done with the three of them in the same room obviously. Stills, Nash and Young aren’t talking to Crosby. And I also read a quote from a fairly new interview with Young where he said: ”Crosby should write an introspective book on why people aren’t talking to him anymore”. It’s tragic and hilarious at the same time. All the best, Robert, Klas

 

mwe3.com interview with
Gudmundur Bragason

 

mwe3: Thank you for speaking with mwe3. Do you remember when you first met Klas Qvist?

Gudmundur: Klas and myself met through mutual friends. I talked to them recently and they remembered the exact date. It was the 20th of May, 1982.

mwe3: Also tell us something about the band you and Klas Qvist started called Agony Street and the albums you made. Are they all on CD yet?

Gudmundur: We decided to use the name Agony Street simply because it sounded good. Songs For William sounded like an album title. William was a person we sort of invented. The first album is titled 119 Agony Street. Klas was born in 1966 and I was born in 1953. 53+66 =119. There are no plans to release 119 on CD, maybe later, I don't know.

mwe3: Tell us about the third Agony Street album. It’s great you and Klas almost finished it. I know he had this record label.

Gudmundur: There is still some work left on the final Agony Street album. We have no picture for the cover yet, but a friend is working on it. I think we will release the album late summer or early autumn. Actually, Klas and I started our own record label Silverton, but we never got a distributor. Klas’ sudden death took a lot of energy from me. I'll see what I can do about distribution now. Annika, Klas’ girlfriend and I own the rights to Klas’ recordings, but not the record covers, so we have to make new ones.

mwe3: You didn’t record again after the second Agony Street album from 1993. What were you and Klas doing all those years before Klas made his first 1994 solo album Carried Away? It’s great you were album to make this final album.

Gudmundur: I remember Klas for a short time was studying literature or something at the university. He had various day time jobs. We did not work together for some years. While Klas was recording his albums I was involved in audio restoration. With some friends I ran a record label called Refräng - releasing old recordings of Swedish popular music mainly from the 1930's and 40's. I have also restored some audio recordings for other labels.

I also co-produced 8 of the tracks on Klas Qvist Citizen K album III. We started to write together again in 2017. The first song we released was "Merry Christmas Anyway" written and released in 2018 and re-issued on our own label Silverton in 2019. The new Agony Street album will contain 14 brand new songs.

mwe3: Songs For William a true classic of the genre! It was a great loss for the music world that you didn’t continue. How did you and Klas work together on the songwriting and performance of the music?

Gudmundur: Yes, we co-wrote all the songs. Most of the songs were written when we visited each other here in my apartment near Stockholm or in Borås where Klas lived. Sometimes I sent Klas lyrics and he wrote the music. The album was first archived on DAT-tape, a short-lived format, but later transferred to CDR. That disc was used when the album was remastered. My DAT-machine broke down many years ago. We didn't listen to the album for more than a decade and suddenly we were shocked by how fresh it still sounded. We didn't have a record contract in 1993, so it was impossible for us to release the album then. Klas played most of the instruments, I am mainly a producer.

mwe3: Track 12 on Songs For William “Believe Me”, is that your song and vocals and does Klas play the other instruments. What do the lyrics mean?

Gudmundur: "Believe Me" is a song about media with vocals by Klas. The line "I'm just looking for some brand-new Watergate" was inspired by what my father once said about journalists. Klas’ vocals are recorded at a slightly higher speed and played back at the correct pitch so Klas sounded more arrogant. I play percussion on that and many other tracks.

mwe3: Is there a story behind “Therapy Hill”. Is it a kind of parody?

Gudmundur: There isn't a particular story behind that song. It is about charlatans selling their so-called solutions.

mwe3: Two tracks where Klas is in the spotlight vocals are “Voices From The Other Side” and “The Voices Inside My Head” are highlights. Any memorable stories about those tracks you can share?

Gudmundur: "Voices From The Other Side" is about people trying to get messages from the dead. I was told that there was an AM-frequency where we could get those messages. I have tried without success. We had great fun recording "The Voices Inside My Head". In the chorus you can hear marching feet to the right and in the left channel, there is me drumming on a table. In the last chorus you can hear me screaming "Ég heyri raddir", that is "I hear voices" in Icelandic.

mwe3: “Plastic Revolution” is great. Is that your lead vocal and Klas on the choruses? What do the lyrics mean?

Gudmundur: Yes, it's me doing the lead and Klas harmony vocals. There are some background vocals on the left and right featuring both of us. What the lyrics mean? Honestly, I don't know.

mwe3: There’s even a Beach Boys tribute track called “39’ Tank”. What’s up with that track? Is that your lead vocal and Klas’ Carl Wilson inspired guitar track?

Gudmundur: Yes, it's me on lead vocals. Well, it is more a Jan & Dean pastiche. I guess you know that terrible tune "Surf City". We sort of changed "Two girls for every boy" to "Me and my baby cruising in my 39 tank". We imagined some looney cruising in a tank made in 1939, but recently a friend asked us if the lyrics was inspired by the Soviet tanks T-39 built during the second world war, but we didn't know about their existence when we wrote the song.

mwe3: Who else was key to making the final album? After you made the album in 1993, were you and Klas disappointed that it wouldn’t actually be released until 25 years later?

Gudmundur: The people working with us in Blue speaker studio - Stefan Andersson (engineer, backing vocals), Jonas Nordin (drums, backing vocals, cover design mastering), Hans Wallentin (engineer) and Mats Åhlin. An old friend of mine Kenneth Andersson helped us editing the original DAT master. I don't remember if we were disappointed, I think we didn't expect anything.

mwe3: Your song from 2018, “Merry Christmas Anyway” is brilliant. Did you set out to write one of the great Christmas songs of all time? Klas must have had a field day playing on that track. Is there a heavy organ sound, like entering a church or something?

Gudmundur: Well, the summer of 2018 was terribly hot over here, so we decided to write a Christmas song. It ended up being one of our best songs. I didn't believe my ears when we listened to the finished result when we came back from the studio to Annika’s place. Today the line "Let's raise a glass for all our friends who passed away" is more than true for me. I have lost a few friends in recent years and one of them is Klas. I'm not sure if I ever will be able to sing that song again. I think we were a bit disappointed when nobody cared about "Merry Christmas Anyway", but maybe some radio station will discover it and play it during some Christmas season. Yes, there is a heavy organ sound in the choruses.

mwe3: You were telling me about your other music projects including the restoration of vintage Swedish recordings. Are those vocal or instrumental recordings? What else can you tell us about Refräng Records? Can I get to hear those recordings? Were you into the Swedish prog sound or the Swedish jazz-rock sound?

Gudmundur: Refräng released vocal popular music from the 78 rpm era. We released the first volume of "Schlagerkavalkaden" in late 1997 and the 16th and last in 2009. The CDs are out of print, but they are available for streaming on Tidal, Spotify and others and iTunes also have them. Schlager is a word often used for popular songs before the rock era. Those albums are various artists collections. When record stores started to disappear it became more difficult for us to sell our products and in 2011 one of the founders of Refräng and an old friend of mine died at the age of 55. I have also been involved in compiling and in some cases restoring pop recordings. I wasn't into the Swedish prog sound or the Swedish jazz-rock sound.

mwe3: Are you still working or are you retired and would you consider recording a solo album in the future? Do you have a lot of songs in your archives?

Gudmundur: I worked at the library for talking books and braille from October 1976 to May 2018 when I retired. I was heavily involved in broadcasting for local community radio 1979-1984. There were plans to record more material after the third Agony Street album. Klas and his girlfriend Annika wanted to record songs they have written.

Klas was going to make a new solo album and we wanted to write and record more Agony Street songs. Annika is featured on the upcoming album and I was going to help them with some mixing and production for their albums, but everything changed when Klas passed away. Maybe I will be involved in some productions, I don't know. I will probably decide what to do when the new Agony Street album is released. I have a few unfinished songs. There is also a song Klas and I wrote I'd like to record.

mwe3: So what can we look forward to next as far as the third and final Agony Street album?

Gudmundur: Our ambition was to record a logical follow up to Songs For William, but we knew that we no longer were young men though our voices hadn't changed much. I would say that the sound of the album is compact, which we both enjoyed.

 

Pt. 2 of the interview with Gudmundur Bragason from May 2022

{Some of the questions are revived again from part one to gain a broader understanding of the music}

mwe3: I just wanted to kind of backtrack and go over how the songs were written for the first two Agony Street albums.

Gudmundur: We co-wrote all songs on both albums. I think there are more pastiches on Songs for William. You asked about "Another Sleepless Night". We were actually trying to get a bit of how the Beatles sounded in 1964. The solo is played on piano and guitar like, for instance the Beatles’ "Any Time At All". We intentionally tried to catch sort of an old fashioned sound. Good examples are "You're In Love" and "A Perfect Day For A Breakup". I don't think we could have written and produced those songs when we were working on 119 Agony street.

mwe3: The first track on the 119 Agony Street, “Fabulous Years” is a great lead off track.

Gudmundur: I provided the lyrics and Klas wrote the music to the song "Fabulous Years". It was one of the last songs we recorded for the debut album. There are a lot of names mentioned like Gigli (Beniamino Gigli), Miller (Glen Miller) and so on… I have always been interested in 78 rpm records and performers of that era. I provide the lead vocals on that tune.

mwe3: Another song from the 119 Agony Street album "More Than Fourteen Years" has very haunting lyrics.

Gudmundur: Well, "More Than Fourteen Years" is a song about meeting old friends after a long time, in this case 14 years. Sometimes they have changed, but sometimes when you meet old friends after many years you suddenly realize you're not the same. When we wrote this song we had the opening words "I met them all a week ago, after more than fourteen years, I had changed but they were still the same". These few words got us started and "More Than Fourteen Years" sort of wrote itself. It was written in late 1990, or early 1991. We co-wrote both words and music.

mwe3: You said you worked in the braille library, so I thought you met Klas there. Then, I remembered Klas told me you were also blind! I apologize for forgetting.

Gudmundur: I met Klas through mutual friends. It had nothing to do with my work - in fact he never visited the library. Yes, I am blind. The main part of my work was to check new braille and talking books - delivery control. I had to read a lot of stuff that I never would have known anything about.

mwe3: I wanted to see if you and Klas had a website to buy the CDs.

Gudmundur: Unfortunately we never created a sales site. We talked about such things, but you know what happened. At the moment the only way you can buy Songs For William is by sending me an e-mail. Discogs is probably the only page to feature the album. I am not quite sure how many copies there are left. We sold several and some friends helped us to sell a few. I don't know who put Songs For William up on Discogs.

mwe3: You told me there were some pictures of you and Klas from the early days.

Gudmundur: I have tried to get in touch with the guy who has probably got some old pictures of Klas and me. Unfortunately, he has been ill. I hope that he will recover soon. My wife was going to take some new pictures of Agony Street last summer, but for obvious reasons that didn't happen.

mwe3: How about early influences you have as far as shaping your songwriting?

Gudmundur: I don't know if it is of interest, but I have listened a lot to classical music from a very young age. It is very important to me and I have learned a lot of useful things that I have been able to use when we write pop tunes.

mwe3: How were the original Agony Street albums made, did you use tape?

Gudmundur: The original masters was on DAT-tapes. For the new remasters made by Jonas Nordin a MAC computer was used. Jonas was one of the sound engineers on both albums and he has helped us a lot on the upcoming album as well. He also designed the album covers and labels. I will work with another record manufacturer when the upcoming CD is produced. There were some troubles when we produced the CD Songs For William.
 
mwe3: You told me about the Songs For William track “Believe Me”. Can you share any other info on “Believe Me”?

Gudmundur: “Believe Me" is a song about media and their twisted version of the ‘Truth’. Sad to say a lot of journalists are nothing but simple liars and the situation is getting worse, at least here in Sweden. You could read a lot of articles about dying forests in the early 1990s. The words "are gonna do good things for ya" could easily be understood as a way to sell more newspapers. I think climate changes are more popular than dying forests nowadays. Klas’ voice is actually down-speeded, recorded at a higher speed I think it was a semitone, my harmony vocals are recorded at the correct speed.

mwe3: “I Bet They Wish” is another cool track.

Gudmundur: "I Bet They Wish" is another tune concerning media. The song is based on stories mostly from radio and newspapers here in Sweden. The verse "A taxi driver calling the police, A wolf run over by a car, now wolfs they come from miles around,And the papers keep spreading all the news,Because wolfs don't live in this town" sounds probably like some sort of fiction, but this really happened. I know… I was the passenger in that cab. I don't know if the word info-tainment is used in the US, but it is widely used in Europe. It's a combination of information and entertainment and it's a radio format Klas and I didn't like.

 

 

 

2020-11-06 Original Press Release

Silverton Records are happy to announce the November 13 release of "Songs For William", the second album release by Agony Street, the first of their albums to be released on CD.

"Songs For William" was recorded and mixed at Blue Speaker Studios in Barkarby just outside Stockholm, Sweden between the spring of 1992 and the fall of 1993. It was originally set for release only months after it was finished, but it never happened, not until now, 27 years later.

"It's really exciting to be able to give this album a proper release, both as a CD and as a digital album", says Agony Street's two members Gudmundur Bragason and Klas Qvist.

"Songs For William" will be available on CD and as a digital album on download and streaming sites such as iTunes, Spotify and Tidal.

Those who buy Songs For William on CD, will not only get the album's 15 tracks, but also two bonus tracks, "Merry Christmas Anyway" and "Goodbye Forever", originally released as download and streaming only singles in November of 2018 and December of 2019 respectively. These two songs were recorded in Borås in 2018 and 2019.

All songs on Songs For William were written by Agony Street and recorded by Hans Wallentin, Stefan Andersson, Jonas Nordin and Mats Åhlin at Blue Speaker Studios. The album was remastered by Jonas Nordin.

For further information please contact Agony Street:
Gudmundur Bragason
E-mail: gbragason@bredband.net
Telephone: +46-730947878

 


 

 
   
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