Foto: Jocke Bispfors
Mad Artwork Is a band from Uppsala, Sweden.
Mad artwork is really the result of years of various constellations and genres. The band actually began as a 70s-rock/doom band by the name “Black Soul Choir” (inspired of the “16 horsepower” song with the same name). BSC was a trio consisting of Gabbi Dluzewski: Guitars & backing vocals, Adam Grauman: Guitar and later on Keyboards and Anders Lindh: Drums. Unfortunately they had problems to find a suitable Bassist. None of the two collaborations lasted longer than their first gig. BSC established a name in Uppsala, Sweden, and continued with the doom-rock until the fall of 2005.
In early spring 2006 they recruited two new members to the band and changed genre from Doom to Progressive metal. With this constellation the band participated in “Musikdirekt”, Swedens leading live music competition, sadly with no luck. After failing success Gabbi didn’t want to continue with the progressive metal. Gabbi had a new vision for the band. The concept of Mad Artwork was born.
The idea was to create a slightly “Mad” band, with roots in blues-rock, only a bit more liberated and experimental. The rest of the original members (Anders Lindh and Adam Grauman) swallowed the idea, so BSC died and from the ashes Mad Artwork was born. The blues-rock concept didn’t last long though. The band did one blues-rock performance, only to realize that this wasn’t at all what they wanted.
During the summer of 2006, the band was down for the first time in 1 ½ years, but they found each other again. After the break, beginning to write music again, the concept of “Art-music” evolved and became reality. After two gigs with the Art-rock band(one of them “Rockfesten” in Uppsala) their dreams came true. Gabbi found a keyboardist/pianist/organist! Mattias Pentti was recruited to the band, and the first thing they did was to dive into the studio and start the recordings of a demo. This demo havn’t been released, and won’t be released because of change of plans.
After the demo-recordings the band started to compose new art pieces, and due to the new member and sound source, their music developed. After a lot of rehearsing and composing, Mad Artworks first gig became “Musikdirekt”, Swedens biggest live music-competition for youths between the age of 13 and 19. They managed to win both the local- and regional-finals (this means they are appointed to the best young band in Uppland). Their next stop became the national finals. It took place in Karlskrona. The whole thing lasted five days. They did their performance at Thursday afternoon, and after having heard the rest of the contributions they realized that they’d have a tough match. Somehow they managed to win the “Musikdirekt” winner-tour, so together with two other bands Mad Artwork got the first prize in “Musikdirekt” 19/5-07, a tour along the coast of Norrland v44.
After all huff and stuff with recordings summer 2007, the band still feels that their plans for recording their debutalbum is still their no1 priority. During the summer of 2008 they acctually began to record their debut album but it’s uncertain when it’ll be finished because everything is delayed as always.