The Tale of Book of Hours

he story of Book of Hours begins in a rather peculiar way. In the late fall of 1996 drummer Henrik Johansson was planning to put a band together alongside with bassplayer Mattias Reinholdsson who he had met on a Bruce Dickinson concert in 1994. Their situations were very similar, a lot of musical ideas but nobody to execute them together with.

The first Book of Hours

Henrik had been playing guitar in a band called "Arachnofobia" together with vocalist Stefan Zell, who played bass back then. After they had disbanded, the two of them started a musical project in the late fall of 1994 which was christened "Pornographical Harmony" and they had a bunch of songs that was to be used in this new bands repertoire.

Mattias knew Per Broddesson from an earlier band effort called "Oberon" and Per was interested in trying out, since he had heard Henrik's material. A band was born.

After rehearsing for only a weekend as a complete band and with a friend of Henrik's, Ulf Nygårds, on Keyboards, they decided to record a demo but this one was thrown into the dustbin because the 8-track recorder was very unreliable in pitch. They had a gig the same week, billed as "Pornographical Harmony", but were still very uncertain about what to call the band.

Ulf live in action

Then after some more rehearsals they decided to have another go at recording. Ulf had to this point been considered a member of the band but in the end of the rehearsals he announced he had decided to quit, since he felt he didn't belong, musically, although he agreed to help out with the recording.

The recording session took place in late August '97 and resulted in the demo "Previously unreleased" which features four songs of very different character. When the demo was finished they decided to print the name "Book of hours" on the cover.

Mattias during the "Previously unreleased" recording-session

The band now carried on without a Keyboard player, with the "available" members playing the essential keyboard parts.

On Januray 5th, Book of Hours played on the Face Front Festival in Pitea, northern Sweden. Per found that he had some difficulties in timing the whole thing into his schedule since he was in the midst of moving to Stockholm, so Stefan's brother Mikael was brought in to save the day. And a very good job he did. In less than a week he learned the songs and the various parts on guitar and keyboards. Henrik had his second Christmas when he got to play an intro on Pump-Organ.

Per and recorder

On the 18th of April the band had a gig in Limedsforsen, a year after their live debut there. Per and Mattias were unable to get there because of Force Majeure but Henrik, Stefan and Micke did the gig as a threepiece, adding yet another dimension to Book of Hours.

May the 10th the band did a recordingsession for Soderhamn Local-TV, performing two new songs but due to lack of time and unproffessional approach by the TV-crew the whole thing was regarded as a flopp by the band.

In June they recorded a Christmas-hymn for inclusion on a Compilation CD with heavy versions of X-mass standards. Their contribution was to be "Oh come, all ye faithful", but they were rejected in the last minute with the excuse that "the material did not fit in very well with the rest".

At the beginning of September vocalist Stefan Zell announced that he wanted to leave the band because of musical differences, and also to pursue full time engagement in his other projects.

A new demo was recorded in October/November '98 and would be the last recording with Stefan in the band. The demo was christened "We find your lack of faith disturbing", a little dig at the commercialism that is poisoning the whole music-industry.

The band then went on from there looking for a new vocalist. In January 1999 they were contacted by Record Heaven who were showing interest in their music. They agreed to finance the release a CD so the band went into the studio for some retouching of the previous demo-material and some extra recording. Stefan was once again brought in to re-do some of the old vocals as well as singing on a completlely new song, "Fading from grey".

Stefan Morén, Ulf and Mattias discussing organ recording.

The first thing to be released from the new sessions was a remix of "Infinite", which appeared on the Nordic Progressive Sampler. The album, "Art to the blind", was released in May and later released through HOK/MNW on November 22nd. A second promosampler from Record Heaven was issued by this time and Book of Hours is featured with the track "Endearment", off the album.

Andreas Runeson recording the vocals.

On suggestion by the Record Heaven label the band recorded two cover-songs for a 7" vinyl-single who would come out as a promotional item for the "Art to the blind" album. Being without a singer at the time, a friend of theirs, Andreas Runeson, was brought in as well as former member Ulf Nygårds who contributed with some keyboard frenzy. However, its release kept on being delayed by Record Heaven and when it was finally released in September 2000 it was not as a 7" (as was originally intended) but as a CD-single.

Manne Ikonen live with BoH.

In December of 1999 the band met up with vocalist Manne Ikonen through an add and they began rehearsing to get a decent live set together, as gigs were round the corner.

After having been with the band for five months Manne left the band for personal reasons in May 2000. Despite this setback the band decided to move on and start rehearsing for a studio-session in September.

But in the initial stages of the rehearsals it was made clear that Per was not happy with the situation. After having assisted Wolverine on gigs, as they had recently lost their guitarist, he had decided to join them full time in August. This left Mattias and Henrik the only remaining members of the band. The two of them completed the impending recording by themselves with Per playing on two tracks.

Adam Skogvard live with BoH.

After this change a period of intense planning took place with reviewing older musical ideas and trying to find a direction in which to take the band in search for fellow musicians to join them in their musical adventure. In November a guitarist was found in Adam Skogvard and they immediately started working on new and unfinished material. Adam proved to be full of ideas and it all started to gell together nicely.

During winter and spring of 2001 they were preparing for another run in the studio which took place in May. However, slightly devastated by the result of the session they decided to revise some of their material while continuing the search to fill the vacancies in the line-up.

After trying out a number of different vocalist they finally settled for Anni Thulin who became a permanent member just a couple of days before Christmas 2001.

Anni Thulin during rehearsals.

By that time the band had already decided to record and hopefully release a four track CD the coming year. Anni quickly learned the new songs (as well as the older material) and the project shaped up nicely. In the beginning of March the band once again went into the FS studio in Söderhamn for a four day session. New songs were recorded (as well as overdubbing older backingtracks) with the new line-up. Pleased with the outcome the band dubbed the demo-CD "Transmissions" and set out to try to get it properly released.

On the 16 of May 2002 the band performed at Club Alcazar in Stockholmm together with QOPH! This was the first gig with the "new" line-up and the first one for the band since May 2000. However, during summer it became apparent that all wasn't well. Adam was not pleased with the musical direction of the band. The writing of new music was going painfully slow and the release of the CD seemed not to be happening. Spirits were lifted a bit when the band got a gig at the "Rundgång" festival in Gagnef on September 7 where they played to an enthusiastic crowd and got excellent reviews.

Anni live in Gagnef.

The situation within the band didn't get better during the autumn and just a few weeks before the upcoming studio session they all agreed to that Adam should leave the band. He recorded with the band one final time when they once again went to Söderhamn for a two day session at the beginning of December 2002.

When it came to finding a new guitarist for the band Henrik pointed the attention to Jonas Hansson whom he had been studying together with at Stockholm University. He knew that Jonas was a guitarist and understood that he had the "right" approach on music. When asked he seemed a bit reluctant as he had not been playing in a band for several years but he was sort of persuaded to have a go. No proper audition was held, he was rather asked to come along to rehearsals at times and gradually he grew into the band. In April 2003 he was formally asked to join permanently, an offer which he seems to have accepted.

Jonas in Kungsträdgården.

As the approached labels didn't really show any intrest in releasing the "Transmissions"-EP the band decided to do it themselves. Not really having the budget to press a "proper" CD the band made CD-Rs to be sold via the internet and at gigs. It was finally "released" in April.

During the spring the band signed up for the all-european band competition Emergenza. The first round, held on the 15th of april was the very first gig with Jonas and it turned out to be very successful as the band got the most audience votes for the evening. This only to advance to the not very succesful second round of the competition a few weeks later.

Söderhamn, Dec 2003.

During the spring Mattias and Henrik had bought some recording equipment and on July 29 the recording of the "second debut album" began. "About time" soon became the "official" title of the project. Recordings have mostly been done, and are being done in the bands rehearsal room or wherever appropriate. Bits and pieces, mainly drums and bass, where recorded during the autumn of 2003 but apart from another session at FS, Söderhamn not much was done. It was not until december that the band got their act together and started to get on with some serious recording.

“Day of Release” and “The third” along with “Submergency” (the first songs to be completed from the ongoing recordings) were chosen to be on another promo that was sent out to various festivals and promoters at the end of february 2004 with the hope of getting some more gigs to spread their music!

...to be continued...