The music in this project has emerged from me exploring the cornucopia of possibilities that the setup provides. Each combination of effects for the sound, patterns for the speed control and registrations on the organ creates an acoustic room with certain properties, features and limitations. After finding a room that seemed interesting I would just sit down and play around in it. I seldom had to try hard to find inspiration. On the contrary, it feels like I was constantly bombarded with musical ideas, to the degree that I could hardly keep up with documenting them. It was an absolutely incredible stream of creativity, and so much music has come out of it that I never expected. Though, sometimes I have had to be careful not to pursue too much of musical effects to the detriment of musical quality. There is so much you can do, but my intent has been to focus on making music that still is enjoyable and not just audio experiments.

Almost all the music that has come out of this has some kind of cinematic quality. It wasn’t a conscious thought, but after finishing each song I would immediately get images in my head of what the music could depict. So the titles reflect that and in the list below I’ll elaborate on it further. However, these are of course my own thoughts, and if you as a listener get other ideas of the music, that is just as valid. In fact, I think it’s just even more interesting.

Musically, I have taken elements from many of the styles I play otherwise, but in terms of inspiration, I feel a strong connection to the computer game music that I grew up with. It has been a liberating feeling to not be bound to a certain genre or style. As this is new and uncharted territory, I have allowed things to turn out just as they will. Another basic requirement that I have had so far is also that everything must be able to be performed live.

Now, here are the songs, with comments and reflections.

Introduction – A short piece to give the listener a sense of what’s coming. A wall of sound slowly moving around, with the organ changing its registrations quite constantly. I love the effect of these changes slowly wandering around in the soundscape.

Among the Clouds – One of the first songs that was finished after exploring the delay effect and having a bass line jump around in the room. Picture yourself in a toy airplane, on the runway. It’s a sunny day, and you take off into the sky. Small fluffy clouds float around you and seagulls passing by are laughing merrily. You do a few turns and stalls and then land safely back on the runway.
Caverns – This song explores the room of a giant reverb that creates a huge space and depth. So with this, we turn in the other direction, for an adventure underground. We enter into a large cavern to explore the various passages and halls as we descend deeper and deeper.

Return of the Hero – I love having some kind of ostinato line that runs constantly throughout a song where you can make variations to the music around it. For this, let’s go back to ancient Greece or maybe Rome. The great warrior is coming back victorious from many years of campaigns in far away lands. He is taken to the town square to be celebrated by the masses. But despite the glory of the moment he can’t help but also mourn the comrades he lost in battle.

Space Birds – Probably the most experimental song of the album. To me, it depicts a flock of birds flying through space when they approach a planet they haven’t seen before. They swoop down to explore it further, and after a couple of rounds they have a little rest and continue on their journey.

Down To Earth – This is the song that portrays the quadraphony and the positions of the leslies most accurately, especially in the beginning. So listen closely for that. It is a little darker than the other ones. The feeling when reality hits you in the face, when you walk with heavy steps and a gloomy mind after some bad news, a breakup or perhaps the loss of something dear.

Starry Night – Also a tune with the big reverb sound, but this one is directed upwards, depicting the night sky on a crisp winter’s day. Stars blink, and you get a sense of the vastness of the universe.

On a Quest – A song with inspiration both from 70’s progressive rock and computer game music. It makes me think of a hobbit or similar, out on a quest in a fantasy world, wandering through various landscapes while fighting monsters and overcoming obstacles along the way.

Lullaby for the Unborn Child – The last two songs of the album use loops as one of the effects. When working with this song, I imagined a child, still in the womb with its mother singing a lullaby. While being a little mangled in there, the child is still feeling safe and warm.

All Together Now – And for the final song, let’s end with a party! Musically it utilizes loops to create an accompaniment to the gospelish funky groove. In terms of imagery, this is just a celebration and a call upon everyone to come together and to be kind, helpful and understanding towards one another.

So, that’s the music. I hope you will enjoy listening to this album, and I also hope to see you at a concert, online or at some other place sometime soon.

The year of 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of my first encounter with a Hammond B3 organ. It turned out to be a life changing event, and the Hammond organ has since been the centerpiece of my life. Along the way, various players, mentors and visionaries that I have met and admired have helped shaping me into the musician, artist and human being I am today. However, I have always also been driven by a curiosity to go beyond the already established and find new ways of using the instrument and how to express myself with it. As a consequence, the path taken might not always have been the straightest and I haven’t always known where I’m headed. But to another point, the end results sometimes have surprised me even more. For some years now, music has been my main occupation, but that hasn’t always been the case. The only formal education diploma I possess is a degree in Computer science and I have had a few different jobs in parallel with doing music. Sometimes when I look back, I regret all the hours I spent doing something else than music, as the time spent on the instrument feels like the hard currency of progress. However, it seems that now, after all these years, all the paths that seemed so disparate are actually converging and all playing an important role in the grand scheme of things. My project »Quadraphonic Leslie Experience« is a perfect example of that. It has elements of innovation, musical composition, computer programming, technical adaptation, aesthetics and artistry. When I started, I didn’t really know where it would lead, but now it has developed and matured to a point where I couldn’t see it being anywhere else.
Over the years I have acquired quite a few organs and leslies. Most of them have ended up at the HQ, my studio and workshop. One day a few years back I found myself sitting at the B3 in the middle of the room, surrounded by 4 leslies. I had »only« connected at most two at a time and they weren’t all fully compatible with each other, but I thought to myself – I just have to know how all these would sound together. After a bit of technical adaptation and a primitive solution for the rotation speed control I got it working. And I would say it felt a bit solemn, almost spiritual. Partly purely aesthetic – the organ, which in itself is a fine wooden piece of furniture, surrounded by 4 other equally fine cabinets. Partly symbolic – one cabinet in every corner of the room, in each cardinal direction. So when sitting in the middle, you are like in the center of this whirlwind of sound. A vortex summoning all the organ energies of the universe on the path to enlightenment, or something. From there on, you could say that Pandora’s box had been opened and I immediately started thinking about how to take the project further and use the format and the setup even more.
I continued to work and the next edition began to take shape. I added an effect module for the sound, with 4 separate outputs for each leslie. The sound from the organ could then be made to jump, wander and pulse between the cabinets, and with different types of effects I could create acoustic rooms of different kinds. Now the quadraphony began to take shape for real. In addition, I also built my own computerized control mechanism for the speed of the Leslie rotors. The change in speed could then be run using different programs and patterns or just manually. I even made it so I could control them via the touch screen of my laptop. In essence, I could make them behave in any way I wanted. I remember my first experience of having an organ loop being played back, with an automated speed control program, and I just walked around in the room laughing hysterically of joy in realizing what kind of monster I had created. Now the fun started for real and I began to explore what musical ideas could come from this. It was like a whole new world opened up with soundscapes I couldn’t even have imagined before, much less experienced. More on this in the notes about the music.
As musical ideas turned into songs it was time to try my wings and have concerts outside the confines of the HQ. Partly to see if the format and concept would hold up for a larger venue and audience, partly to discover any technical difficulties that might arise. And after having done concerts in venues of different sizes and types, I can safely say that it is just as awesome as I had hoped. It’s an incredible feeling sitting there in the middle while the audience can move around and experience the sound from different angles and places in the room.
With a solid repertoire taking shape it was time to make a recording. To best capture the quadraphonic setup you need some kind of surround sound system, and so the priority was to have it in Dolby Atmos. The digital release is available in that way on those platforms that support it. In terms of physical products there’s also an edition of Blu-ray Pure Audio.
However, for most streaming platforms, as well as in a vinyl production like this you need to have a stereo version that conveys the listening experience sufficiently well. You somehow have to create depth and space so that the listener perceives the four cabinets like they are placed in the room. Though, as I found out, there really are no guidelines on how to do it. When working with the recorded material I had experimented with creating a fake room in the stereo image, by placing the listener in front of a square, with the first cabinet to the near left corner, the second to the near right, the third in the far right and last cabinet in the far left. It actually portrays the room quite accurately to the listener and that became the way the stereo version was mixed.
And here we are – with the vinyl release of what I would say is my most grandiose project so far. And yet I have the feeling I have only just begun to scratch the surface…