Björn Kleinhenz - B.U.R.M.A.

Early in 2009 Björn Kleinhenz moved to the island of Farö on the east coast of Sweden together with his girlfriend Yrsa and their rabbit Humle. The island is small and inhabited only by 500 people and the landscape is flat and barren. Ingmar Bergman shot many of his films on Farö and also lived from the sixties and onward.

They rented a small house with a huge garden overlooking the ocean and spent eight months there in solitude and idleness. The tempo was low, the surroundings beautiful and they found themselves to be very pleased with the decision of leaving Göteborg. Björn had started recordings for an album before leaving Göteborg and continued the work when arriving at the cold windy island. With a small arsenal of instruments and nothing but time on his hands he put up his little studio in a small eight square metre room on the second floor facing east.

Accompanied only by the morning sun, cigarettes, coffee and the sheep outside the window he spent a few weeks of the long winter recoring what is now B.U.R.M.A. His girlfriend Yrsa forbid him to work in the evenings because of the scary thumping through the roof down to the livingroom where she was reading and talking to Humle. So it is very much a morning album.

Being cut off from people to play with and with no proper instruments the whole album has a very homemade feel to it. Rythmical parts put together by bits and pieces. Voices instead of keyboards to add atmosphere. Using small means to add details to the arrangements of the songs. Or like a friend visiting from Germany said when seeing Björn at work in his studio: "Bastel Und Rauch Mehr Alter!". Which is of course not what B.U.R.M.A. stands for. It is a phrase used alot by american soldiers during the 2nd World
War when sending letters home to their wives and girlfriends meaning "Be Undressed And Ready My Angel". In a way quite similar to Björn's hopes of Göteborg when he comes back from his year in exile.

Right now Björn is workinig as a garbage man and eagerly waiting to go on tour with Yrsa in September and October. He is biding his time working in the garden, drinking coffee and listening to radio under a pear tree. This summer namely, is the most beautiful in his life.

Tracklist
A1 HAZ920
A2 Fist Fighters and Steel
A3 Black Water
A4 Holy Boredom
A5 Red Woods
A6 Stillborn
B1 Worlds Apart
B2 Hungry Hunter
B3 Poets of Sensless Warnings
B4 Bodilla
B5 Down
B6 Farö