Archimedes Badkar was one of the key bands that shaped the Swedish alternative fringe back in the 1970s. In 2020, co-leader, Per Tjernberg, convened an updated band to make a new double album that, while retaining the eclecticism and wide musicianship of the original, added the fruits of 40 years of experience and major advances in studio technology. It turned into a masterpiece - a combination of deep musicality marinaded in many musical cultures, with an instinctive feel for the best of rock and pop. The result is an organic but intense smorgasbord of sketches, excursions, covers and satisfyingly rounded essays that integrate music from around the world in an extraordinary way (instance: the jaw-dropping African guitar solo in their version of The Grateful Dead's, The Eleven) mixing mostly their own compositions with references to (amongst many others) The Fugs, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Otis Reading, Willie Dixon, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, John Lee Hooker, Duke Ellington, Robbie Robertson, Thelonius Monk, Harpo Marx and both John and Alice Coltrane. There's a depth and breadth here that's rare in records now - and it has that well-worn, wholly relaxed, feel that can't be faked, of great musicians happily playing great music together. Recorded old-style, with everyone playing together, over seven days and nights in their own 'Big Pink' out in the Swedish woods; it's never hurried and never stressed. Relaxed in its grooves, tricksy in its twists and turns, it remains indifferent to perfection - and from this quintessentially human understanding, another, deeper, kind of perfection comes. With guest appearances by Dr. John, Don Cherry and Bill Laswell, and documentary interventions from (amongst others), Frank Zappa, Bukka White, Allen Ginsberg and Muhammed Ali - the inescapable mood throughout is elegiac: of times past, people passed and of an optimism that refuses to capitulate. Timelessness, not nostalgia. There are passages it's impossible not to move to and passages steeped in musicality and ingenuity which seem to cover all the vital bases without drawing a sweat. And it's sonically rich - as well as the expected electric guitars, piano, bass, drums, saxes and various organs, are brass, harp, steel pans, violins, cellos, pedal steel, marimba, xylophone, harpsichord, celeste and bazouki, as well as numerous ethnic instruments and a global array of percussion. I would never have thought a record like this was possible to make now, and I'm certain we shan't see another like it. This comes highly recommended.