Background, lyrics and more

The album "A matter of time"

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Shortly before we had our last rehearsals before going to the studio, the idea was that it almost entirely was going to be an  instrumental record - with "Easy to forget" as the only exception.

It should also have been released under the name "Time Group", which was the name of the band back then.

But the recordcompany thought it would be easier to sell it with the name of the singer - so it became "Lysdal".
And they were so happy about the song, that they asked if I could write some more. So during the next two months, I wrote the other six.

Apart from those there was a Randy Newman song - "Marie" and Billie Holidays' "God bless the child".
The latter we scrapped, but it appears on the remastered version from 2012
 

The members of the  initial band were: (see pics)

Niels Thybo – piano/keys,
Lisbeth Diers – percussion,
Anders Pedersen – drums
Kaspar Lindhart – bass
JL - Vocal, acou.- and el-guitar

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Just before going to the studio, we had three days of rehearsals.

I hadn't yet told the others about the new songs, so they were somewhat surprised, when I said that I had scrapped most of the material we had worked and toured with the past years, and that we instead were going to work on totally new material.

I recall the ambience as being a mix between a certain amount of grumpiness and curiosity :-). 

The first recordings took place in october 1993 in Sun Studio (not the Elvis one) on Dortheavej in Copenhagen - one of the best studios in the country a that time.

Bjarne Hansen was chief engineer and Rene Combony was the producer. .René produced the first four songs, but couldn't agree about the economics with the recordcompany, so we got Flemming Ostermann in instead. Both worked very dedicated - and differently - with the music, and were a big part of the result.

We recorded on 48 track digital tape (like an ordinary multitrack tape recorder, but on digital tape).
The mixing console was a big SSL and we mixed down on DAT-tape.

This was before you had all the editing possibilliteis with Protools and the like, where you can edit everything with millisecond precision, så the basic recordings to a very high extent, laid the ground for how the song would be and sound in the end.

Of course several things were dubbed afterwards:background vocals, extra percussion, guitars, keys etc. so in the process a substantial number of musicians got involved.

Jon Bruland – bass

Niels Dahl – double bass
Rune Harder Olesen – percussion
Christina Boelskifte – backing vocals
Klaus Menzer – drums
Otto Sidenius – organ
Øyvind ougaard – accordeon
Jacob Christoffersen – grand piano
Bobo Moreno – backing vocals
Christina Boelskifte – backing vocal
Flemming Ostermann backing vocals og accoustic guitar

In 1997 the album "A matter of time" won first prize "Album of the year" at "Cerbul d'Aur International Popmusic festival" among participants from 72 countries (see video).

Among the other participants were a very young  Christina Aguilera (see video).

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In 2012 I released a remastered version of the album with new vocals and played a tour around the country playing the album from beginning to end (live review in danish)

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