Biography
The Swedish ensemble Ikaros was formed in early 2004 by its founding core members David Lehnberg and Gunnar Forsman. David and Gunnar originally played in the indie band Leiah but after 5 years of excessive touring and record releasing they broke up.
"The inspiration was gone. 3 ep’s, 3 albums and 11 European tours later we felt that we had taken the band as far as we could. We did not want to get stale and end up as some old sad 'rock band' touring and releasing records without any content or energy."
With the unique craftsmanship David and Gunnar have together they tried recording something different from what Leiah was doing. The band was still around at the time but was heading nowhere. The music that came out sounded like nothing they had done before. Blending the little they knew about electronics with a lot of sloppy harmonic guitar chords they set the fundament of what would become the sound of Ikaros.
With a new spark they gathered the rest of the people that would form the band. They knew that friendship is what makes a band interesting and puts soul into the music so they asked Ralf Kuja-Halkola and Dan Engkvist to join them. Ralf had been playing music with David since childhood and he is the co-pilot in David’s solo project Ariel Kill Him (Kasual Recordings). With some years at Jazz school David and Gunnar knew he would be the perfect friend to play the organ and keyboards. Dan, the multicolored musician from Hälsingland would be the other member to complete the band. Dan has the ability to play any instrument given in his hand and is also an old childhood friend to Gunnar so with Dan in the band Ikaros was complete.
With all the members located in the “small” northern Swedish city: Gävle and armed with the best rehearsal place the city can give the songwriting and recording of songs has been a true adventure.
"Even if a song is stuffed with melodies and the melodies are fighting each other to be hearable we don’t think that our music is in any way pretentious or hard to listen too. When you listen to a production or song that Phil Spector has made you get that wall of sound feeling, the melodies hits you like a speeding train! That’s what we strive for in Ikaros. We also want the listener to feel that the music we make is in no way crafted out of big city complexity, it's rather small city boredom and paranoia. Each member has a totally different taste in music but together we have one thing that we love in common; melodies, and David’s head is full of them."
In December 2004 Ikaros signed a record deal with the Swedish indie label Kasual Recordings. The long awaited Ep on Strange Fruit is finding its way out to the audience in early 2005 and Ikaros knows you will like it. 4 songs of indie extravaganza! An album is being completed at the Jesus Lo-Tech facility and Kasual Recordings are preparing its launch in 2005! When it’s done you will hear about it!
"We are getting a lot of e-mails regarding our closure with Leiah. People got really sad when we broke up but as we have written to people that has been asking us about our new band; The future is in Ikaros and we hope you will reunite with us as we will hit the road again! We promise you some excessive touring in 2005 and the forthcoming album and Ep will not make anyone disappointed!"
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