By the time of Solo, Kaipa had a new bassist and a new singer: Mats Löfgren provides a softer, more pleasant, yet certainly no less assertive lead voice, while Mats Lindberg's bass work retains Eriksson's melodic sensibilities but his work on a Fender Precision and occasionally fretless gives the band's low end a lighter tone. Combined with the more prominent role assumed by Stolt's guitar and songwriting, Solo is a more accessible, immediate record with eleven tracks of 3-8 minute length. Yet the songwriting and performances are as good as ever, and there is some excellent symphonic rock to be found. Lundin's ballad "Visan i sommaren", "Hairless Heart"-like "Igelkötts död" and especially the spooky "Taijigan", laced with wobbly Mellotron, are among Kaipa's finest works, while Stolt's "Total Förvirring" is the blueprint for his later Flower Kings adventures, and "Sist på Plan" closes the album with some of the most incendiary guitar/synth duelling the band ever recorded. I find the flippancy of "Sen Repris" and the ... well, funk of "Frog Funk" (actually, much better than the title would suggest) a bit out of place, but they are still good enough works not to distract from the whole of this lighter but still absorbing album; in fact, The Flower Kings fans may well prefer this album over the others. Of the three live recordings included on the CD version (Musea FGBG 4128.AR) the most interesting is the ten-minute jam "Live in an Elevator" which shows the band can still maintain an immaculate melodic sense while jamming their heads off. Some of the original album tracks have also been remixed for this re-release www.gepr.net/ka.html

Very few people only are able to name Roine STOLT’s first professional band ! Even though he seems to have an eternally young face, TRANSATLANTIC’s famous guitarist was already a veteran when he created the quite famous THE FLOWER KINGS. The answer ?... Twenty years earlier, this very young Swedish musician was "only" one of KAIPA’s members, the band of the excellent keyboardist Hans LUNDIN, now re-formed for the outstanding "Notes From The Past" (A undeniable success, applauded in the year 2001 by both fans and critics !). However, it was not a one-time project ! A proof of this is that Musea has re-issued three albums of this leading Seventies Scandinavian Progressive rock band. With such references, we could expect some high-quality standards, especially given that the guitar riffs already showed their author’s genius. Even though they are mostly instrumental, the eponymous album (1974), "Inget Nytt Under Solen" (1976) and "Solo" (1978) benefit from the warmth of the Swedish tongue (With some previously unreleased tracks sung in English). Their influences can be traced back to such varied styles as Progressive rock (CAMEL, YES, GENESIS...), classical music (BACH...) or local folklore. The enormous success of those re-issues places KAIPA among Musea’s best sales, and shows, as if it were not evident, this original music’s great value... Each album also includes some previously unreleased tracks !... The main event in the year 2001 is then undoubtedly the re-formation of KAIPA with its two main elements Hans LUNDIN and Roine STOLT. As we already knew that the bass player is Jonas REINGOLD, we could have reasonably thought that this was going to be an album by a kind of THE FLOWER KINGS re-visited. It’s not the case ! That’s mainly due to their leader’s choice of playing only the guitars, and deliberately leaving the compositions to his keyboard colleague, and the vocals to Patrick LINDSTRÖM (RITUAL). If you add the incredible drummer Morgan AGREN (Frank ZAPPA, MATS-MORGAN...) to this blend, you’ll get a little wonder... 217.128.227.4/ext_re_new_catselect.php?np=1104
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EAC extraction logfile from 00. 00 0000, 00:00 for CD Kaipa / Solo
Used drive : 00 Adapter: 1 ID: 1 Read mode : Secure with NO C2, accurate stream, disable cache Combined read/write offset correction : 0 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Used output format : Internal WAV Routines 44.100 Hz; 16 Bit; Stereo
Other options : Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No Installed external ASPI interface
Range status and errors Selected range Filename _CDImage.wav
Peak level 99.1 % Range quality 99.9 % CRC A2624E43 Copy OK
No errors occured
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