Double vinyl outer sleeve design by Steve Lippert/Anna Logue Records.
I came to some kind of basic musical awareness just as vinyl LPs became big. So, I grew up experiencing that shift in focus from singles to LPs, which for me was an amazing adventure - becoming an LP guy, not a track guy.
The musical landscape of the late 1960s and 1970s was an incredibly creative and expansive era, filled with groundbreaking and obscure music. We soaked up music spanning from the avant-garde to punk, via musique concrète and minimalism, to electronic and progressive music. It ranged from music that got vividly stuck to those that risk fading away more or less entirely. Regardless of that, we consumed artists like Brian Eno (Here Come the Warm Jets, Discreet Music), Yes (Fragile), Slapp Happy/Henry Cow (Desperate Straights), Terry Riley (A Rainbow in Curved Air), Ron Geesin (A Raise of Eyebrows), Neu! (Neu!), Gilli Smyth (Mother), and Spooky Tooth/Pierre Henry (Ceremony), and so on. Naturally, this had an impact - not necessarily meaning we were always directly inspired by the music itself, but rather in how one viewed compositions and the structure of compositions. At the same time, a string of absolutely great synthesizer-based bands emerged, which literally forced me to get a synthesizer of my own.
The early version of Moß Garten with Jan was built around the synthesizer and the tabla. We naturally drew much of our perspective on music from the shifting musical developments of the 1970s. We set out to explore and record:
- Improvised music, rooted in the fact that we both liked Soft Machine (4), Robert Rental & The Normal (Live At West Runton Pavilion, 6-3-79), and King Crimson (the 1973–1974 trilogy).
- Conceptual music with storytelling, because we listened to Kraftwerk (Radio-Activity, Autobahn, and others), Jethro Tull (Thick as a Brick) among others. This led us to create our own musical narrative: "Sir Henry Ralfington's WWI conspiratorial plot to overthrow King George V of the United Kingdom in 1917".
- Synth-punk, which is probably what you may call it today, heavily influenced by the sheer energy of The Damned (Damned Damned Damned), Iggy and The Stooges (Raw Power), and Ultravox (Ha!-Ha!-Ha!).
We weren't looking to mimic or copy the music we listened to in any way. Instead, we wanted to absorb different elements of music - such as energy, power, dynamics, multi-part compositions, time-signature changes, improvisation, storytelling, repetitions and loops. Essentially, we wanted to capture everything we could grasp and had the ability to use, which wasn't always the case or far from it.
Nor were we trying to create music that revolved around the actual sound of the tabla. We simply used the instruments we had access to and could afford. What we were really after was creating rhythm loops and amplifying events in the music.
- Conceptual music with storytelling, because we listened to Kraftwerk (Radio-Activity, Autobahn, and others), Jethro Tull (Thick as a Brick) among others. This led us to create our own musical narrative: "Sir Henry Ralfington's WWI conspiratorial plot to overthrow King George V of the United Kingdom in 1917".
- Synth-punk, which is probably what you may call it today, heavily influenced by the sheer energy of The Damned (Damned Damned Damned), Iggy and The Stooges (Raw Power), and Ultravox (Ha!-Ha!-Ha!).
We weren't looking to mimic or copy the music we listened to in any way. Instead, we wanted to absorb different elements of music - such as energy, power, dynamics, multi-part compositions, time-signature changes, improvisation, storytelling, repetitions and loops. Essentially, we wanted to capture everything we could grasp and had the ability to use, which wasn't always the case or far from it.
Nor were we trying to create music that revolved around the actual sound of the tabla. We simply used the instruments we had access to and could afford. What we were really after was creating rhythm loops and amplifying events in the music.
Mikael in the studio. Photo copyright by Mikael Isaksson.
Moß Garten – Parallel Musical Paths
If you try to categorize the main paths that Moß Garten focused on, you could describe it as three parallel musical directions running more or less simultaneously:
- The synthesizer- and sequencer-dominated music released by Anna Logue Records, which can be found on the Moß Garten album ”Sekvensstyrd 1981-1986”.
- Music for installations related to photo-film-audio screenings, such as "The Gothenburg Session" in 1983, which centered around energy and power plants.
- Ambient music, such as electro-acoustic music featuring field recordings, like the work "Memories of an Ironworks".
However, there was a constant, open flow of musical ideas between these directions. To illustrate how the different sides of Moß Garten interacted with one another, all the tracks from the EP ”Zchlagerz/Industrier” originate directly and exclusively from the music I created in early 1983 for the photo-film-audio installation "The Gothenburg Session".
Furthermore, my initial intention with ”Zchlagerz/Industrier” was to make a kind of ambient EP. It was meant to be based on the piano music from the tracks "Blue Moss" and "Garten," including synthesizer soundscapes and field recordings, under the band name Moß Garten. It was supposed to have the title ”Zchlagerz/Industrier” and use the final cover art, but with completely different tracks - before I changed my mind. I decided instead to use and break up the installation music into four separate tracks, which then became the tracks on the EP.
- Music for installations related to photo-film-audio screenings, such as "The Gothenburg Session" in 1983, which centered around energy and power plants.
- Ambient music, such as electro-acoustic music featuring field recordings, like the work "Memories of an Ironworks".
However, there was a constant, open flow of musical ideas between these directions. To illustrate how the different sides of Moß Garten interacted with one another, all the tracks from the EP ”Zchlagerz/Industrier” originate directly and exclusively from the music I created in early 1983 for the photo-film-audio installation "The Gothenburg Session".
Furthermore, my initial intention with ”Zchlagerz/Industrier” was to make a kind of ambient EP. It was meant to be based on the piano music from the tracks "Blue Moss" and "Garten," including synthesizer soundscapes and field recordings, under the band name Moß Garten. It was supposed to have the title ”Zchlagerz/Industrier” and use the final cover art, but with completely different tracks - before I changed my mind. I decided instead to use and break up the installation music into four separate tracks, which then became the tracks on the EP.
Front cover of the ”Zchlagerz/Industrier” 7"EP, MEP 001, Sweden 1983.
As I recall it decades later, the drum machine was the master and the rest of the machines were slaves. Broadly speaking, the signal flow went like this: the drum machine, which regulated the tempo, sync-triggered the Roland CSQ-600 sequencer. By connecting that sequencer to the Sequential Circuits Pro-One, who then controlled the pitch of the synthesizer. Finally, I seem to remember that you could send an audio trigger from the Sequential Circuits Pro-One to the Roland JX-3P to control its built-in sequencer.
Manually noted down sequencer pattern of the song "Zon Zon".
Copyright by Mikael Isaksson.
The most central synthesizer was the Sequential Circuits Pro-One; the others were pretty much interchangeable. In fact, the Sequential Circuits Pro-One itself was probably interchangeable too, if compared to more powerful synthesizers. I never felt that the Moß Garten songs depended on a specific synthesizer that I happened to own at the time.
The Casio VL-1. I bought one in New York for 10 dollars back in 1981. I guess I wanted a "Dare"-synth, but my budget didn't allow for anything else if I also wanted to eat. I used the Casio VL-1 on tracks like "Pulz" and "Skuggor," and then about 35 years later on the track "Consumer Maneuvers."
If I could have wished for any single instrument during that period, it would have been an ARP Odyssey.
Mikael on synths. Photo copyright by Mikael Isaksson.
However, people often forget to praise all the enthusiastic and dedicated studio engineers - whose names I’ve unfortunately forgotten - who helped out with the mixing and creativity. Quite often, they were more important to the final result than other things.
Mikael Isaksson, August 2026
Mikael, portrait.
Photo copyright by Mikael Isaksson
