International Harvester ~ Sweden

Sov Gott Rose-Marie (1969)

On the Heldon Electronique Guerilla post, I spoke of the anarchic subversiveness to which that particular album portrays. When compared with International Harvester, Heldon comes across as a conservative Reaganite, preaching the virtues of capitalism. While left wing politics were typical in late 60s, early 70s European progressive rock, especially from France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, International Harvester has to be one of the most overt of all of them. Typically playing in clubs sponsored by the Communist Youth League, International Harvester were laying their own brand of radical free rock. On the album you'll hear screaming chants of "Ho Chi Minh" which pretty much sums things up from a philosophical standpoint. But this is no politrock album (known as Progg in Sweden), of which I'm not usually a fan, but rather one of the first examples of primarily instrumental avant garde rock that one could buy on the market, along with early Can and Amon Duul (I and II). An important evolutionary work. International Harvest evolved from Parsson Sound, a group we all learned about in the late 1990s due to Subliminal Sounds' great archival release. The group evolved into Harvester and Träd, Gräs och Stenar, and some members found their way onto to perhaps the greatest avant garde rock album of all time: Älgarnas Trädgård's Framtiden Är Ett Svävande Skepp, Förankrat I Forntiden.

Ownership: 2001 Silence (CD). Acquired in 2001.

First copy: 1984 Silence (LP). Acquired in 1988.

1988; 2001; 3/3/10 (review / new entry)