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 values 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 polit-rock 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.
CD: 2001 Silence
Pretty rare as an original, and not even released in their native Sweden, no doubt due to its subversive political views. Years later, Silence bought the rights from Love and reissued it on LP. Had International Harvester come out one year later, most assuredly it would have been released on Silence, a label known for radical free thinking music groups.
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