Carbon Based Lifeforms (CBL) are Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Vadestrid, both born in 1976 and based in southwest Sweden. They met when both were 15 and are still, amazingly, working happily together over 25 years later. CBL itself was formed in 1996 as an offshoot from other projects, but it soon became their focal point, culminating in their first release on ‘mp3.com’ in 1998.
The duo signed with the celebrated Lyon-based ‘Ultimate’ label in 2002 and have since released six official, full-length albums:
‘Hydroponic Garden’ in 2003
‘World of Sleepers’ in 2006
‘Interloper’ in 2009 ‘
Twentythree’ in 2012
In 2014 they left Ultimae and went independent and have released:
‘Derelicts’ in 2018
‘Stochastic’ in 2021.
Derelicts made it to #12 on the Billboards Dance/Electronic Albums chart, #11 on UK Official Charts Top 40 Dance Albums and #59 on UK Official Charts Top 100 Independent Albums. Their music has been extraordinarily well received by connoisseurs within the ambient scene and clearly beyond since in 2012, they were also commissioned to write the soundtrack to the independently produced movie ‘The Mansion’ and the theme to ‘Green Land’ by Wanderword in 2018. In addition to their own work, they have actively participated in successful collaborations with several other artists, including Magnus Birgersson of Solar Fields in a project to compose the music for the Swedish dancer Olof Persson’s ‘Fusion’ performance in 1999.
Johannes and Daniel aim to combine Earth and space in their music. Using the combination of nature and technology as the main inspiration for their work, they like to represent both the positive and negative effects that this collaboration can lead to, including the negative impact that incorrect technology can have on the environment. Johannes often creates the building blocks of sounds and harmonies and could happily tweak sounds forever, whereas Daniel develops the rhythms and sculpts the ideas into tracks. It remains unclear which of them derives the greatest pleasure from manipulating the distinctive, squelching sounds of the Roland TB-303.
CBL are frequently present among the headliners of the biggest Psytrance festivals across Europe and has done many shows in Russia and even USA and Australia. In 2009 they performed at ‘Cosmonova’, the Planetarium within Stockholm’s Museum of Natural History, with a backdrop of nature-inspired imagery from across the world and then beyond too, with the International Space Station taking an impromptu tour of the Solar System. The gig sold out way in advance, so they scheduled another night, which also sold out. Those who attended will readily attest to an unforgettable experience. They did another four sold-out shows in 2014. In 2018 they did a show at the Moscow Planetarium, and the tickets sold out in less than 14 hours; they followed this with full Russian tours in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Regarding the new album ’Seeker’, the band tell us that:
“Since we couldn’t work together during the pandemic, we started making tracks separately, which led to songs going off in multiple directions, and there was no coherent theme. This led to us deciding that it would be better to focus on making drones, which, for us, is way better suited for remote work. Daniel could start out a track, and then Johannes took over and added some elements back and forth; this led to us releasing Stochastic instead.
Once the pandemic started dying down a little and vaccines were available, we could start working together again on a more regular basis. We scratched a lot of tracks and developed the ones we both liked together. This led to the album becoming more homogenic. This will be the second album that we release completely independently, Stochastic being the first. We tend to gravitate to themes of post-apocalypse and what comes after.”
Listen to ‘Rymden3000’ – BELOW:
Hmmm. Dunno guys. Not sure what to make of this.