In the late 1960s, a pioneering Swedish collective made music so free and open-ended that even its identity fluctuated. Sprouting from the mid-’60s left-wing group Mecki Mark Men, they began in 1967 as Pärson Sound, rebranded a year later as International Harvester (soon trimmed to just Harvester), and finally landed on what would be their best-known moniker, Träd, Gräs och Stenar (Trees, Grass, and Stones). In each incarnation, this wildly creative gathering of musicians, poets, artists, and writers made mossy improvised jams that began simply—a few chords, a basic beat, some singing—then trekked into the stratosphere.
Since those heady times, the work of Pärson Sound and Träd, Gräs och Stenar has been collected into box sets, and now it’s International Harvester’s turn. Remains joins their two previously released albums with three discs of recently unearthed live material. Mapping the musical differences between the group’s iterations is somewhat futile, as they have many more commonalities than contrasts. This is especially true when comparing Pärson Sound to International Harvester, who shared the exact same six members. But the latter proved both a crucial fulcrum between past and future and a distinctive entity on its own.
Where Pärson Sound were more overtly experimental—inspired largely by Terry Riley’s minimalist trips and the corresponding experiments of co-founder Bo Anders Persson—International Harvester sometimes used traditional folk forms. They also were more political. In an interview in the notes of Remains, saxophonist Thomas Tidholm says their name was a critique of “Western profit-hungry engineering,” and some songs—such as “Ho Chi Minh,” which could’ve passed for a protest chant—were explicitly rooted in the events of the era. Their music was more timely too, dovetailing with hippified ’60s rock and hinting at the psychedelic strains that Träd, Gräs och Stenar would fully embrace.
On their two proper full-lengths—International Harvester’s 1968 album Sov Gott Rose-Marie and Harvester’s Hemåt, from 1969—the group’s melange of interests and influences creates music that continually grows despite rarely deviating from initial repetitive sounds. They rarely changed key, or even chords. “Everything was usually left to evolve by itself and from itself,” Tidholm says. “It was all about listening, answering, filling in.” It’s a trippy thrill to hear how far the group can go without making huge moves, as if they’re playing their single-minded jams while sitting on a flying carpet.
The most extreme example of this peculiar magic is “Harvest Times,” recorded in 1968 at the Nacka Aula auditorium in Stockholm. Clocking in at 25 minutes, it’s the longest piece on Remains, and it sure does take its time. A slow, lazy beat plods along for a good 10 minutes while small elements—vocal hums, horn bleats, stray guitar notes—wind around it. Eventually, the intensity increases, inch by inch, until the group generates a massive swirl of howling guitars and blasting horns. Despite its duration, the extended climax develops so gradually that it still sneaks up on you. The effect is similar to a drug high that doesn’t so much kick in as wash its way through you.
There are other long songs on Remains—six of the 33 tracks last over 10 minutes—but this group could build arcs in smaller spaces too. Side one of Sov Gott Rose-Marie offers 11 shorter pieces and hits many highs: the straight-up rock riffs of “There Is No Other Place,” the atmospheric balladry of “It’s Only Love,” the proto-metal lurch of “It’s Getting Late Now,” the orchestral swing of “The Summer Song.” On Hemåt, the group stretches further, riding their repetitions into mantras. They indulge their sense of humor more too, playfully grinding out the drunken carnival song “Cock Polksa” and the woozy “Everybody (Needs Somebody to Love),” which evokes the Rolling Stones traipsing through mud.
All these sides of International Harvester get play on Remains’ three live LPs, which are on a par with the band’s two official albums. They even stretch the band’s purview, adding styles like the rootsy blues of “Dada Babble Boogie” and the cinematic woodwind essay “Blowing the Wind.” The more epic tracks, like the aforementioned “Harvest Times” or the 19-minute tower of psychedelia that is “Streets of Stockholm,” are complete works that could’ve been albums themselves.
Throughout Remains, the group shows its jam-until-we-break-through approach to be so productive, it comes off less like jamming than spontaneous composition—perhaps even an eternal suite of variations on one vibrational theme. That may sound overly mystical, but it’s hard to listen to Remains and not believe that International Harvester tapped into something elemental.
