Benny Andersson Band

Whilst he hid it fairly well beneath layers of multitrack production and the shimmering harmonies of Agnetha and Frida, Benny Andersson's music has always been influenced by the melodies and structures of Swedish, and northern European folk, polka, and Schlager (popular music-hall tunes setting those central European dance floors alight in the baby boomer years). Listen carefully, though, and ABBA's finest moments owe more to traditional forms of folk and fireside singalongs, even to classical motifs, than they do to most ephemeral and forgettable western pop and rock - and that's why they stay in the mind far longer than most of their contemporaries' work. SOS is nothing short of a mini symphony. With ABBA's demise in 1983, Andersson, born Göran Bror Benny Andersson (Stockholm, Sweden, 16 December 1946) was free to delve deeper into his family's (and his country's) love of traditional musical forms, with his own band Benny Anderssons Orkester (BAO! - The Benny Andersson Band outside of Scandinavia), a loose collective of anything up to 16 musicians fiddling away on a range of instruments as diverse and archaic as the nyckelharpa (literally "key harp") a traditional Swedish musical instrument in which, when a key is depressed, the pitch of the string is altered. It's a bit like a lira. The band's first UK release, 'A Story of a Heart' is a collection of the band's best bits, with some new, poppier material, co-written by ex-ABBA lyricist and long-term writing partner, Bjorn Ulvaeus.