Cosmos Music Group announced today in a press release that about 200 songs written by Per Gessle will be released on Spotify and later in a box set until September 2014.
The project is called The Per Gessle Archives – A Lifetime Of Songwriting and will consist of 11 volumes including nearly 200 songs from Per’s archive, most of them previously unreleased.
There will be three parts of Per’s career: Demos & Other Fun Stuff is mainly unreleases stuff from GT, Roxette demos, solo and side projects that Per created throughout the years
The Roxette Demos will be Per’s early versions of Roxette’s many hits.
Solo with Mazarin and En händig man demos in separate albums.
Per Gessle will comment on each songs in interviews by Sven Lindström for the digital version of the release.
The first two volumes will be out in Spotify on May 2nd and the box will be out on September 24th. The box will include the 11 volumes on CD or vinyl and is designed by Pär Wickholm.
Two books with Per’s lyrics will be released by Roos & Tegner. One will be in English and the other one in Swedish and will contain comments, drafts and more.
A single off the box will be releases on Record Store Day on April 26th.
As Per posted about it on Roxette Official some weeks ago, a surprise was coming for Record Store Day. When it was announced some days ago that a limited edition ”The Look” vinyl will be released on Record Store Day in Sweden, we thought that it’s a great surprise for us Roxers. But now it turns out that besides the beautiful, limited edition, 25th anniversary ”The Look” red vinyl (1000 copies) there is another surprise for this year’s RSD. We are spoiled and we love it! Per Gessle also releases a limited edition 7” vinyl called “The Per Gessle Archives”. So limited that only 500 copies will be available!
Finnish Record Shop X states that the limited edition PG vinyl is in their stores from 19th April (Record Store Day everywhere except Sweden…, where it is 26th April), but on CDON you can see it’s available from 26th April. Ginza states no date, Bengans hasn’t listed it yet.
The vinyl is featuring 2 songs from a forthcoming box set:
Side A – Kvar i min bil
Per wrote this song for Tomas Alfredson’s film, “Låt den rätte komma in”(= “Let the Right One In”). It has never been released, but is loved by all Mr. G fans. Listen to the song here.
Side B – Loud Clothes For a Roxette album Per writes about 25 songs and then selects those that fit. “Loud Clothes” was written for “Have A Nice Day” in 1998. An interesting thing is that in May 2010 a fan asked Per on Facebook what’s up with some of the never released songs listed under his name in the BMI repertoire and “Loud Clothes” was among them. Per replied LC is a pretty decent one. “I/We might use them some day.” Now he is using it. Yay!
So, who knows what else shows up on the box set! According to Ginza, the title of the box set is “The Per Gessle Archives” andwill be released on 24th September 2014, but both pieces of information haven’t been confirmed yet. It’s not yet known whether it’s going to be a vinyl box set or it will be available in CD version, too. Fingers crossed for all fans who want to get hold of these limited edition goodies.
Update by Judith: as one can see on the Finnish website, the single will be released by Cosmos Music Group, you may remember Per became co-owner and board member of the company about a year ago.
Besides TDR, Hallandsposten was also in a creative joking mood yesterday. Good that I read the article only today, otherwise I would have believed it was true. 😉 They came up with the idea of putting Per Gessle on the welcome sign of Halmstad. “During the last week of July, Per Gessle will be available for a few hours each morning for taking pictures with the Castle in the background.” Haha! They even created a test sign with PG. Lookin’ good, isn’t it? If I were the one who decides on such things at the municipality or the traffic authority, I would definitely go for it! Think about it, you guys there! 🙂 It was a great one, Hallandsposten!
You might remember our last year article about Gyllene Tider becoming the sponsor of IS Halmia and you already know Per is a major sponsor of Halmia since many years. When Roxette became active again, the girls had Roxette as their sponsor, then in 2013, when GT released a new album and went on tour, it was Gyllene Tider printed on their official jersey (already 2 months before their new album, “Dags att tänka på refrängen” came out).
The girls are dressed for success again! Maybe it has nothing to do with any upcoming tours or any new albums and we don’t know what that surprise could be on 26th April, but nice to see this year it’s GESSLE [heart] HALMIA on the jerseys. Heja Halmia!
IS Halmia jerseys over the past years. Last photo with GESSLE [heart] HALMIA is by iaisaksson.
PS: IS Halmia should use the link to Per’s official website instead of what they are using now at the Sponsors. Not that there is any news on gessle.com since last year. No complaint though. We love having Mr G on Facebook each day instead. 😉
David Guetta, Per Gessle, Christoffer Lundquist in the studio – pic was posted on Roxette Official by Per
Since that studio photo of Per and Chris with David Guettawas posted on Roxette Official 2 days ago, tons of fans started discussions about what this new project could be. Well, yeah, we are discussing this topic continuously, whenever PG is in the studio. But is it a remix album in progress now or something completely new? Is it related to Roxette or some Per solo stuff?
Mr G said it even in one of the Nordic Rox shows that it’s easy to get stuck in your own style, so for example, he tries writing in keys that he doesn’t know that well. Why not a new genre then?
You might remember our earlier article about Per Gessle featuring Galavant, a house duo from Halmstad. They were together in the studio on 19th September 2013. It’s still not known what they recorded there, but that work must be also related to this new project.
Sebastian Atas, Per Gessle, Victor Sjöström – pic was posted by the guys from Galavant at their Instagram profile
One month later, on 24th October 2013, Per posted a selfie from a helicopter, saying he ”talked a lot to DJ Balthazar. Such a generous and talented fella.” DJ Balthazar is a Bulgarian DJ, whose music is something unique between techno and progressive house.
Had a big “remix-discussion” over dinner….. Do you like remixes of our songs? If so, any favourites from the jolly and colourful Rox-past?
When it comes to remixes, fans are divided into 2 bigger groups. One part of them likes or even loves most of the remixes, the other part is never listening to them. I’m personally not much into remixes, but my ears say Bassflow did magic to ”The Sweet Hello, The Sad Goodbye”. One thing is sure: almost everyone agrees on that anything can be better than ”Dance Passion” (1987).
So now here is this David Guetta piece of info some months later and we still don’t know what it is all about. I think via remixes, PG’s music can reach and be more appealing to the younger generation, so it’s fine to spread the word that way, too. But who knows if it’s really about remixes?
Surely this is not the only project Per is working on, since he was also posting a lot about vintage synthesizers, studio sessions in AGM and T&A studios and all this DJ info. He said it in interviews that he is also working on a soundtrack for a new Jonas Åkerlund film (which Jonas starts shooting this spring) and we know new Roxette material is also in sight in a near or a more distant future.
Hard to be patient when there are so many exciting bits and pieces of news, but again, Roxers are the best at waiting. Hope to hear the outcome of the project(s) quite soon.
The vinyl is featuring 2 songs from a forthcoming box set:
