Birthed from an agonising stress-related hearing loss, and put together in an ABBAowned prison-turned studio, Kasbo’s third album The Learning of Urgency is a potent, melody-infused statement from an artist in ascendence

Photo: © Olof Grind

As creatively rewarding as being an artist can be, it’s not without its stresses. With global streams surpassing 500 million, you’d likely think that Kasbo (aka Carl Garsbo) would be content with his music reaching a worldwide audience. Yet for the Gothenburghailing DJ and electronic artist, the pressure of maintaining a flow of resonant yet creatively satisfying work was beginning to take a toll. “It took a while for me to decide what I wanted to be doing with my music after the pandemic hit,” Carl explains. “I think electronic music was just in a really weird state, and it was evolving really quickly. I felt a bit confused on how to marry what I personally listen to and make it work in a club environment. Making it marry with the more ambient pieces that I listen to.”

It was around the same time that Garsbo began suffering from a rare, stress-related hearing loss. It was a condition – which Carl still periodically experiences – that eliminated low and sub frequencies, making the all-important mixing process extra-complicated. The combination of being at a creative crossroads, and the toll of this unexpected hearing condition (not to mention the weirdness of the then-enforced Covid lockdown) set Carl off on a creative journey quite different to those that yielded his first two records – 2018’s Places We Don’t Know and 2020’s The Making of a Paracosm. Carl takes up the album’s backstory; “I think that was the thing for me that was underpinning this record, the idea of how I can make it sound new and fresh and true to what I’m passionate about, while still keeping this essence of what my music is all about. I was able to boil down what my music has always been about, and build something new off of that. I do think it has the same core as everything – this very big, grand and dramatic feel.

“I’d say this new record is a lot faster and has more of this house backbone which hasn’t really been the case for the previous record. I’ve always kind of dabbled with the four-on-thefloor thing, but it’s always been a bit slower BPMwise. This definitely feels like it’s more clubby in a way.”

Migration

In making his upcoming third album, The Learning of Urgency, Carl spent some time at a facility managed by Riksmixningsverket (RMV) – a former prison turned studio, owned by ABBA. “This is like an old prison that RMV bought, they changed it into a bunch of studios. They have such a wide array of synths and things like that, which gave me a ton of inspiration. Most of the record was recorded in [the converted prisonstudio], which is right next door to [the main] RMV studios.