Guided By The Light
Swedish proggers Gaupa have gone from five members to four, but it isn’t holding them back. With new mini-album Fyr the group have started afresh – and as guitarist David Rosberg and bassist Erik Sävström tell Prog, change isn’t always a bad thing.
Words: Chris Cope
Gaupa have started over as a foursome.
Images: Mats Ek
There’s something unusual in the water over in Scandinavia; it continues to excel as a hotbed of musical creativity. Sweden’s Gaupa have already staked their claim in recent years as one of the area’s hottest free-thinking exports, and their current release is likely to cement their place in the progosphere further. It’s only a mini-album, but Fyr packs a powerful punch, and it’s perhaps all the more impressive given it comes after the quartet had to press the restart button when guitarist Daniel Nygren called it quits last year.
Prog is speaking to sole guitarist David Rosberg and bassist Erik Sävström on a video call ahead of Fyr’s release, but amid the celebration it soon appears that the recording process behind it – which was more fragmented than usual – wasn’t all joy and sunshine.
Sävström, who admits he is more of a stage man than a studio dweller, says it was a “trauma”, while Rosberg describes the process as “tough”.