Ace.of.Base
A.O.B in Canada
Sep 4th
Sorry for the lack of updates lately!
Ace.of.Base recently performed a few concerts in Canada (Gay festival, beer festival etc.) In my opinion, they still butcher original AOB tunes, but they managed to make their own tunes sound pretty good (thanks mostly to Clara…)
You can find lots of videos of the concerts on YouTube, but another great page to check out is AcerAdam’s blog on the concert he went to in Toronto.
There has also been an announcement about some upcoming (November) concerts in South America. Check out the Brazilian site here.
Did you see the concerts? What were your thoughts?
Ulf: relationship with Jenny improving
Jun 17th
Ulf recently gave an interview to UK-based So-So Gay.
Key points from the interview:
- They are still looking for a record company for the UK
- They are still working on the soundtrack for an upcoming film
- Relationship with Linn has always been good, relationship with Jenny improving.
Jenny and I are supporting each other equally nowadays. I really like her album. She’s happy with what she’s doing now; engaged with the church and her kids and husband.
Ace.of.Base are also performing at the Queer Beer festival in Canada next month. Surprisingly there was no mention of this in this interview.
It’s interesting how both Jenny and Ace.of.Base have been catering to the gay markets recently. This was not the case in the past. The cynic in me says that the gay community is now the only community that remember or want to know them…
Read the full interview at http://sosogay.org/2011/interview-ace-of-base/
Ulf’s Fireside talk
May 18th
Ulf gives an interesting discussion on the music industry and the role of social media.
Is a re-release of The Golden Ratio on its way?
May 17th
Now our album is available on all download systems! Playground just told us so.
Gosh what a long time it took!! Embarrassing…
Now Playground is calling the shots and took control again, Universal failed…- Jonas
On the message boards (1, 2), Jonas admitted that he doesn’t expect the album to sell a lot, but he does hope that some "sleepers" (Acers of the past) will wake up and rediscover the music. He has hinted that their may be a Summer re-release of the album and that some new songs will be released "step by step".
It’s nice to see that he hasn’t given up on the album, and it’s interesting to see him come straight out and say that "Universal failed." Jonas mentioned in chat that Souther California is likely to be the new single. "Very pleased with Bingolotto. SC could make a new start-new girls etc."
Singer Wynter Gordon has mentioned that one of her upcoming tracked was "produced by Ace of Base." Jonas said he can’t say much about it, but that "We were not SO involved."
If you haven’t heard it already, check out the newest song Jonas shared from Ace.of.Base, Paradise here.
Results: your favourite MS & TGR tracks
Mar 3rd
Last year, a poll was run on The AceBoards to see which Ace of Base songs were the fan favourites. You can see the results of that poll here. This time, we’d like to know your favourite tracks from the two recent albums: Jenny Berggren’s My Story, and The Golden Ratio by Ace.of.Base.
Imagine you are creating a “Best of” album, showcasing the best songs from both albums. You can vote for the 13 songs on each album, plus “Let Your Heart Be Mine” and “All Night Long“.
VOTING OVER – RESULTS
| 01. Let Your Heart Be Mine* 361 |
| 02. Dying to Stay Alive 276 |
| 03. Gotta Go 270 |
| 04. Black Sea 248 |
| 05. All For You 228 |
| 06. Air of Love 212 |
| 07. Vision in Blue 189 |
| 08. Bla Bla Bla (OTR) 162 |
| 09. Natural Superstar 157 |
| 10. One Day 135 |
| 11. Numb 116 |
| 12. All Night Long* 108 |
| 13. Mr Replay 102 |
| 14. Here I Am 101 |
| 15. Doreen 100 |
| 16. Southern California 94 |
| 17. Give me the Faith 79 |
| 18. Precious 78 |
| 19. Beat of my Heart 78 |
| 20. The Golden Ratio 74 |
| 21. Free Me 69 |
| 22. Going Home 68 |
| 23. Told my Ma 58 |
| 24. Living in a Circus 56 |
| 25. Spend This Night 36 |
| 26. Who Am I 13 |
| 27. Intro (My Story) 7 |
| 28. Juliet 5 |
Let Your Heart Be Mine is the crowd favourite.
Thanks to all who took part. 
Opinion: The Sign & All For You competitions
Jan 29th
This competitions ran between November 30 2010 and January 12th 2011. This was followed by two weeks for voting, which closed on January 26th. Winners will be officially announced on February 16. To view all the results and to listen to all the remixes submitted, visit http://www.indabamusic.com/opportunities/ace-of-base-the-sign
These competitions, ran by Indabamusic.com, had a fantastic response with over 300 remixes being entered for The Sign and about 150 remixes of All For You.
The choice of using Indaba Music as the competition platform was an interesting one. You’ll remember that previous AOB remix competitions were run by a start-up venture called Koblo, which went bust not long after the competitions (but appears to be relaunching soon). Indaba Music, by comparison, is a much larger organisation. It is a very well-established, large community of DJs and remixers, but perhaps the most noticeable difference between these two communities are the music styles. Where as those who entered the Koblo competition were most likely to be Acers and pop/dance friendly, the Indaba Music community appears to be a community of dubstep/eclectic/experimental music enthusiasts. The result? Many more remixes, but also a much wider range of music styles submitted. Whether this is a good thing or not, I will leave up to you.
The quantity of entries, while great for Acers, did cause another problem. It made voting extremely difficult. After all, who is going to sit down and listen to 300 remixes? That would take over 20 hours (conservative estimation). Although I did, I very much doubt many others would have gone through and listened to every single remix. Thus it became more of a popularity contest; who could get the word out by spamming their remix address all over Facebook, Twitter, etc. and getting their friends to vote them up. I would have liked to see someone in an official capacity – preferably Jonas and Ulf – judge the competition. If the top 20 remixes were presented to them after voting, at least we could be sure that the winners had great sounding remixes.
If you don’t have time to go through all 300 remixes, I’ve saved and uploaded the ones I like. That’s about a 100 (or a third) of the Sign remixes, and about 40 (just under a third) of the All For You remixes. You can find them here. The disturbing thing is, not many of my favourite remixes were in the top 10. It was seeing so many of these good remixes ranking so low that made me start to wonder about this whole process.
Which are your favourite remixes? What did you think of the competition? Leave a comment below.
New Years concert in Poland
Dec 30th
Ace of Base will perform at the New Years Eve celebrations in Wroclaw, Poland (Poland’s second biggest city). The event was televised nationwide on TVP2.
Reaction to the performances have been mixed. The general consensus is that they are good at performing their own songs (All For You), but not so good at performing material from the original line-up.
The Golden Ratio album is being released in Poland this month.
We will play: TS,BL pause A4U-pause and then ending 5 past 12 after the fireworks, ATSW and LIAF. So all in all 3 different sets and times.
Looking forward to it and I hope the stage and arrangements on the stage is good. -Jonas
Happy New Year!
Web Interview with Jonas
Dec 19th
Yesterday Jonas gave an online-chat-interview to Mikey at the ‘The Base’ forum. Here is a summary of what said: (Jonas’ typing has been fixed… a lot!)
Video footage taken from the recent concert in Cancun, Mexico are likely to be used for an upcoming video of Vision in Blue. The song will be remade, with a well known Eastern European duo. - The idea of doing an "It gets better" video for gay bullying awareness has been discussed with Ulf and may be on the cards.
- " We think about rec some new tracks in Jan between the promostuff. New Years Day , Heat Of The Night, So Over You, Eve, a total new One Day, and 4 songs for a BIG film about the ww2 and Raol Wallenberg!!-Interesting stuff!! film"
- Julia and Clara can apparently write music. "Maybe they will in time."
- Mikey asked why Come to Me was never officially released. Jonas replied: Jenny didn’t want to re-record the "come give me all your colours" line, which the RC didn’t like in opera style. They wanted Linn to sing the whole thing, but Linn didn’t want to.
- Jonas described difficulties with working with his sisters: "Even harder was that that I wasn’t allowed to talk to the fans!! Each time I did that I heard all kind of negative comments from my sisters. It’s not to recommend to have a music group in the fam… First 3 years was ok but then.. And to have to fulfil the contracts with the RCs at the same time! So much better now!"
- About Linn: "She’s not very interested in our career these days which is good for us both. She’s so nice and caring.
- About releasing TGR in America: "We will release the album there soon, unfortunately only digital, but anyway… RCs in America love the album but don’t have the money to promote it… Such a shame.."
- About Vida Hermosa: " We did a whole spanish rec with BL the day after we finished the song with Denniz Pop. A guy from Spain translated it and we sung it but the grammatics were wrong so we couldn’t use it!!! How about that!! I still listen to it sometimes, I don’t know Spanish that well so I can dig it!!"
- Mikey suggests an online vault of different song versions people would pay to access. "Good idea! We’ve actually thought about to do that with this records different recordings. Some are very good. And we also have lots of recordings from the past as well."
- The recordings of old songs done at Sirius Radio in New York are being saved for future use. "Some old songs there, but the teaser they released wasn’t that good, no reverb etc."
- and finally about old songs: "We will do a medley on the tour with YAP,WFM,DC and TG and one other with AHAW,C and CLV".
Updated: Ace of Base in Cancun
Dec 13th
On December 11, Ace of Base performed a free concert in Cancun, Mexico. The concert took place at an event called Dance for Climate Change and was for charity. They performed All For You, All That She Wants, Beautiful Life, Black Sea, Southern California, and some others.
Video:
Thanks to legallyblond for the pictures.
New Remix Contest: All For You
Dec 1st
Following the announcement of a remix contest for “The Sign”, Ace of Base recently posted on their facebook:
Welcome to AoB 2.0! We [are] now launching a second remix contest, this time with “All For You”! Looking forward to hear[ing] your versions. Enjoy! Ulf
At indabamusic.com you can download (for free; registration required) the “All For You” remix kit, which includes the full original acapella vocals from Clara and Julia. Instead of featuring the original instrumental (as “The Sign” remix kit did) as part of the remix kit, it features stems from the “Madhouse Monkeys Remix” and “The Sign Dub Mix”. One grand prize winner will receive $1000 (US) and 10 Honorable Mentions will win $50 (US). The grand prize winner will be chosen by judges, while the 10 honorable mentions will be chosen by popular vote. Voting begins January 12th.
Download the remix kit, and listen to the submitted entries here:
http://www.indabamusic.com/opportunities/ace-of-base-all-for-you
UPDATE: Some new stems have been added, including “live” tracks and an instrumental that is very similar to the “All For You” album instrumental.