Spring 2009 - There is a new era in the World of Detektivbyrån coming up!

Dear friends!

Yes! This is how we feel about our listeners, we feel like you are our friends rather than our fans.

In some way we know each other already, sharing the same affection and curiosity for music and we guess that in some way that makes us friends. And friends tell each other things so here we would like to tell you not a little bit, but a lot about our plans and intentions for the future. As we've already said, there is a new era in the World of Detektivbyrån coming up.

Yes, but in what way? In many ways! We are so happy to tell you that:

We are making a new Detektivbyrån album.

This is the most important bit of everything. Three months after releasing Wermland, it was on a snowy december day, we sat on L'Assasino, a nice restaurant in Gothenburg. There and then we grew so excited talking about new musical ideas that we decided that we needed to start working on a new record. We immediately gave it the working title "Beyond". That's what we call it now and that's the best way to describe our intentions with this record.

We have started to write songs and today we have about 35 scratch demos of new songs and we are so excited about them. At this time there's no time schedule at all for this album, the plan is to release it when it's done and we'll keep everyone updated on the progress. We have also started writing on a long list of new instruments we are planning to use on the new album. Both existing instruments and others that we need to build byourselves. To mention something, we have just tried out a Celesta from 1925(!). Celesta means heaven in Latin and it sounds just like that! We've also bought a Theremin which is nothing but lovely.
We have also been thinking about what would be the perfect place to record and that led us in on a big decision:

We are moving together in a house at the countryside.

Today we live in separate apartments in the centre of Sweden's next biggest city, Gothenburg.

It has been a nice time here but we need to find total workpeace to be able to top ourselves and make this recording as beyond as we want it. The houses we are looking at are really located far out in the almost wilderness. Everything is perfect there for creating music, quiet and calm and we can build our own studio exactly the way we want it. We will be very close to eachother, since we will be living in the same house we won't have to take public transports to meet up and do whatever, it will be more of a -"walking into Anders room and say hey i got this idea about "Burning Hot Beats" which we'll create using the sound of a matchbox"- thing. Since we are siblings this goes back to the time when we lived together at our parents house, always sitting in some room playing the 12 bar blues - Anders on electric bass and Martin on electric guitar taking turns in playing solos.

Theres just one hatch to all this right now - we haven't got the house yet. Not the bank loan to pay the house either. But we are working on it! We are planning to move in when summer starts, around June 1th. Maybe the first "Making of Beyond" - video will be about us travelling around and looking at different houses because:

We are making new "Making of" videos

Just like we did for "Wermland" we will be making "Making of Beyond"- videos for Beyond.
We will also be making new "Making Of Wermland"-videos! We have a lot of filmed material that we never got the chance to edit which we are planning to start editing into episodes now. Two new-old nice episodes you can expect is the "Trying out the perfect Glockenspiel" - episode and the "Building a Thumbstack Piano" -episode. (The piano used on the songs "Camping", "Honky Tonk Of Wermland" and "Partyland")

We are working on a technical solution to be able to play more outside Sweden.

Yes this is actually true and really great. We would love to play more in the US and in Europe and Japan and well, all over the world. Especially Mexico! The thing is that our instruments are so special that we need to bring them with us to every show, a guitar based band would just bring their guitars and the clubs would fix all the backline such as amps and drums. But we can not do that and that makes it hard for us to fly and play.

We have been forced to say no thanks to a lot of gig request from abroad cause it's so very expensive to fly our gear. So we are in fact looking at a new technical solution using smart electronics and small instruments with big hearts so that we are able to get the weight of everything down so that we can fly!
Looking so much forward to be able to play live for you who live outside Sweden!

We are building a new home for us and our friends on the internet.

We are building a new website. But we hope to be able to make it a little bit more than just a website, we want to make it our home on the internet. And you are so welcome to come and visit! We are calling the site "The World of Detektivbyrån". Except for having all the usual stuff presented in a nice and informative way, we also have plans for some key features:

- We are starting a combined mailinglist/supporter club which we call "Friends Of Detektivbyrån". Sign up for the mailinglist and you are automatically a member of "Friends Of Detektivbyrån". We will work hard to make this mailinglist effective, for example when people sign up, they can state where they live, country and city, and we will be able to send them a special mail when we are playing in their town. The mailing list will be one of our most important channels to communicate with our friends all over the world. This mailing list is to be constructed and therefore not available today but if you send us an email only stating "mailinglist" in the subject to detektivbyran@gmail.com we will mail you and let you know when it's done!

- We are building a new mailorder webshop - runned by ourselves. This is the concept: We want to make it easy for anyone from anywhere to order our records or merchandise. To do this we have decided on starting to distribute our records and merchandise worldwide, by ourselves. No record label or distributor or record store acting in between artist and listener, putting high-level prices and the artist gets nothing. We will look upon every order from our shop as a support, a donation for which we can give a nice gift (the ordered item!).

By making everything totally by ourselves we'll be able to have the lowest prices and the best service, we'll personally pack and send the orders and we'll make every effort possible to make sure the buyer is 100% satisfied. Since it's our own band and our own name this is of course highly important to us.

Here´s some other plans for the shop:
- We will have free shipping worldwide, shipping included to everywhere, no hassle.
- Put out all our records on vinyl.
- Make a book with sheet music on our songs (many have aked for this!)
- Make new, good looking clothes displayed on human models with a supersmart system to make it easy knowing which size is right.
- We dream of making music boxes that play "E18"...
We will build the site slowly, starting super-super simple and work our way up over the time.

We need help.

We'll continue to do everything totally by ourselves, no record label or other major company are involved in our work. Though there's one thing you, our friends and listeners, do so much better than us.

It's spreading the word about Detektivbyrån. From the start we have been so amazed that people are spreading the word about our music and how much that is helping us. In this new era in our lives and world we will be needing that help. In return we will try to make music that goes beyond good! Thanks so much for reading this far, it's quite a lot information! Seems like you are a true Friend Of Detektivbyrån to have come as far in this text! If you have any questions or thoughts just mail us at detektivbyran@gmail.com

This is our own e-mail and we are reading it all the time.

Now we are going to spend the evening learning how to write HTML so that we can put up something like an embryo of our new site. As said, we're doing everything by ourselves...

Until next time, take care!

All the best/ Martin & Anders - Detektivbyrån

Swedish Grammy Awards – Vote for us!
Hey!
We have been selected as one out of 10 finalists in the Swedish Grammy Awards. We are competing in the categories: “Årets Nykomling” which means “This year's newcomer” and “Årets Folkmusik/Visa” that means “This year's Folk”.

International votes counts as well, so if you think we deserve a Swedish “Grammy” you can vote here:
http://vote.grammis.se/kategorier/arets-nykomling.aspx (“This year's newcomer”)
http://vote.grammis.se/kategorier/arets-folkmusik.aspx (“This year's Folk”)

You do the voting as follows:
Pick a winner, a second and a third by clicking on the stars. When you have done that a new window will appear in your browser. There are two empty fields in the window. In the first empty field you should write your name. In the second field you write your e-mail address. Then click hit enter on your keyboard or press the “Rösta” button. “Rösta” means vote. You will now get an e-mail that says that you have to confirm your voting. Just hit the link attached in the e-mail and then your vote will be registered.

Don’t forget to vote in both categories.
If you think that our explanation on how to do this is really bad, and you don’t understand how to vote drop us an e-mail and we will try to help you out.

Happy voting and thanks so much for your support. You can vote until the 10th of December. If you think we deserve a “Grammy”, please tell your friends as well. We are really eager to get to the awards, we have heard that the party at the gala is great. Love. //Detektivbyrån