Propane Propane Premiere “Purple Sun” from Indigo Sessions
Sweden’s Propane Propane released their Indigo (review here) LP in 2012 through Clostridium Records, and they’re marking that 10th anniversary by issuing three lost tracks from the era. The longer of them is “Purple Sun,” premiering below, and there’s an instrumental demo of the same song, as well as a track called “Cult of Börstig.” The vibe in that shorter, lyric-less piece is relatively soothing, where “Purple Sun” works to be anything but. Hypnotic, perhaps, for its overarching nod, the nine-minute roller digs deep into post-Electric Wizard riffing — in my head it sounds “very 2012,” and thinking that makes me smile — but the song’s weight and groove hardly sound dated for that. It will be easy to dig. If you’ve made it this far, you will not regret clicking play.
I imagine that when it came down to it, it was either “Purple Sun” or the 12-minute “Indigo” that would end up on the vinyl version of the album, and well, it’s hard to leave off the song you’ve named the record after (or vice versa), but while the atmosphere of “Indigo” is definitively less straightforward, droning out later into more cosmic fare after its drifty beginning, the relatively blunt (pun completely intended) riffery of “Purple Sun” has its own appeal, and the same goes for the manner in which it grows more aggressive in its vocals as it moves through. Propane Propane were not out to challenge the universe, but listening to it now, it feels all the more like a celebration, certainly of Indigo‘s 10 years, but of that era of the band’s work and the sheer joy of getting together in a room, being loud and fortunate enough to have someone there to press record.
No need to keep you. I think you get the picture, and if not, you will by the time “Purple Sun” locks in its groove. Some words from Benjamin Thörnblom (guitar, vocals, synth, production) follow the player below, giving background on the cultish underpinnings of “Purple Sun” and “Cult of Börstig” alike.
Please enjoy:
Propane Propane, “Purple Sun” premiere
Benjamin Thörnblom on Indigo & More:
“In the late 1960s a pyromanic family ravaged the Swedish countryside of Börstig, where I lived 1990-2001. Many of the neighbors had been mentally scarred for life from the terror this family inflicted upon the area. Hundreds of innocent animals lost their lives in the fire and smoke because of the madness of this family. In the end nobody in the family got prison as there was not enough evidence to prove guilt. During the long-winded trials two of the brothers claimed in opposition to each other to have started the fires. This and the lacking evidence left the court helpless and the brothers and their family walked free in the end, for good.
These events changed Börstig, it gave a springboard for paranoia among the villagers and eventually even generational trauma. Safety and trust got ripped out of the core of the area but people did try to go back to a normal life and not live under constant fear but it was very hard. Many waking up in panic during the nights for years to come from small noises or deep embedded fear that another fire could strike again at any given time.
During 2010 under the influence of substances, confusion and paranoia I wrote and recorded a song during roughly one or two days. The result became ‘Cult of Börstig’ which emotionally revolves around these events. I actually recorded the entire bass track first, standalone, and then did drums. Later I tracked the guitars and recorded deranged whispers and a bunch of hidden things.. It got pretty layer in the end.”
Bandcamp: https://propanepropane.bandcamp.com/album/purple-sun
2022 marks the 10 year anniversary of Propane Propane’s album ‘INDIGO’. The roughly 9 minutes long ‘Purple Sun’ was recorded during the Indigo sessions at Boltzmann Brain Studio (2010/2011) but was at the end cut from the final release. It came down to both vinyl run-time constraints and the sense Purple Sun did not fit the context of an album that already had plenty of slow earth shattering titles such as “Food of The Gods”, “Truth” and “Indigo”.
The up until now unreleased track tells of a clan traveling through the country in service of a force and a deity they themselves have chosen to name “the purple sun”. By focusing and sacrificing their mental energy and essence to this hidden force they in return get an unspeakable but very real state of being which expands their capacity, strength and resilience in the journey through life.
The 10 year anniversary release contains the track Purple Sun and the demo originally called “Rising Sun”. The last track, a calm instrumental, called “Cult Of Börstig” revolves around the pyromaniac family ravaging the Swedish countryside of Börstig during the 60’s.
