EXPANDING CHAOS BIOGRAPHY.

Current members:

MARKUS WIDEGREN - Voice, guitar, bass, keyboard, programming, effects, noise etc.

ANDERS RUDOLFSSON - Drums, percussion, effects, programming, keyboard, guitar, noise etc.

 

History:

It all began when both members of Expanding Chaos Markus Widegren and Anders Rudolfsson decided to form a band back in the 1990's. Anders already played drums in a heavy metal band called Fenria (they released a demo called Untight) but they soon disbanded. It took a couple of years before the band, that went through a lot of namechanges, actually became active. First they played some covers (mostly heavy metal) with Anders brother Björn Rudolfsson in 1994-95 and then Jens Andrée came around. They started playing Black Sabbath covers and called themselves Totally Sabbath. In 1996 they recorded and videotaped a live concert at Gamla Tingshuset in Östersund. But that was the end of that band, since both Björn and Jens moved away.

Things were kind of slow and Anders went to the town Haparanda to develope his sound-engineering skills at SFFHS. During this time he played drums in a band called Happy Randys. They went on a international tour through Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. There are supposed to exist some recordings of their songs, but it is uncertain who's got the tapes. After one year Anders moved back to Östersund.

This is where Expanding Chaos came into the picture. The year was 1996 and founding members Markus and Anders tried to find new ways for musical development. Anders bought a four-track recorder and the studio Mixtrofobi Inspelningsplatå was founded. The path through minimalism and making the most with the least led them to some strange parts of the world of sound. Ranging from avantgarde classical music to brutal death metal, their first selfttiteled cd was released in december 1996 (guest bass & vocals on one track by Björn Rudolfsson).

The next album contained more normally structured songs, although they were told that they weren't musicians as much as soundpoets. Some ordinary songs were mixed with more experimental tracks and two covers (the waitress by Tori Amos (guest vocalist Anette Sidevärn, and Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath). In the Fields of Quantum-music was released in july 1997.

Later that autumn work began on their third album, In Your Mind. This time the songs were even more structured as conventional songs, a bit melancholy and depressed, although with the special Expanding Chaos sound. But now, for some reason, things started to go wrong. At the end of the recordingsessions in december 1997 the four-track broke down and started to erase tracks randomly. Other bad things happened and the last two tracks were done with fellow band Tjernobyl Dödar's four-track, which wasn't really of the same quality. Vocals for two other songs were done at Mediaverkstan Östersund. Finally the album was released in February 1998. After this the band took a break for a couple of years.

Markus had joined the country-rock-pop band My Big Teeth Gnash It (featuring The Hall of Heads) during 1997 as guitarist. The other members were Rasmus Dahlgren and Lage Engenström. They used to play They Might Be Giants songs to get in shape, and then they wrote a couple of their own songs. About ten tracks were recorded, intended to be an album called Eating Popcorn With The President, but it was never mixed. It remains to be released. The band was featured in the local newspaper and played a concert at Frousobourg the day before new years eve 1997-1998. And some months after that the band sadly fell in a coma from which it has not yet awakened from.

And suddenly no bands were active. Markus concentrated on writing his second novel and Anders worked at TJ Studios. They worked with a filmproject that eventually became infamous as the movie Silent Dreams for which they provided the spectacular and strange soundtrack. They tried to kickstart Expanding Chaos by recording two long experimental songs in their old style. They were very intresting, and a minicd called Intermission was planned, but nothing more was recorded.

Then, in january 2000, the band A Strange Day In The Park was formed by Markus, Anders, Pia Junvald and Viktoria Klint. With these four different minds there was some confusion in the beginning, exactly what kind of band were they? They started to write some songs and developed their own style, a style that wont let itself be easily be described. Inspiration came from different genres as eastern and northern folkmusic, heavy metal, goth, rock, country & western and it was all shaped into their own special brew. Suddenly, in february 2001, Pia and Viktoria decided to go to India to get some new musical influences. The band took a break as the girls went away for four months to play tablas and look at elephants. When they came back Anders had bought a new 8-track recording device and the band immediately started recording the old songs they had written and a couple of new. It was put together to a demo and the band started writing new material for their first cd.

During the four months break from A Strange Day… Markus surprised himself by writing 15 new songs for an entire album. He recorded most of them during two weeks in february 2001 during and earinfection (!) and intended it to be a demoversion of the album. But since the sound was so special, and since Anders was busy working he decided to produce the whole album at the studio Module 216 and release it as a soloalbum called Project 2:16. But since it was clearly an Expanding Chaos album the band deciced to release it as that. It's a further developement from In your mind, and later re-recorded for the Closer To The Stars-album.

In late 2001 some new tracks were recorded by Markus, again at Module 216, and some tracks were done by Anders at his homestudio. The material was so different from each other that the band decided to produce two albums for 2002. One with a technological sound and one with an analogue sound. At a session in december more of the acoustic stuff were developed and in january 2002 new technological arrangements were done. Work progressed during 2002 and the technological stuff ended up as the release Notangotech autumn 2002 and the guitarbased songs was released in september 2003 with the title Time To Leave. The band also participated on a compilation released by Viola Rekords.

During 2004 the bandmembers were involved in filmproduction (Markus) and theatertours (Anders) so not much happened. A new song was written for the annual compilation from Viola Rekords. And of course there was the much talked about liveconcert at new years eve in Frousoubourg, where the band played an acoustic set of ten songs.

2005 was a busy year with even more film and theatre. Not much happened to the band.

The the seventh album Closer To The Stars was released in 2006. It features 16 pop/rock songs about unhappy love and astronomy.

Anders and Markus joined punk/rock-band Boxtavsbarn in 2007 and played a lot live. Anders had to quit due to lack of time though. EC didnt do much.

2008 has seen a lot of activity from EC. Eight songs for their eight album Zero Weight was recorded and the album was released 19:th december 2008.

2009 and 2010 have seen sparse activity from the band. A live performance was planned and rehearsed but didnt happen for various reasons. Some new material has been worked on. A remix of Zero Weight is about to be put on Spotify.

 

Biography updated 2010-11-06