Multi-instrumentalist Tobias Hellkvist (b.1984) was born and raised in the south of Sweden, just outside Malmö. He's a
songwriter/soundartist/producer and has been making music since his early teens.
Some of his works is just him with a guitar and some of it is computerbased soundscapes
in the ambient/drone genre.
In early 2007, he finished his first
official album called Transports, which mostly contained electroacoustic/ambient
material. This album was self-released and produced by Tobias himself. He also got some attention
for making an acoustic cover version of the song "Step Aside", originally
written and performed by the danish electronic/postrock band
Efterklang.
In the summer of 2008 he released his second
album, Sides. It's an album where Tobias continues to explore
different sounds and textures. At the same time he shows a completely new
approach to his songwriting, involving lots of different instruments such as
piano, accordeon, harmonica, flute, vibraphone, glockenspiel, vocals and drums.
This results in a more diverse album than his previous.
About a month later, a split EP with scottish act Metronomes (aka
Al Paxton of Stapleton) was released, containing
three songs by each artist. One of Hellkvist's contributions was an acoustic
cover version of the song "Ships of the North Atlantic", originally by
Stapleton. Vintervarm (from Sides) was also featured, as well as
Always Problems, a previously unreleased track made exclusively for this
split.
The first collaborative project Tobias participated in was with another swedish
drone artist, the Gothenburg-based Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words (aka Thomas Ekelund).
They were introduced by Avi Roig from Seattle, the man behind the
non-profit web publication It's A Trap!. This introduction
resulted in a 25 minute piece entitled White/Grey/Black. This was
later released on Roig's own IAT.MP3 label as a free download.
In early 2008, Tobias hooked up with longtime friend Ola Pålsson, after
talking about working together for a long time. After about a year of composing
songs in Tobias apartment in Malmö, they started to search for musicians to play
with, which turned out to be the hardest part. But after a couple of months they
had assembled a group of people, and the band
Pixie
Carnation was born. They went on to record their debut EP Fresh Poems
in February 2009, and it was self-released three months later.
Simultaneously, Tobias had been working on his third fullength album, entitled
Evolutions. This album was actually taking its form pretty fast after
the release of Sides, but since most of his focus was spent on Pixie
Carnation during this time, the album kind of fell into the shadows.
After being heavily delayed, Tobias put his last touches on Evolutions on
november 15th 2009. Anna Johansson (who also made the artwork for
Sides), had been listening to rough cuts of the album pretty much since
the start of the creation process, and created beautiful artwork for the
new record.
The wrap up of Evolutions was made just before Tobias would do his very
first live performance, in the Trinitakis church in Copenhagen on november 17th.
Also playing was the danish soundartist Peter Jörgensen, who had
helped Tobias alot in the process of taking his music out to perform in front of
a live audience.