mattias ia eklundh

Guitar wizard Mattias Eklundh covered Frank Zappa's 'The Black Page' on his first solo album, "Freak Guitar". The album has been released worldwide on Steve Vai's Favored Nations record label.

His second solo album, "The Road Less Traveled" included 'Asteroid 3834', which is the Zappafrank asteroid. The track is a Zappa tribute.

Eklundh is a part of Freak Kitchen, a Swedish (hard)rock band.  he contributed to a Jason Becker and to an Yngwie Malmsteen tribute album and can be found as guest on various other records.

discography

concerts

• 2007/09/27 Mattias IA Eklundh – concert ‘Park Inn’, Cardiff,UK

• 2007/09/28 Mattias IA Eklundh– concert ‘Pinewood Thistle Hotel’, Manchester,UK

• 2007/10/04 Freak Kitchen– concert “ProgPower USA”, Atlanta,GA, usa

• 2007/10/05 Mattias IA Eklundh– concert “ProgPower USA”, Atlanta,GA, usa

• 2007/10/10 Mattias IA Eklundh– Freak Guitar Clinic, Alafors,Sweden

• 2007/10/20 Mattias IA Eklundh– Freak Guitar Clinic,Alafors,Sweden

• 2007/10/27 Mattias IA Eklundh– Freak Guitar Clinic,Verona,Italy

• 2007/11/10 Freak Kitchen – Freak Guitar Clinic,Ibbenburen,Germany

• 2007/11/11 Freak Kitchen – Freak Guitar Clinic,Ibbenburen,Germany

• 2007/11/14 Freak Kitchen – Freak Guitar Clinic, Vilnius,Lithania

• 2008/01/17 Mattias IA Eklundh– concert “NAMM Show”, Los Angeles, CA, usa

• 2008/03/01 Mattias IA Eklundh– concert & congress, Linköping,Sweden

random notes

    info from the big nOte files:
if you're into serious guitar work, you'll love this.  this is mattias eklundh's first solo album and it's great.  I bought it because it had 'the black page' (fz) on it, but the entire album is excellent.  & 'the black page' as well.  I don't think there are many players around that could do this with 'the black page'.  this will not be the last we hear of this guy!!
-- peter van laarhoven

     info from: Marc De Bruyn (emdebe@village.uunet.be)
Mattias IA Eklundh homepage: http://home.swipnet.se/freakguitar  

     From: http://home.swipnet.se/freakguitar/bio.html
"Seeing Frank Zappa when he was 11 changed his view on music forever and he has been a huge fan ever since. Mattias consider his major influences to be the inimitable Zappa and Kiss."  

     From: http://www.guitar9.com/freakguitartrk.html
about The Black Page:
I first saw Frank Zappa in 1981 (I was twelve then) and I didn`t understand a thing of the music being performed. All the songs were strung together as one composition, the audience had to sit down all the time (whenever someone got too carried away and started to dance Frank told them to get back to their seat so him and the band could continue "to play music"). My buddy Jorgen, with whom I went to the concert, bought the Frank Zappa album "Sheik Yerbouti" and neither of us understood it either and put it away. A couple of maturing years later I pumped into "Overnite Sensation" and things changed monumentally. I couldn`t believe the coolness of the songs on that record combined with the superb musicianship and most important of all: attitude. Unlike some quasi-complicated fusion-crap, Zappa always had a point with his sometimes extremely complex tunes. This really appealed to me and over the years I have bought every Zappa record available and got to see him a second time in 1988. "The Black Page" has become something of a gauge of skill for musicians all over the world. Bulging with complicated and bestial polyrhythms I, of course, had to make my version of it too. To try and get it as exact as I possibly could, I first recorded the written melody line to a metronome with two guitars. Then I recorded everything else afterwards and the "human element", which Zappa spoke so frequently about, appeared big time, and things weren`t that exact anymore. Ever tried to play a simulated ethno groove with cheap percussion over fast 11-tuplets.