The Soundtrack of Our Lives

by Stanton Swihart
Ebbot Lundberg (vocals) and Bjorn Olsson (guitar) were founders of the wildly exciting Swedish band Union Carbide Productions, which recorded several albums that mixed Captain Beefheart and punk (think Stooges) to wonderful effect in the late '80s. Eventually Ian Person joined Union Carbide Productions on guitar. By this point, however, Lundberg was becoming influenced by Love and other late-'60s psych-pop bands and was steering the band in this direction, causing friction within the band. After several albums in this new direction, Union Carbide Productions imploded, and band members went in their own directions. Lundberg, Olsson, and Person reunited in 1995 and started the band Soundtrack of Our Lives, which mines the '60s psych vein in unique, unpredictable, and interesting ways. Never sounding like a retro act, Soundtrack of Our Lives is a thoroughly modern band that is actually extending '60s themes and ideas in ways that acts from that time never imagined. The Homo Habilis Blues EP was released in 1996, followed by the full-length Welcome to the Infant Freebase that same year, after which Olsson left the touring aspect of the band to the other members (he remained a part of the band in the studio, while maintaining his own solo career). Work on a second album commenced in 1998, and the band released Extended Revelation for the Psychic Weaklings of Western Civilization late that year. The new millennium found the Soundtrack of Our Lives with an American contract through Universal's Republic subsidiary, which released 2001's Behind the Music and 2005's Origin, Vol. 1.