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Music

Ace of Base

Ace of Base reaching out with 'Cruel Summer'

Web posted on: Thursday, September 03, 1998 3:57:59 PM

From Correspondent Mark Scheerer

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The musicians that make up Ace of Base are aiming to find a new foundation to their music. Siblings Jonas, Jenny and Linn Berggren, along with their longtime friend Ulf Ekberg, are exploring new musical territory with their latest full-length release, "Cruel Summer."

Hear a clip of "Cruel Summer"

Audio clip: 240k MPEG-3
Audio clip: 330k WAV
Video clip: 1.7Mb QuickTime

(Courtesy Arista Records)


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The album features a remake of the 1980s Bananarama song "Cruel Summer," but strays from familiar territory from there with a number of ballads.

"Ace of Base normally has been a little softer, easy listening but happy music, happy melodies, and this goes deeper, under the skin," says Ekberg. "On this album it feels right -- the sound, the melodies, like, fit together."

"We live for the music. We do the best music we like," says Jonas Berggren. "We let other people name it afterwards."

'Proud of ourselves'

Jenny Berggren says the band is more than satisfied with the final product.

"It's something that we're very proud of ourselves," she says. "It's been a masterpiece for us."

The Scandinavian band shot to fame in the early 1990s with their first release, "The Sign." The multi-platinum album featured the hit title song, as well as "All That She Wants," and "Don't Turn Around."

The band released a second album "The Bridge," which boasted another top-10 hit ("It's A Beautiful Life").

'The joy is back'

And now, it's a "Cruel Summer."

On the cover of the new album, Linn Berggren is slightly out of focus; she was purposefully silent throughout an interview with the band, and sister Jenny sings most of the leads on the new album. Linn's reticence regarding publicity might be explained by an incident in 1994, when a knife-wielding female fan broke into Jenny's home.

Jenny says she got some helpful advice on how to deal with the dangers of fame from another Swedish supergroup -- Abba. Now she's just concentrating on doing what she and the band love -- making music.

"The joy is back like there was on the first album," she says. "It was a very big joy in doing it."

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