Analogue Master

On his second solo album, Gamle Mester, Wobbler keyboard player Lars Fredrik Frøislie unleashes a tour de force of old-school analogue wizardry. Lars kindly invites Prog into his magical world of vintage instrumentation to find out more.

- Words: Stephen Lambe Images: Erik Nilsen

In this modern world of progressive rock, with new acts appearing all the time, albums that are based solely around keyboards remain unusual.

Even rarer are those that rely solely on analogue instruments. One of the few remaining flag-bearers for this style of instrumentation is Lars Fredrik Frøislie, best known for his work with Norwegian bands Wobbler and White Willow. A visit to Frøislie’s basement reveals a treasure trove of vintage instruments — enough to warm the cockles of any 70s prog fan.

“They have a sort of soul, you know, because of the smell and touch as well as their sound,” he says, reflecting on his passion for the musical tools of that era. “I recently posted a video online where I was turning on the Mellotron and some of the other instruments and got lots of reactions, just from flicking switches to get them started.”

The sheer accumulation of such instruments must have taken a great deal of time and cost a fortune. Indeed, alongside the Mellotron, Hammond, Minimoog, ARP Soloist and Clavinet, there’s a harpsichord. There can’t be too many musicians who have one of those in their basement. Frøislie admits the cost was high but, bizarrely, he managed to rent quite a lot of the equipment from National Radio in Bulgaria, where they were simply taking up space. He also notes that while his heroes Rick Wakeman, Tony Banks, Keith Emerson and Kerry Minnear of Gentle Giant used analogue instruments in the 1970s, in the 80s and 90s their sound palette often changed to brassier, more digital keyboard textures.

“These [digital] sounds were not so optimal for me. So I always go back to the early 1970s because those sounds are timeless, even though they’re from before I was born.”