Union Carbide Productions was a Swedish rock band formed by
Ebbot Lundberg
Torbjörn "Ebbot" Lundberg (born 26 February 1966 in Västerås)''(In)visible Dialogues'', 2011, p. 170. Published by Dent-de-Leone. . is a Swedish artist, songwriter and music producer who lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. From 1995 to 2012, he was t ...
(vocals), Patrik Caganis, Björn Olsson, Per Helm and Henrik Rylander in 1986.
Though never really commercially successful, the band has received praise from artists like
Kurt Cobain
Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – ) was an American musician. He was the lead vocalist, guitarist, primary songwriter, and a founding member of the grunge band Nirvana (band), Nirvana. Through his angsty songwriting and anti-establis ...
,
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American alternative rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and lead vocalist Michael Stipe, who were students at the University of Georgia. One of the fir ...
and
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth were an American rock band formed in New York City in 1981. Founding members Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar), Thurston Moore (lead guitar, vocals) and Lee Ranaldo (rhythm guitar, vocals) remained together for the entire history of ...
. After the success of the members' subsequent group
The Soundtrack of Our Lives
The Soundtrack of Our Lives, often abbreviated T.S.O.O.L., are a Swedish rock band that formed in Gothenburg in 1995 and disbanded in 2012, before reuniting again in 2023. The band's style draws heavily from sixties and seventies rock and punk, ...
, a compilation CD was released in 2004.
History
In 1981
Ebbot Lundberg
Torbjörn "Ebbot" Lundberg (born 26 February 1966 in Västerås)''(In)visible Dialogues'', 2011, p. 170. Published by Dent-de-Leone. . is a Swedish artist, songwriter and music producer who lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. From 1995 to 2012, he was t ...
met Patrik Caganis at a
U.K. Subs
U.K. Subs are an English punk rock band, among the earliest in the first wave of British punk. Formed in 1976, the mainstay of the band has been vocalist Charlie Harper (singer), Charlie Harper, originally a singer in Britain's Rhythm and blues ...
gig. They shared a common musical taste in hardcore music, and the friendship that followed produced the forming of a punk band Sure Tråkings Trio. After a few years Sure Tråkings Trio disbanded and Patrik Caganis spent a year as an exchange student in Minneapolis, USA. It was during this time that he found musical inspiration by attending gigs to see bands such as
Hüsker Dü
Hüsker Dü () was an American punk rock band formed in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1979. The band's continuous members were guitarist/vocalist Bob Mould, bassist Greg Norton, and drummer/vocalist Grant Hart. They first gained notability as a hardc ...
Soul Asylum
Soul Asylum is an American rock band formed in 1981 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their 1993 hit " Runaway Train" won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song.
The band was originally called Loud Fast Rules, with a lineup consisting of Dave Pirner ...
.
In 1986, Ebbot Lundbergs friend Emrik Larsson had tried out as a singer for a band called Heartbeat City. Emrik, (who was also the singer of the domestically famous Swedish funkrockband
Stonefunkers
Stonefunkers is a Swedish funk, go-go and live hip hop band started by brothers Emrik and Torsten Larsson that was one of the first Swedish bands to play "urban"-style music.Radium 226.5. The same year they released their first album, ''In The Air Tonight''. One of the people running the company, Carl Michael von Hausswolff claims that "At that time nobody else was doing what they were into, and having a reputation as spoiled rich kids with outrageous behavior didn't exactly help them make friends with the media or the music biz. A lot was exaggerated, but not all."
Later the same year, they played at the Swedish festival Hultsfredsfestivalen. In 1988, UCP continued touring in Sweden and also played some gigs abroad. One of the more notable venues was
CBGB's
CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in the East Village in Manhattan, New York City. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for ''Country, Bluegrass, Blue ...
in New York where they were the opening act for another band. Before going to USA, Per Helm (bass) was replaced by Adam Wladis—a former bandmate of Henrik Rylander's. During the tour, UCP continued to build on their reputation as a crazy live act.
Before recording their next album, ''Financially Dissatisfied, Philosophically Trying'', Adam Wladis quit and was replaced by earlier band member Per Helm.
During those years, the band line-up changed a lot. In 1989 they settled and appeared in their final incarnation, consisting of: Ebbot Lundberg, Patrik Caganis, Henrik Rylander, Jan Skoglund, Ian Person and occasionally Christian Martinius on saxophone.
Some of the band's material was produced by
Henryk Lipp
Henryk Lipp is a Polish-born Swedish musician, songwriter and music producer from Gothenburg, Sweden.
Beginnings
He started his musical career in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the Swedish band Extra alongside Anne-Lie Rydé, among other ...
—a Swedish producer who has worked with
Millencolin
Millencolin is a Swedish punk rock band that was formed on 12 October 1992 by Nikola Šarčević, Mathias Färm, and Erik Ohlsson in Örebro, Sweden. In early 1993, drummer Fredrik Larzon joined the band. The name Millencolin is derived from ...
Ocal Waltz Ocal or OCAL may refer to:
* Öcal, Turkish surname
* Öçal, Turkish surname
* Open Clip Art Library
* Organization of Communist Action in Lebanon
The Communist Action Organization in Lebanon – CAOL ( , ''munaẓẓamah al-‘amal al-shuyū� ...
,
Stonefunkers
Stonefunkers is a Swedish funk, go-go and live hip hop band started by brothers Emrik and Torsten Larsson that was one of the first Swedish bands to play "urban"-style music.Blue For Two
Blue for Two was a Swedish alternative pop / rock duo that started in Gothenburg in 1984 of Freddie Wadling
Berndt Arvid Freddie Wadling (2 August 1951 – 2 June 2016) was a Swedish singer born in Gothenburg, whose over-thirty-year musical ...
.
The band recorded their last album, ''Swing'', in 1992 in Chicago, and it was recorded by
Steve Albini
Steven Frank Albini (; July 22, 1962 – May 7, 2024) was an American musician and audio engineer. He founded and fronted the influential post-hardcore and noise rock bands Big Black (1981–1987), Rapeman (1987–1989) and Shellac (band), ...
. UCP split up in December 1993.
Ebbot Lundberg, Ian Person and Björn Olsson later went on to form the more commercially successful band
The Soundtrack of Our Lives
The Soundtrack of Our Lives, often abbreviated T.S.O.O.L., are a Swedish rock band that formed in Gothenburg in 1995 and disbanded in 2012, before reuniting again in 2023. The band's style draws heavily from sixties and seventies rock and punk, ...
.
In 2003, they made a temporary reunion and returned to Hultsfredsfestivalen, sixteen years after their first appearance there. The band's entire back catalogue was re-mastered and re-released on vinyl in a limited edition of 500 each by Ebbot Lundberg in 2013.
Band name
The name Union Carbide Productions originates from the company name
Union Carbide Corporation
Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) is an American chemical company headquartered in Seadrift, Texas. It has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company since 2001. Union Carbide produces chemicals and polymers that undergo one or more f ...
that was written on a battery that Björn Olsson had, and that was involved in the
Bhopal disaster
On 3 December 1984, over 500,000 people in the vicinity of the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India were exposed to the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate, in what is considered the world's worst ind ...