ON THE RECORD
You know the term ‘slush pile’? It refers to the depressing heap of unsolicited manuscripts (or, more probably, terabyte of emails) waiting to be read by publishers. I’m not sure what the equivalent term for a heap of unsolicited recordings is, but Robert von Bahr probably does. The founder of Swedish record label BIS receives sackfuls each year. The majority aren’t good enough for the label, but, even after all this time, he guarantees that he will listen to every single one of them.
Here’s the reason why. In the early 1970s he wanted to help his then-wife, the flautist Gunilla von Bahr, to make an LP. ‘I contacted all the labels on Gunilla’s behalf and got no response at all,’ he tells me during our very entertaining Zoom chat. ‘So I sent out a cassette to show what she could do, and again heard a big zero.’ Even now, all these years later, his voice takes on a harsher tone as he discusses the events. ‘So I made a vow never to treat artists on my label like we were treated back then. Artists are human beings. They deserve a listen, and I’ll always make a comment on my reasons if I reject them.’
Just to prove that artists make it out of the
