Biography
From Örebro, a town in the middle of Sweden, comes SQUARE - probably the most electric and eclectic ska band you have ever heard.Six teenage boys, eager to create their own music, founded SQUARE in the fall of 1998. By the summer of 1999 they had decided to erase their personal differences in order to reach a common consciouness for the sake of their creative goals. They developed their stage uniform and soon the blue-grey shirts were seen on stages all over Sweden. Realising that image isn't all they also started to create a special noise of their own. The Band has seven members now, all guys in their late teenage or early twenties. They create something that they simply call speed-garage-ska, which also could be described as a mixture between high-speed ska and 60's garage rock.
SQUARE say they play their music because there isn't really any other band that play what they want to hear. The lyrics are always written after the music and they often tell a story, which feels more important than individual description of emotions because of the band formula. Their energy filled ska music jumps restlessly between different tempos, music influences and strange sounds. When the intense rhythm section by the Ficks brothers, no-school guitars, screaming trumpet and trombone, "played-too-fast" synthesizer and biologically disorted vocal is played together it's like being run over by a car - in a positive way!
Members
Andreas Alm
Date of birth: 82-02-23
Instrument: Trumpet
Get personal: I am interested in the basic pleasures in life; food and beverages. Hitherto my expertise in this area is quite scarce but I'm trying to improve a bit every chance I get. In a distant future my work will be to combine music and drinking in to a complete experience. Try a bottle of Faustino VII to Miles Davies Sketches of Spain! or down a bottle of any cheep blended whiskey whilst listening to Guns n' Roses. Voila! The experiences of drink and music complete each other.
Martin Augustini
Date of birth: 82-05-27
Instrument: Vocals/synth
Get personal: I think that if you could mix scoptofilia, or a more specific; a thirst for the images that is created in someone's head while they experience the world with an erotic perspective, with a craving for music that in fact is hedonic images, it would be a state of mind that I'm trying to put myself in when I'm writing music. I am not sure if these images can ever exists outside someone's head to be a perceptible object, but I am assuming that for now.
Fredrik von Ahn
Date of birth: 83-03-17
Instrument: Guitar
Get personal: What I love about music and skateboarding, the two biggest passions of my life is that they are quite similar. You can basically do whatever you like with it and no one can judge you. When I step on my skateboard or put on my guitar I just simply skate or play whatever I feel like in that moment. It's pure pleasure.
Håkan Ficks
Date of birth: 88-??-??
Instrument: Bass
Get personal: Food is one of my big passions, but I take a brisk walk every day to keep in good shape for stage performance. I try to be the best-looking guy in the band but it's hard, my only advantage is that I'm the youngest one. My bass guitar is my ticket to dance and I like to dance, I dance a lot. I never say no, test me!
Petter Fridell
Date of birth: 86-05-08
Instrument: Trombone
Get personal: I spend most of my time riding my bike to the rehearsing place. My goal is to invent a whole new way of playing trombone; I believe it can be done without even touching the actual instrument. I have experimented with throwing different kind of things on the trombone from a distance and I have also tried pouring different kinds of liquids on it. Until now I have had mixed result.
Claes Persson
Date of birth: 82-06-05
Instrument: Guitar
Get personal: As any hard working construction worker this writing -about -me -shit is an absolute favorite occupation. My ambitions are to become rich enough to retire and farm strawberries in Finnerödja, a small town just outside Örebro. Rock on!
Martin Ficks
Date of birth: 85-02-04
Instrument: Drums
Get personal: All you got to do is pour. My name is Martin Ficks and I am telling you that all you need to do is pour. Lust!