Story

Art Fact started in Stockholm in the second half of the 1980s: four teenagers, a few synthesizers and a four-track tape recorder. We made three cassettes and then stopped. Thirty years later people were dancing to them.

1980s · A bedroom in Stockholm

We are Måns Jonasson, Anders Ljung, Jonas Embring and Olle Söderström. We met after school to drink soda, play synths and play computer games, and at some point the synths took over.

The studio was whichever room we could occupy, for a long time Jonas’s brother’s bedroom. The equipment was what teenagers could afford or borrow: a Roland D-20, a Yamaha PSR-70, a Casio CZ-101 and a Tascam four-track, later two Juno-106s and a Roland S-330 sampler. Vocals were recorded with a cheap microphone. One small reverb unit had to do everything.

1989–1992 · Three cassettes

We made three cassettes: In Fact (1989), Nowadays (1990) and The Nuclear Princess (1992). Everything on them is electronic. They begin as upbeat synth pop and get darker as we got older.

The tapes were sold by post for 35 kronor. The flyer for Nowadays carried a warning: “These cassettes contain synthesizer music.” We played live around Stockholm, at Tre Backar among other places. One song, “Building”, was picked for Illuminative, a compilation from a brand new label called Memento Materia. Later, our song “DKW” was picked for the follow-up compilation.

1991 · Letters from the record companies

In the summer of 1991 we sent a tape to the big labels. They answered, and they said no. EMI wrote that it sounded “atmospheric and credible” but lacked strong melodies and lyrics. Virgin sent a standard letter with a handwritten note at the bottom: “Synth pop is not for us right now. Sorry.” Sony and PolyGram declined too. We kept the letters.

After 1992 · Silence

After The Nuclear Princess the band stopped, and for twenty years we did other things. What we did not know was that the cassettes kept travelling. People copied them, traded them and played them, and none of it reached us.

2011–2016 · Found again

In 2011 “Rain in the South” was included on The Hidden Tapes, a compilation from the Minimal Wave label. The year after, Dödsdans Rekords released And the Seasons Changed, a gatefold vinyl compilation of songs from the three cassettes.

That sent us back to the archive. In 2013 and 2014 Måns and Anders wrote about every song on the tapes, one a week; the whole series is under The Tapes. In December 2013 we played live for the first time in twenty years, at Nalen in Stockholm, and the following summer at the Kalabalik på Tyrolen festival.

In 2016 we pressed 250 vinyl copies of Closure, new recordings of the old songs, and announced it as the very last Art Fact album.

2023–2025 · The remixes

It was not the last of anything. In 2023 Vinyl on Demand released Tape Works, a box set with all three cassettes remastered for vinyl. DJs began remixing “Rain in the South”, and in 2025 22Recordings released Art Fact Reviewed by Veintidos, with new remixes of six of the old songs.

2026 · On the road

For more than thirty years Art Fact had never played outside Sweden. In 2026 we played Milan, Barcelona, Paris, London, Catania, Bielefeld, Berlin, Taranto, and then Stockholm again. Photos from all of it are on the Live page.

The songs are still the ones we wrote in that bedroom.