Gunnar Silins

Gunnar Silins worked as a mix engineer and was responsible for the studio at the record company Grammofon AB Electra, which at the time was one of Sweden's largest record companies (that went into a rather spectacular bankruptcy around 1989). His job was to run the studio and also to handle most of the recordings Electra did locally.

Vinyl Mania was a record shop in the centre of Stockholm focusing on dance/DJ stuff and they came up with a label of their own; Beat Box. Beat Box was one of the plentiful small record companies who got assistance with distribution from Electra. Fredrik Ramel approached Gunnar and asked if he wanted to help him remix a song which had a mix he considered a bit weak. He had gotten the permission to do this from the songwriters.

Gunnar doesn't which song it was, perhaps it was Disco Band with Scotch. But the results were said to be good. This instituted the start of a co-operation which lasted for a few years. They remixed maybe 50 or 60 tracks in total. Gunnar did a few of them on my own but mostly they worked head-to-head doing this. At some point they did a complete production with some swedish female singer and a guy with a lot of programmed synthesizers. This also came out on the Beat Box label.

Fredrik used to call Gunnar in time for new mixes and book up the studio. They mostly worked late evenings and nights. Fredrik came with the multi-track tape, a copy made for them by the record company down in Italy, and a stack of hamburgers from McDonalds. We had dinner in the studio and then started working. Beginning to end, a track took about 10 hours to finish, giving us a complete master to engrave records from.

Gunnar has said that he didn't feel anything for the music, rather the opposite. He thought it was quite vacuous and uninteresting, like most music in the dance scene. Personally he'd rather listening to King Crimson. But it was fun from a professional standpoint. He had a lot of possibilities to come up with new things, try different ideas and be creative. And Fredrik was a nice fellow that Gunnar enjoyed working with.

For Gunnar, the Beat Box mixes was a fun feature compared to his normal working day, where he usually recorded everything from death metal to big band jazz, folk songs to children's records and dance band music.

Vinyl Mania had three shareholders, of whom Fredrik was one. Due to an argument they split up the business, so Gunnar's mixing of Beat Box tracks came to an end. Vinyl Mania didn't go into bankruptcy, but into liquidation. The store shut down, and Gunnar lost with Fredrik.

In recent years, Gunnar has left the studio world behind and has instead worked with sales of professional sound, at MixRommet AB. subsidiary of Lydrommet in Sweden. The company was located in Sollentuna outside Stockholm, managed by Gunnar Silins.