Biography
Swedish drummer Morgan Ågren, born in 1967, and keyboardist Mats Öberg, who entered the world in 1972 and has remained sightless since infancy, launched their partnership at an exceptionally young stage. In 1981 a local promoter in their native Umeå arranged for the fourteen- and ten-year-olds to appear as a duo, an encounter that initiated a continuous run of joint performances and recordings.
From the outset the pair gravitated toward the compositions of Frank Zappa, prompting them to assemble the tribute group Zappesteetoot in 1984. After meeting the musicians, Zappa himself invited them onstage during his 1988 Stockholm concert. Plans to integrate Ågren and Öberg into Zappa’s touring ensemble were later abandoned when prostate cancer, which claimed Zappa’s life in 1993, rendered participation impossible. Both musicians nonetheless took part in the large-scale Zappa’s Universe project, whose November 1991 concert at New York’s Ritz was captured on the Verve album Zappa’s Universe, issued in 1993.
Returning to Sweden, the duo inaugurated their own Ultimate Audio Entertainment imprint to document an eclectic body of avant-prog and fusion work. Their first release, Trends and Other Diseases, was tracked between 1993 and 1995 and appeared in 1996. Subsequent UAE titles included the 1997 two-disc set The Music or the Money…, split into separate Mats and Morgan discs; the 1998 pair Radio Da Da, drawn from 1992 sessions, and The Teenage Tapes, which reached back to 1981; the 2001 live album Live, taped at a Stockholm venue with an expanded sextet featuring guitarist Jimmy Ågren, bassist Tommy Tordsson, and keyboardists Robert Elovsson and Eric Carlsson; and 2002’s On Air with Guests, a radio archive recording that added guests such as Meshuggah guitarist Fredrik Thordendal and multi-instrumentalist Simon Steensland on selected tracks.
The core quintet configuration first heard on On Air with Guests signed with Cuneiform Records in 2004. The label issued the studio album Thanks for Flying with Us, augmented by live bonus material, in 2005. Three years afterward Cuneiform presented the CD/DVD package Heat Beats Live/Tourbook 1991-2007, whose audio portion collected 2005–2007 performances and whose video portion surveyed sixteen years of Morgan Ågren’s solo and ensemble work. An extensive reissue program followed, beginning with a remastered Trends and Other Diseases in 2008 that incorporated a fifteen-minute bonus collage. The Music or the Money? reappeared in 2010 with the original discs interleaved and forty-five minutes of later band material appended. Live was reissued in 2011, while 2013 saw Radio Da Da and The Teenage Tapes combined into a fifty-four-track remastered collection that added two cuts to the former and expanded the latter from twenty-eight to thirty-six selections, spanning 1981 to 2008. Cuneiform released the new studio album Schack Tati in 2014.
From the outset the pair gravitated toward the compositions of Frank Zappa, prompting them to assemble the tribute group Zappesteetoot in 1984. After meeting the musicians, Zappa himself invited them onstage during his 1988 Stockholm concert. Plans to integrate Ågren and Öberg into Zappa’s touring ensemble were later abandoned when prostate cancer, which claimed Zappa’s life in 1993, rendered participation impossible. Both musicians nonetheless took part in the large-scale Zappa’s Universe project, whose November 1991 concert at New York’s Ritz was captured on the Verve album Zappa’s Universe, issued in 1993.
Returning to Sweden, the duo inaugurated their own Ultimate Audio Entertainment imprint to document an eclectic body of avant-prog and fusion work. Their first release, Trends and Other Diseases, was tracked between 1993 and 1995 and appeared in 1996. Subsequent UAE titles included the 1997 two-disc set The Music or the Money…, split into separate Mats and Morgan discs; the 1998 pair Radio Da Da, drawn from 1992 sessions, and The Teenage Tapes, which reached back to 1981; the 2001 live album Live, taped at a Stockholm venue with an expanded sextet featuring guitarist Jimmy Ågren, bassist Tommy Tordsson, and keyboardists Robert Elovsson and Eric Carlsson; and 2002’s On Air with Guests, a radio archive recording that added guests such as Meshuggah guitarist Fredrik Thordendal and multi-instrumentalist Simon Steensland on selected tracks.
The core quintet configuration first heard on On Air with Guests signed with Cuneiform Records in 2004. The label issued the studio album Thanks for Flying with Us, augmented by live bonus material, in 2005. Three years afterward Cuneiform presented the CD/DVD package Heat Beats Live/Tourbook 1991-2007, whose audio portion collected 2005–2007 performances and whose video portion surveyed sixteen years of Morgan Ågren’s solo and ensemble work. An extensive reissue program followed, beginning with a remastered Trends and Other Diseases in 2008 that incorporated a fifteen-minute bonus collage. The Music or the Money? reappeared in 2010 with the original discs interleaved and forty-five minutes of later band material appended. Live was reissued in 2011, while 2013 saw Radio Da Da and The Teenage Tapes combined into a fifty-four-track remastered collection that added two cuts to the former and expanded the latter from twenty-eight to thirty-six selections, spanning 1981 to 2008. Cuneiform released the new studio album Schack Tati in 2014.