Ache

Ache was a progressive rock band from Denmark. They released four albums between 1970 and 1977.

ACHE biography

The seeds for ACHE were sown in the early 60’s via the Danish beat group THE HARLOWS. When HARLOWS Torsten Olafsson (bass), Peter Mellin (organ) and Glenn Fischer (drums) were joined by former MCKENZIE SET guitarist Finn Olafsson in 1968, ACHE was born.

They spent the next two years working on an extended piece called "De Homine Urbano", which was released as programme music to an experimental "rock ballet" in 1970. Released on the Philips label the same year with an accompanying single of non-album tracks, it netted positive reviews in the Danish press. ACHE’s "rock theater" created something of a sensation in the rock underground, and "Green Man" followed in 1971. The next major ACHE project, by a revised six-piece version of the band, was a conceptual work called "Pictures From Cyclus 7", written in collaboration with lyricist Bo Lillesöe in 1975 and released one year later.

Ache have remained active on and off, albeit sporadically, ever since. Their only other major work (i.e.: not counting singles and compilations) has been "Blå som altid", a folk-oriented album released in 1978.

Albums:
Ache - 1970 De Homine Urbano
Ache - 1971 Green Man
Ache - 1976 Pictures From Cyclus 7
Ache - 1978 Bla Some Altid

he title track of Ache's first album, De Homine Urbano (1970), was a 20-minute long instrumental ballet suite (the ballet itself was performed in Copenhagen and Moscow). The other side of the album had another track of equal length with some vocal parts. The ambitious music (all written by Mellin and Finn Olafsson) wasn't entirely successful as it relied too heavily on ideas similar to The Nice (the classically influenced keyboards), Vanilla Fudge (their melodramatic, long dynamic pieces), Pink Floyd (their atonal pieces), early Van Der Graaf Generator and the pastoral songs of Procol Harum. Even so, the album is excellent and recommended for those who enjoy the instrumental excesses so typical of the period.

Green Man (1971) was an improvement, displaying more personality and more discipline. Ache described their own performance as "a dramatic art form based upon the coordination of heavy rock music, psychedelic light, dancing and acting - the Ache Rock Theatre". A theatre performance to correspond with the music was indeed planned but cancelled due to lack of money. For the same reason, Ache disbanded in 1971.

Four years later, Finn Olafsson and Peter Mellin decided to have another go with Stig Kreutzfeldt, Steen Toft Andersen (these two operated earlier as the duo Stig & Steen) and Gert Smedegård (ex-Kashmir). In true Ache tradition, a rock opera (with Bo Lillesøe writing the libretto) named, Pictures From Cyclus 7, was soon recorded and released. This is another interesting effort, although their final album, “Blå Som Altid”, wasn't up to the previous standards.

~Taken from Scented Gardens of the Mind - A guide to the Golden Era of Progressive Rock (1968-1980) in more than 20 European Countries, by Dag Erik Asbjørnsen, Borderline Productions

www.achesite.dk/