Ril­tons Vän­ner (Friends of Ril­ton) is one of Sweden’s most suc­cess­ful a cap­pella groups, we have recorded 5 albums, made over 500 per­for­mances & col­lab­o­rated with a lot of nice peo­ple, for exam­ple the Elec­tric Banana Band. This web­page also cov­ers what we’ve done so far, includ­ing some strange things we’ve done, it is pos­si­ble to watch videos & pic­tures, you can also lis­ten to dif­fer­ent stuff we’ve recorded. Almost every­where on the page there is a chance for you to com­ment, and that makes us so happy when you do! If you want to get in touch with us a lit­tle more not so pub­lic, that is pos­si­ble, too.

Denna vecka håller vi hus på Södra Teatern, där Janne Schaf­fer firar 40 år som artist. Vi bidrar med diverse sång, dans och röda detaljer.

Komsi!

RARB, a kind of a cap­pella com­mu­nity that pub­lishes reviews of all a cap­pella albums released (almost), have picked their top albums of the decade, and our album “Här är pas­sion” from 2005 is among them! How about that!

» RARB Picks of the Decade

» Här är passion

» Store

Yet again, we’ve been nom­i­nated in the Grammy awards of A Cap­pella. This time, it’s for Japanmix:

• Best Jazz Album
• Best Pro­fes­sional Orig­i­nal Song (“Don’t let me know” by Matilda Lindell)

We like! Though we’d never put our­selves in the “jazz” category…

The A cap­pella pod­cast Mouth Off did a review of our lat­est album ear­lier this week. Except for neatly pack­ag­ing all the argu­ments you need to buy it, they’re doing it in a very enter­tain­ing way :-)

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We’ve reopened our web shop, where you can buy our CD:s. Two nice features:

• No mid­dle­men!
• CD sign­ing possibilities!

Buy now!

» Store

This autumn Ril­tons Vän­ner turns 10 years old. We’ve been cel­e­brat­ing that with a fan­tas­tic Swe­den tour!

Also, join our Face­book group!

We realised that we used to send out a newslet­ter, a nice & good way to keep in touch with our dear friends..! So, we decided to put it back to use, and you are very wel­come to sub­scribe to it!

» Newslet­ter

This is our lat­est album, orig­i­nally designed for the Japan­ese mar­ket. Some of the songs are col­lected from the sec­ond last album, “De vill att vi bugar och niger”, and the rest are new mate­r­ial. Since the new stuff turned out really good, we thought that the rest of the world also deserves to take part of it :-)

In the sunshine:

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» Read more…

Those of you who remem­ber our video “Hero” will rec­og­nize the music in this rather pecu­liar video: It’s a South Korean vocal group, put together only to per­form one sin­gle song — our ver­sion of Char­lotte Perrelli’s “Hero”. Cover on cover, so to speak!

» Read more…

We just recieved our new CD “Japan­mix” from the CD fac­tory. It’s deli­cious, the pack­age is from the Swedish design­ers at Jake­box

It will be avail­able for sale later this autumn!

From our upcom­ing album “Japan­mix” (release later this year), this song is the first single…

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At last, our lat­est album “De vill att vi bugar och niger” is avail­able on Spo­tify, click the link below:

Ril­tons Vän­ner

We’ve just started a Twit­ter account, where we’ll occa­sion­ally post updates of our doings. Totally live.

Fol­low us!

The gallery sec­tion is recently updated & loaded with nice pictures.

…please let us know if there’s any­thing you miss on the webpage!

The Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test is a huge thing in Swe­den. This is a cover we just made on last year’s win­ner, Char­lotte Perelli with the song “Hero”.

We’ve been invited to par­tic­i­pate in a Tokyo based a cap­pella fes­ti­val by the end of August 2009. Among other invited groups are Take 6 & Raja­ton.

Nice!

The inter­na­tional A Cap­pella orga­ni­za­tion CASA has its own annual award for A Cap­pella albums, called CARA. In 2005 our album “Här är pas­sion” won the Best Folk/World Album cat­e­gory. This year, our lat­est album “De vill att vi bugar och niger” has been nom­i­nated in four categories:

• Best Pop/Rock Album
• Best Folk/World Album
• Best Euro­pean Album
• Best Pro­fes­sional Orig­i­nal Song (En tyst minut)

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We like!

Since 2005 we’re part of the Swedish cult chil­drens rock/pop band Elec­tric Banana Band, highly acclaimed by gen­er­a­tions of Swedes. Ril­tons Vän­ner van­ishes into “chock-pink” dresses and becomes The Flamin­gos, a given suc­cess as you can see: Watch a video and more pictures…

De vill att vi bugar och niger have now been reviewed by RARB (The Recorded A Cap­pella Review Board) and received won­der­ful com­ments. Read them here!

“…De vill att vi bugar och niger is an excel­lent album, full of fan­tas­tic singing and top-notch song writ­ing. Even with­out trans­la­tions of the lyrics, the songs are spell­bind­ing. If only they had some US tour dates com­ing up…”

5/5 Tom Czer­win­ski, RARB

“Ril­tons vän­ner remains one of my all-time favorite groups. It’s impos­si­ble not to fol­low them through the nearly mys­ti­cal sound­scapes of Nånt­ing inom oss, Klor, or the title track, De vill att vi bugar och niger.”

5/5 Jonathan Minkoff, RARB

“Albums this thought­ful and art­ful are cer­tainly a rar­ity. De vill att vi bugar och niger is a won­der­ful lis­ten time and time again, and one deserv­ing of your attention.”

4/5 Kim­mie Raschka Sailor, RARB

Ril­tons Vänner’s 4th album was recorded in the sum­mer of 2007 — spring 2008. With this album, Ril­tons Vän­ner is tak­ing a giant leap towards new sound­scapes, away from the pre­dicted & expected. Some of the songs are writ­ten for the album, while oth­ers have been in the group’s con­science for a longer period.

Don’t let me know:

All songs are orig­i­nals, writ­ten by Peter Björk­lund, Peter Hägerås and Matilda Lin­dell. » Read more…

Swedish electro-trio Stay Ali have hon­ored us with a funky, mad & won­der­ful remix of our song “Ensamhet”. Keep your eyes open on these three gen­tle­men, some­thing big is going on…

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In octo­ber 2008, we were guest per­form­ers at a major child choir con­cert in Lund, Swe­den. We met some fan­tas­tic kids, along with some great Swedish artists (Molly Sandén, Ola (from Swedish Idol) & Nic Schröder). It felt kind of like a jackpot.

We have started our own record com­pany, Sock­eye. (Fishy name, huh!)

Sock­eye is also an event com­pany that pro­duces all kinds of stuff, even stuff that doesn’t have to do with Ril­tons Vänner.

» www.sockeye.se

We would like to thank all of you who came and vis­ited our con­cert at Nalen, Stock­holm at May 19! We had a lot of fun, we hope you enjoyed it too… Here are some pic­tures for you: » Read more…

We appeared at a famous Swedish radio host, Annika Lantz, at her show on May 16th. Apart from chat­ting about every­thing (Annika’s famous for talk­ing), we also sang “De vill att vi bugar och niger”.

» Watch the video…

We had a two week tour in the mid­dle of Swe­den (Sörm­land) in March ’08. 11 school-concerts and 8 pub­lic con­certs total. Here are some pic­tures: » Read more…

We per­formed two songs from the new album at a major Swedish TV show in March 2008.

» Check it out here

In the sum­mer of ’07 we vis­ited an unique Swedish venue, a lime­stone quarry called Dal­halla. We did a con­cert together with three of Sweden’s bright­est jazz stars; Rigmor Gustafs­son, Mag­nus Lind­gren & Sand­viken Big Band.

» Some videoclips…

Ril­tons Vänner’s sec­ond lat­est album con­sists of all-original songs, all writ­ten by Peter Björk­lund. The CD was awarded “Best folk/world album of the year” by the inter­na­tional A Cap­pella orga­ni­za­tion CASA.

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» Read more…

Together with two Swedish choirs we went on a mini tour to Wash­ing­ton DC & New York. The tour, called Vocally Swedish, was arranged by Kalle Thor­son, in order to bring Swedish vocal music to the US. Among other things we did a show at the Duke Elling­ton School of the Arts in Wash­ing­ton DC, a show that we’ll remem­ber for the rest of our lives…

» Watch a video clip…

A com­mis­sioned work for the Swedish labour union, which con­tains old peace– & labour­songs in a new style.

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» Read more…

Ril­tons Vän­ners very first CD. A charm­ing mix of funny & seri­ous, orig­i­nals & cov­ers, and Swedish & English.

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» Read more…