"In January 2007 e.s.t. were on tour in Asia and Australia performing shows in Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Jakarta, Perth and Sydney. It was their third tour of Japan and their second time on the fifth continent and the venues and audiences had become noticeably bigger. Only a few weeks before they had finished their triumphant tour of Germany performing their now legendary “Live in Hamburg” concert (awarded ‘Album of the Decade’ by the London TIMES). It was undoubtedly the prime time of the style defining jazz band of the Noughties.
Esbjörn Svensson, Magnus Öström and Dan Berglund decided to rent the famous Studio 301 in Sydney for their off-days in the middle of the Australian tour and jammed for two consecutive days to develop new songs and material. Altogether they recorded 9 hours of music. “Leucocyte” became the first release from this recording and has been praised by critics and fans alike as a ground-breaking work that leads into a new musical universe.
Very soon after the recording Esbjörn Svensson had edited much of the material down to two albums. And so the plan at the time was to release either a double album or two consecutive albums from this recording. The untimely passing of Esbjörn Svensson then disrupted this undertaking and only one of the albums, “Leucocyte”, was released at the time.
Three years on, in October and November 2011, Dan Berglund and Magnus Öström revisited the material from that recording and together with their regular sound engineer Ake Linton made their own edit for an album which is now called “301” on the basis of the name of the studio where the album was recorded."
ACT Music+VisionMagnus Öström, Esbjörn Svensson, Dan Berglund - © ACT / Joerg Grosse-Geldermann
