Gazpacho (band)

Gazpacho
Gazpacho at Dingwalls, London 2011
Background information
Origin	Oslo, Norway
Genres	Art rock progressive rock alternative rock neo-prog new prog
Years active	1996 – present
Labels	Happy Thoughts Production Kscope
Associated acts	Marillion
Website	http://www.gazpachoworld.com/
Members	Jan Henrik Ohme Jon-Arne Vilbo Thomas Andersen Mikael Krømer Kristian Torp Robert R Johansen
Past members	Lars Erik Asp Roy Funner Geir Digernes

Gazpacho are an art rock band from Oslo, Norway. The original core band of Jan-Henrik Ohme (vocals), Jon-Arne Vilbo (guitars) and Thomas Andersen (keyboards, programming, producer) started making music together in 1996 and the band has since expanded with Mikael Krømer (violin, co-producer), Robert R Johansen (drums) and Kristian Torp (bass).

Gazpacho's music has been described by one critic as being "classical post ambient nocturnal atmospheric neo-progressive folk world rock". The music has been compared to A-ha, Radiohead, Marillion and Porcupine Tree.

Childhood friends Jon-Arne Vilbo and Thomas Andersen had played together in a band called Delerium before, which in their own words "whittled away." After several years of separation, the two friends met again and started making music together again. Andersen had met Jan-Henrik Ohme through his work as radio commercial producer and brought him into the jam sessions, which laid the foundation for Gazpacho as it exists today.

The band name comes from an attempt to describe their music.

Andersen: "We are a very unlikely mixture of people really, not the average types you'd expect to see in the same band… so we thought Gazpacho, which really is the bastard of soups (meshed up vegetables served cold), was the perfect name for our group(...)With Gazpacho you get a surprise, something unexpected, something out of the norm, a 'positive' contradiction. We feel this describes our band very well.".

Roy Funner played bass on the finished recordings of the band, though he wasn't part of the writing process. For the drum tracks a computer was used.

For two years the band worked on a concept album Random Access Memory; a piece of work which they discarded altogether when they felt they had not yet reached the level of musical maturity for such an ambitious project.