Sven Larsson started his recording career as a guitar player back in the late 90s, ever since he recorded four studio albums with the critically accaimed Swedish Progressive Rockers Galleon and two with the AOR-Meets-Prog outfit Xinema. His best known work so far can be found on the albums of the Swedish Westcoast AORsters Street Talk. Sven joined main songwriter and keyboarder Fredrik Bergh (Bloodbound) and singer Göran Edman (Madison, Glory, Yngwie Malmsteen, Brazen Abbot) in 2000 for their second album “Transition” and so far he has recorded a total of four albums with them, including one compilation CD.
When Sven started playing guitar in the early 80s he was listening to a wide variety of Rock music, ranging from British Art Rock bands like Queen, 10 CC, E.L.O. and Genesis to sophisticated American Westcoast acts like Toto and Steely Dan, as well as Hard’n’Heavy icons Van Halen and Iron Maiden. To this day among his favorites is also the influential American songwriter Joni Mitchell. Over the years Sven has become known in the Swedish music scene as a player combining amazing technical skills with feeling and emotion.
When his aforementioned bands took a back seat from recording, Sven started working on his first solo album. The record called “Sunlight And Shadow” turned out to become a different musical affair from what he previously did as a band member and it was released in the spring of 2010 through Avenue Of Allies. Offering a nice variety of musical styles ranging from Melodic Rock and AOR to Westcoast and Fusion, and though influences from iconic guitar players like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Steve Morse, Eric Johnson, Steve Lukather and Michael Landau can be heard, “Sunlight And Shadow” was far from being the album of a guitar player, who wants to break free from the boundaries of a band. Sven’s playing is always in the sense of the song and the melody and on eight tracks he proved that he is a good lead vocalist too.
Two years have passed since his solo debut, a time during which Sven worked on the songs for his sophomore record and he also became an in-demand session player for high profile AOR projects like Lionville and Coastland Ride and the soon to be released albums of Sapphire Eyes and Charming Grace.
In the spring of 2012 Sven completed the work on "Bad Mad Man", his solo album number 2. Some of the tracks are again featuring his colleagues from Street Talk, Fredrik Bergh (keyboards), Björn Lodmark (bass) and Christian Johansson (drums) and also the voice of Street Talk, Göran Edman can be heard on the straight forward rocking "Sin City" and the atmospheric piece "Missing Link". Vocalist Thomas Eriksson was already in the line-up of Sven's debut, while Anders Åhlund debuts on lead vocals on two tracks and paying a visit from the Galleon camp are Ulf Pettersson and Göran Fors.