-I want people to dance, or at least to think about dancing

When I first heard Compute on the website of the small Internet-based label Hybris it burned my speakers. I don't know if it exactly clicked, but it spoke to me. Right away. I was thrown back to a meadow, a night somewhere in the 90s. The festival was almost over and I was tired. Then Robot started playing. It didn't click right away then either, but it spoke to me. Right away.

- It's a great honour to be compared with Robot. I think they're great, or were great, they've quit now haven't they?

The café in Vasastan, Gothenburg is filled with high school-students. I enter from a cold and inhospitable Gothenburg. It's steaming from everyone in here. In the middle of the biggest room of the café Ulrika Mild, alias Compute, is waiting. She's like a razorblade, hard and cold. That's what you think in the beginning 'cause her music is as confident as an 18 year old who's just gotten his drivers licence. Like a lumberman jumping from log to log. Her reasoning breathes science and knowledge. But all that is wrong. Well not about the knowledge then, but the personality.

Last year she finished her master thesis about lending music from the libraries via internet. Free of charge of course. Music that would disappear from your computers hard drive as the lending time expired. They're testing it in Denmark right now, she tells me.

- I think that that would be a way to discover more unusual music, Ulrika explains.

- On the sites where you can download music legally now that's harder, but the library has sort of another function in society, I think it could be a great way to find really interesting music if it just was easy to access.

Compute could probably thank Internet, for providing a chance to get their music out there, for their "record deal"

- If people hadn't heard the songs on the web, then no one might have wanted to see me play, no one would have contacted me, and no record would have been made, she says.

- Though to me it's more important to me that people come to and enjoy our shows than that they buy a record or download the music. She herself hasn't used the internet to download music, not the illegal kind.

The record was released this winter by Hybris. A small EP with five songs. But it's not her first one. She's also released a cover of one of Action Bikers songs.

- I like Action Biker very much, and one time when she was playing at the club Starke Adolf I said that I wanted to do a cover of one of her songs, but in German. The original is in French. Someone said that "if you can finish it in two days I'll release it". It was great fun, but a bit problematic. I don't speak French, and my German isn't that perfect. The song is about French verbs, so I just decided to use some German verbs. A friend helped me with the translation, and then I just did it. Two days later the song was done. And a single was made.

- I just hope that no one takes the time to listen too much to the lyrics, she laughs.

She says that she works fast. That it doesn't take too long to finish a song. If it takes too long there's a risk that it gets overworked. To help her out she's got 4 synthesizers, a couple of drum machines and a computer, mostly old stuff.

- I don't really like the new machines, the expensive ones. They scare me, they look like monsters, she says.

Despite the fear she recently bought a new, expensive synthesizer. Not because it's better than the old ones, but because they're starting to break down. She thinks it was a good buy, but still seems to feel a bit more for the old ones.

- I just hope they don't go dying on me now just 'cause the new machine came into the picture.

You can tell in Compute's music that she treats her stuff like they were organic beings. There's warmth in all that synthetic sound. Maybe that's what happens when you work with the music on your own. The machines are her band members, which she can rule over.

- I don't work that well in bands, not when it comes to Compute anyway. I've tried that, and it always ends up with me becoming some kind of dictator over the others.

She almost sounds a bit ashamed about her need of control. One who got a taste of it is Jens Lekman. He was during a period a member of Compute, but chose to leave and go for his own solo-career. Which has gone quite well so to speak. Instead Ulrika became the one who was ordered around by Jens, singing on his record and as a part of his band.

- The touring with Jens has been so much fun and I've learned a lot. Just to see the logistics going on backstage. And to get the chance to meet new people when you're travelling around.

One of these new people is Russell Barker in England who will release the Compute EP there. And in March she will be playing in London.

- That feels great! I've been hearing such nice things about my music from England so I'm really looking forward to going there.

Others like Compute, but what she likes is a bit harder to find out. Ulrika says that she's not as updated about the new stuff that's coming out as she'd want to be.

- I'd like it to be like great new music coming out all the time, but it doesn't really work that way, does it? Then it's easier to ignore it instead. But I really like The Tough Alliance. And the new Client record.

On the question what makes a great song the answer comes after much thinking:

- A good bass line. That's the most important part. Some claps and pauses and then you have a great song.

We continue to discuss if there's a way to calculate if a song is good. Ulrika claims that she's read that somewhere in Spain there's a machine that can calculate if a song will become a hit. I hope that it's just a rumour and think about how horrible the world would be if that machine got to the neighbourhood of Skara. *

On our way up to Götaplatsen, where we'll take her picture, I ask her about the future.

- I'll take it as it comes. We'll see. Right now I'm just excited about England, after that we'll see.

- Is there anything that you know that you won't do?

Pause

- I'll never own a private jet. That just feels unnecessary.

Jerry Boman

* Skara is a place where a mad man called Bert Karlsson lives. He's got a record company, and a show on TV where he takes talented young people and chops off everything about them that stands out and makes records with them. Like Pop Idol, but worse. When he's not doing that he's responsible for about 75 % of the songs in the Swedish song contest that is the trial for the eurovision song contest, and he runs an adventure park. About ten years ago he started a political party with an ideology that was made up by a bunch of racist ideas, strange songs and towerbuilding with boxes, which he and his partner (count Ian Wachtmeister) even managed to get into the Swedish parliament, and then it died four years later.