bob hund always surprises. But this time, maybe still with some recognition. The band now releases "Det allra näst bästa" ("The very second best"), 20 previously unreleased studio recordings from the 90's. Some of the songs have been played live, others have never been heard again after the recording – they were all deselected for different reasons. It is simply a studio album that has been locked up for a long time.

Guitarist Conny Nimmersjö began a deep dive into bob hund's extensive archive and listened through 2–300 hours of music and digitized all the old DAT cassettes and then, together with the rest of the band, selected 20 songs for the double vinyl. The recordings were made in Tambourine Studios in Malmö, Silence studio in Koppom, In Deep Studios in Stockholm and the band's own studio in Solna. When the selection was made, the two most important criteria were that the songs had to be good and that they had to be listenable.

Conny Nimmersjö says: – We have recorded enormous amounts, we probably have 200 cassettes with unreleased song ideas, but we set a limit here: everything had to have good sound quality, so basically recorded in a studio. The only exception is a demo of "Fåntratt", which we recorded with a two-channel DAT cassette in the rehearsal room, and it happened to sound good. It has the same riff as the song that later became "Sista beställningen".

In some of the songs there are elements that can be recognized from later released songs. This is how bob hund work, they create song parts that need to find siblings to become a complete song. Sometimes one part can stand out too much to fit in with something else, and then it is left as a small ship at sea, unfinished, without becoming a whole song.

That these specific songs ended up in the freezer back in the day has a very special reason for each song, one more incomprehensible than the other.
– Some songs are more grunge rock than those we chose to release which were more indie. There was always a tension in the band, some of us came from a punk background and some came from synth, so we have always torn and pulled between a more poppy and a more messy expression. You could say that this is the losing side's record, Conny explains.

– It surprises me now that I go back and look at the choices we made, "What made us deselect this?" It may have been on completely loose grounds that you don't understand at all today, says Per Sunding, producer of bob hund's first two albums.

"Ska du hänga med? Ah näeee!!!" is of course an earlier version of "Skall du hänga med? Nä!!" but none of the band members have any memory of when it was recorded.

– It just appeared on a cassette, "What is this?!" Obviously, someone recorded it, but we don't even know who is playing the glockenspiel. It was one of the most fun things to find, it's like a completely different song, says Conny.

One of the band's most legendary live songs is now finally coming out in a properly studio-recorded version: "Edvin Medvind". It was one of the first songs bob hund recorded and was released on a limited vinyl single in 1994, but that time with deliberately bad lo-fi sound, recorded in the rehearsal room. The recording on the new record is from January 1996 in Tambourine Studios with Per Sunding as producer.

Per Sunding remembers: – For me, the whole period when I got to know them has an air of a crush. It was as if the air was vibrating in a special way, and that had to do with them and their tones.

The album cover was also made in the 90's, of course by bob hund's permanent designer Martin Kann. According to Martin himself, it's a sketch that was second best to a better cover.

Most of "Det allra näst bästa" was good just as it was, but two songs have been remixed by Per Sunding in Tambourine Studios, some have been edited and all sound-improved by Hans Olsson in Svenska Grammofonstudion, and one overdub has been made.

Conny Nimmersjö says: – Christian Gabel wasn't in the band at the time, so we got him to overdub a melody on melodica, so that he can say that he saved the whole record!