In one of the more unexpected musical pairings of recent times Norwegian singer/songwriter Ane Brun has been announced as a touring partner for Peter Gabriel’s upcoming European ‘New Blood Tour’ dates. The legendary UK art rocker is hitting the road sans guitars but with a full orchestra and his daughter Melanie,  as well as Brun [...]

Norway’s latest hopes for global success break the mould of previous exports in one notable fashion: they sing in their native tongue. Rather than signifying a greater willingness amongst Anglo-Saxon tastemakers to absorb Norway’s lilting idiom, however, the imminent success of Casiokids is rather testament to the extent to which the other aspects of their [...]

On their latest album Blackjazz Shining embrace their metal tendencies to such an extent that the whole affair has the air of a calculated project: channeling black metal through their supreme jazz-informed musicianship to produce a semi-conceptual metal record that is not only technically impressive, thought-provoking and boundary-pushing, but also oh-so-fucking heavy and downright scary. [...]

UPDATE: Mayhem states in their blog:
“Despite all attempt to save the USA/CANADA tour we are now forced to cancel it due to the financial situation. We are very sorry for all those who expected to see Mayhem live, we hope the situation will be better next time. We will work hard on getting back over [...]

Bergen clubbers are in for a considerable treat if this year’s The Fix turns out to be anything near as good as it looks on paper. The event, ‘presented’ by Ekko and Bergenfest, two of the city’s flagship live music offerings, revealed a host of great Norwegian and foreign acts who will take to the stage [...]

Following the recent demise of Norway’s most successful band a-ha, fans were placated by the surprise announcement that the odd but intriguing assembly of the band’s guitarist and songwriter Magne Furuholmen, Mew’s Jonas Bjerre and Coldplay’s Guy Berryman had decided to release a full album following their previous one-off recording of the theme for the [...]

Every year Norway’s huge state energy company Statoil donates a sum of money to one of the country’s emerging musical talents to help their progress, with a focus on artists deemed on the cusp of an international breakthrough. Last year jazz solo-artist Mathias Eick walked away with the dough, using it to fund a substantial world [...]

With members of Shining, Supersilent and, um, BigBang amongst their ranks Elephant9 are as worthy as any of the jazz ’supergroup’ title, and having garnered widespread acclaim for their 2008 debut Dodovoodoo they now have a follow-up set to drop. With the love of punning evident in that debut’s moniker intact, this second record is [...]

Lillehammer’s Norwegian Literature Festival, the biggest event of its kind in Scandinavia, has confirmed a ’double’ concert with the country’s own Susanna & The Magical Orchestra and US acoustic favourite Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy (with ‘the Cairo Gang’) on Saturday 29th May. Not very literary, admittedly, but they get round that by calling them ‘poets’ in the write-up. [...]

The full line-up for Coachella, the first of America’s major music events, was released in full recently, with The Whitest Boy Alive being the only Norwegian-ish inclusion. The Berlin-based band are of course fronted by none other than Erlend Øye, one half of Kings of Convenience, which makes them Norwegian enough for us. They are [...]