Syntax TerrOrkester

Land Her O!

Young Aspiring Professionals

My Norwegian sucks. And those dialects, wow. But I’ve played Norwegian scrabble enough to know all the two-three letter Norwegian words that count as points. Putting this newly acquired skill to the test, I’m slowly comprehending this particular band’s lyrical charm, as the opening track, “MÅ ME STÅ” consists of this:
EG STÅR PÅ
EG STÅR AV
EG [...]

Prins Thomas

s/t

Full Pupp

Oslo’s Prins Thomas is perhaps best known for his collaborations with the decade’s king of disco, Lindstrøm; the two friends giving out a pair of joint swirling prog-throwback electro albums (I and II) of patchy quality and arguably forming the bedrock of the capital’s thriving disco scene. Given that Lindstrøm’s success thus casts a formidable [...]

Botkaput

Brompton Cocktail Party

Botkaput Records

It’s that well versed and widely understood scenario when you are at a club and one of your friends hurls himself onto the dance floor (as per usual) and disappears into a trance like state jerking around like a half dead pig being prodded with an electric staff, and all and sundry silently laugh seeing [...]

Monzano

By This Time Last Year Everything Will Seem Younger

Spoon Train Audio

“Little furry things” is listed as one of Monzano’s influences on their Myspace page. Further down it says “the color of the back of CD’s”. Monzano is definitely trying very hard to be cute. They partly succeed, but they remind me of candy floss, and I can always only finish about half of those. By [...]

Darkthrone

Circle The Wagons

Peaceville

Circle the wagons, it’s indjuns! If anyone had said 18 years ago that Darkthrone would be playing melodic power metal, who’d have thunk it? Yet here they are, with their “difficult 15th album”, containing catchy sing-along-friendly choruses that you’ll find yourself humming in the shower. But that’s only in two of the songs. Don’t expect [...]

Nils Bech

Look Back

Fysisk Format

A deeply divisive figure, Nils Bech has split the Oslo underground more starkly than most, with those taking sides increasing by the day as the hordes of the inquisitive are drawn to this camp curio. Formerly of distinctly tongue-in-cheek quartet Snuten, most notable for the cheesy lo-fi of the admittedly irrepressibly catchy “Easy” (chorus: “it’s [...]

The Pink Robots

s/t

YFM

Is anyone thinking of starting up Pop Rock Eurovision? If so, can I nominate The Pink Robots as Norway’s contribution? The Catchy Robots would be a more suitable name. But - keep an ironic distance when it comes to Pop/Rock Eurovision. Pink Robots makes me want a bit of distance anyway.
The Pink Robots’ first album [...]

The White Tiger Prepade

Mystic Force in Gatekeepers Question Overflowing The Fountain of Astral Trollfire

Norway Rat

Finally I get to write about a band nobody’s gunna argue over, to you it’s either kronky senseless racket or, if you’re WIRE magazine-savvy, order determinable on plainly abnormal chaospheres. To those who find pleasure in dissecting or gauging how a modern piece abtractifies or collates pieces of those weird bands in past eras, say [...]

Jaga Jazzist

One-Armed Bandit

Ninja Tune

Jaga Jazzist emerged as one of the leaders of the Scandinavian-spearheaded ‘nu-jazz’ movement in the late nineties, their vibrant style blending the energy and multi-instrumentation of improvised jazz with Warp-influenced electronics and indie-rock melodic sensibilities. With the precocious vision of Lars Horntveth at their centre, the sprawling collective have, either directly or indirectly, made contributions [...]

Casiokids

Topp Stemning På Lokal Bar

Nightliner / Universal

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 [...]

Shining

Blackjazz

Indie Recordings

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. [...]

Anne Lene Hägglund

Bird Cherry Grove

Swingaround Records

Sitting on the tram on my way to work, trying to read while my attention seemed drawn more towards the sunshine flowing over the buildings in a winterworn Norwegian capital, gently blinding my eyes and warming my cheeks, I actually thought I’d found a soundtrack for this feeling, at least for a little while. About [...]

Haust / Next Life

Split: Resurrection EP

Fysisk Format

Split albums are a must in almost every hardcore band’s catalogue, and every hardcore geek has at least once bought a split 7″ or 12″ just for rare songs of one adored band, and then found the other side to be another casualty of bad pairing. When No Idea released Hot Water Music’s split, no [...]

Lindstrøm & Christabelle

Real Life Is No Cool

Smalltown Supersound

Real Life Is No Cool is a welcome return to form. These are throwback thrills of the freshest kind, where Feedelity Records’ ‘first lady’ steers away from ‘space’ and firmly towards ‘disco’. A thumping glitchy stomper of a record that gives all the funkier bits of the seventies a distinctly 21st century sheen.

It’s seven years [...]