Norwegian bands and artists

[Guybrush]

Velkommen, Guest!

You probably think I know lots about Norwegian music as I am from that country and am generally interested in music.

Well, you're going to be feeling more than a bit silly, because that's exactly wrong. When it comes to art and culture, I am like a traitor, always having focused my attention outside and elsewhere.

Still, I'm not completely ignorant - just mostly and vastly - so I thought it might be fun to do a thread.

I can post some Norwegian bands and artists. If you want, you can do the same. We can all explore this topic together and I'll occasionally try to keep it from becoming dreadfully boring.

To kick things off and welcome everyone, I give you Black Debbath's Mongo Norway, a song guide to night life in Oslo from their tourist information album Welcome To Norway.

[Lexi Darling]

My favorite Norwegian artist has to be Biosphere. From his early ambient techno work to the chilly atmospheric landscapes of his masterpiece album Substrata, his music has been a staple in my listening rotation since I first heard him in 2013.

Ladies and gentlemen, feast your ears.

[Guybrush]

That's exactly what I'm talking about. I believe I've heard about Biosphere.. probably? But I've never listened to it.

Thanks for sharing! I'll give it a listen 🙂

Here's a band I should listen to more, Hot Club De Norvege. Their take on the standard Time on my Hands is probably my favorite recording by them.

My parents generation in Norway have a decent awareness of Django Reinhardt, partly because of Hot Club De Norvege. They were part of the Django revival that happened in the 80s and onwards, started a Django festival in Norway and were also involved with running Hot Club records which has been producing jazz records for artists like Jimmy Rosenberg (❤️), Angelo Debarre and Ola Kvernberg whom they also have musical collaborations with.

Here they are playing with my favorite Gypsy jazz guitarist, Jimmy Rosenberg:

[grindy]

Oh boy, I could spam this thread for quite a long time. But lets start with just a few artists.

Stian Westerhus - experimental guitar

Shamblemaths - AvantProg

Terje Rypdal - fusion

Pixie Ninja - atmospheric electronic rock or something

[Gandalf]

I came in here to post Biosphere, but @Mrs. Waffles beat me to it 

So I'll just have to post Madrugada instead. A great late-night alt-rock band.

[Lexi Darling]

Here's a couple of my other Norwegian favorites.

Mortiis, legendary dungeon synth/dark ambient/black metal/industrial artist and formerly the bassist in Emperor. His 90s works are staples of the dungeon synth movement.

Agnes Buen Garnås, vocalist who performs ancient Norwegian folk ballads, very cool stuff and highly recommended if you like a sort of folk/classical hybrid.

And for those of you who enjoy a bit of new age, Amethystium is a cool project. Peep if you like Enigma or Deep Forest kind of stuff.

[grindy]

Supersilent is a Norwegian free improvising group. A bit jazzy, a bit electronic, but overall very much doing their own thing.
Their album "6" is considered one of their best and a good entry point.

I love their DVD "7", it's one of my favourite concert videos ever but it looks like it was removed from youtube.

[Guybrush]

Haha.

@Gandalf I know Madrugada quite well. Their debut album (which you posted a song from) was a small sensation in Norway. They were very popular for a while. Singer Sivert Høyem has done various collabs as well.

@Mrs. Waffles I only have brief knowledge of Emperor and even less of Mortiis, but at least it's something. Agnes Garnås I know nothing about 😅

Btw, Født til å Herske means Born to Rule.. just in case you were interested and didn't know 🙂

Draumkvedet means something like the dream poem.


I'll post something the whole of Norway knows about, one of our most well known rock bands that sings in Norwegian (which means they probably aren't known outside of Norway).

So this is Dumdum Boys, named after the expanding dumdum bullets (not because they're so stupid).

Having only superficial knowledge of Norwegian popular music, I mostly only know the hits. These are a couple of my faves.

The song from the late 80s that made them a staple:

Here's what they were like back in the day:

And here's the song I probably listened to the most during the late 90s.

They kept going well into the 00s and might be going strong still? I don't know 🙃

[innerspaceboy]

@Mrs. Waffles's Biosphere offering is a classic favorite of mine as well.

I'll share a few interrelated selections from Norway...

Kings of Convenience - "Homesick"

I adore everything KoC has released. Quiet, reflective folk at its finest.

Then half of the duo collaborated with Röyksopp, most popularly with their hit, Röyksopp (feat. Erlend Øye) - "Remind Me" (infamously known as, "that awesome instrumental track from that GEICO commercial.")

The two collaborated on one additional track from that same LP -

Röyksopp feat. Erlend Øye of Kings of Convenience - "Poor Leno"

And Erlend released some solo work worth exploring.

[grindy]

Needlepoint are a modern band sounding a bit like some 70s Canterbury. They manage very well to be chill and melodic, yet complex and often busy.
I love this album:

[Guybrush]

Röyksopp and Kings of Convenience are relatively popular and well known, especially Röyksopp. I've never really taken the plunge with either, but generally recognize their most well known songs.

My favorite from Röyksopp is the collab they did with Fever Ray from Swedish The Knife.

Needlepoint are a modern band sounding a bit like some 70s Canterbury. They manage very well to be chill and melodic, yet complex and often busy.
I love this album:

That's really cool, grindy 🙂 my ears are sure to perk up whenever Canterbury is mentioned.

I'll give this a listen!

[Guybrush]

So I've kinda rediscovered what may be the most important album of my teenage years, Gartnerlosjen's Due from 1995 I believe it is.

Losje means lodge and gartner means gardener, so it's the Gardener's Lodge. Their most excellent album is Due, or Pigeon in english.

Gartnerlosjen is one of many bands that sprung out of an expansive group of friends who, for some reason, had access to a studio. They would make up myriad of bands and artists, sometimes only with a single song attached, and release compilation cassettes through their record company with horribly produced drivel, all in the realm of comedy. It was great. Some examples:

Reidar Roses Orkester's Bella Marie where they're parody of Norwegian old timey music.

Or from the time they made German versions of their bands and made a German various artists album, despite having limited grasp of the language:

A thing about Norwegian humour in the 90s - it was the golden age of the irony generation. Young peeps would seemingly do things that previously had been done in seriousness, but just do it badly or obviously stupid. The Bella Marie song is a good example. It's got the right lyrics (nothing's wrong with them), the right instruments, the right feel. It's just stupidly executed. Everything was being made fun of and it was a humour that the parent generation didn't get.

Here's an example from television, a mockery of the rivalry between two Norwegian 19th century poets where the young Wergeland is being played by a very old, strange person.

Anyways! At some point, these guys with all the bands eventually learned how to produce something that sounded good. This shift was arguably around 1994 with a nonsensically named Gartnerlosjen EP released on CD with 4 songs split into 99 tracks. But for most, the shift was noticeable with the release of Due from 1995.

It opened with the Cinema song, a duet by two slightly homophobic friends who went to the cinema together to watch a romantic movie and they both wish the other was a girl so they could smooch.

It has Hammer av Saft where the singer, who takes his own life by slitting his wrists, realizes that everything in his life including life itself is a hammer made of lemonade.

It has Huset, a short song about things in a house going missing and replaced with other things due to the activity of invisible guests.

And the most famous, a kind of ballad about a guy walking in a park and being envious of all the couples being romantic and smooching (heldiggrisene = the lucky bastards).

And other great songs too. I know all these by heart and can play them on guitar. We used to drunkenly sing these songs together around the turn of the century.

A couple of years ago, they released a limited run of LPs and I now have Gartnerlosjen's Due framed on a wall in the house.

Gartnerlosjen wouldn't make another album, but this group of friends (or parts of them) continued with other bands with the most famous being Black Debbath, The Cumshots, The Dogs and Thulsa Doom.

[Guybrush]

Here's someone I do think is brilliant, Susanne Sundfør.

She released an album back in 2007 I believe and also played some festivals. She'd be quite shy on stage, playing a piano and just singing her songs, but her talent was undeniable.

Here's a song, Walls, from back then.

Her sound quickly matured, here with the title track from her second album from 2010:

A bit more upbeat, she found international fame with 2015's Ten Love Songs. This is a great track:

After that, she had a tough breakup and, I suspect, a bit of a depression. She has transformed into a more introverted artist and her music has become a little more acoustic and abstract. This change was evident on Music For People in Trouble from 2017.

A few songs here, but they're well worth a listen, especially the last 3 🙂

[Guybrush]

Here's a band I DON'T know, but probably should at least familiarize myself with, Highasakite.

They're big in Norway, possibly also internationally? Have you guys heard? They get played regularly on radio here so I vaguely know what they sound like.

These are their two most played songs that are not collabs with other artists. I recognize the top one from radio.

And this one is their most famous - and I'm posting this live performance from the 2016 Nobel Peace Price event as I kinda liked it 🙂 can't remember hearing this before.

First time I heard them, I kinda thought she has a thick accent and having worked on eliminating my own for most of my life, I just didn't quite gel with the vocals. But I wonder if it hasn't become kinda cool or endearing. It seems more artists are doing this to some extent.. might be their influence on other artists for all I know.

[grindy]

Ulver should be definitely mentioned here. They've done black metal, folk, progessive metal, art pop, synth pop, modern classical, ambient and whatever else.
I don't love everything they did but there's definitely some cool stuff to explore.

Some cool albums:

Black Metal

Trip Hop

Progressive Metal

Synth Pop

Neuclassical ambient pop(?)