Spurv's debut album. Released on No Forevers Records 11.05.15.
credits
released 11 May 2015
Hans-Jakob Jeremiassen: Bass
Herman Otterlei: Guitar
Gustav Jørgen Pedersen: Guitar
Karl Kristian Støtvig: Guitar
Simon Ljung: Drums
Synøve Knudsen: Violin
Cathy Donnelly: Cello
Drums recorded by Rolf Arne Strandjord
Guitars, bass, additional percussion and strings recorded by Spurv
Mixed by Rolf Arne Strandjord
Mastered by Magnus Lindberg
Skarntyde drawn by Linda K. Røed
Music, arrangement and production by Spurv
Layout and titles by Spurv and Julie Arenthine Leding
Copyright Spurv 2015

The brand new album from acclaimed dream-pop trio Postiljonen.

Flunk是一支syn-pop乐队，来自挪威的奥斯陆。Anja Oyen Vister的凄美主唱、Ulf Nygaad的迷魂Dubby电子曲式、Jo Bakke的简朴吉他，他们做的是Downtempo Electronica的音乐。在以电子民歌手法重玩New order的83年经典Blue Monday之后而一举成名。一点Electronica、一点Shoegaze，加一点New order，这就是挪威flunk的特点.2004年的那张Morning Star，融合了Downtempo的梦幻节拍和Alternative Pop/Rock的流畅旋律，再加上清爽Folk线条的点缀，在众多的北欧女声Downbeat乐团中脱颖而出，成为了首屈一指的团体之一。

Malcolm Dome once said about Venom’s At War With Satan, “It’s the moment Venom reached for the stars. A glorious failure then? That’s very harsh. Just make up your own mind.” In a way, this single is much like At War With Satan. At War With Satan has great songs, no doubt about it, and so does this single. However, something just doesn’t click when listening to either records. You’re listening and thinking, “FUCK YES, CARNAGE!” and you’re headbanging, but it’s just not something you’d listen to seven times a week (or even day…). Maybe Mayhem WERE reaching for the stars, and that’d be no surprise to me. For all his self-proclaimed “Communist” leanings, Euronymous really was quite a greedy business man as far as I can tell, but just like many bands trying to make it big something is missing. Integrity maybe? Who knows, but there is something this record is missing…
That something would be two things, one for each track. When it comes to Carnage, the aggression is missing. Listen to live versions (any Mayhem era) or the versions on the Pure Fucking Armageddon demo and you will hear one thing above all else: absolutely intense, raw aggression. That’s what made the song great in the first place! Here the aggression is lacking, particularly in Dead’s vocals. Now, don’t get me wrong, they’re great on this release, second only to his effort on Dawn of the Black Hearts (or maybe December Moon, but let’s keep this to Mayhem), but it seems Dead is aiming for a more atmospheric effect here. While it sounds cool, everything but his screams of “KILL!” during the first two verses sound out of place. The other element contributing to this lack of aggression is the guitar tone. Again, it’s nice, it’s thick, but where the hell is the screeching solos from the live albums? Not to mention the riff at 2:10, which is normally one of my favourite riffs by Mayhem or any other metal band sounds weaker than it should. I’m trying to headbang while listening to this part right now, and it just isn’t working.
Now Freezing Moon also has something lacking, feel. Dead’s vocals are much more fitting on Freezing Moon, you can see here that Dead’s vocals very much did shape the way Attila performed the song on De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (though Attila really did take a largely different direction on that record of course and I’d like to state that his effort during the last verse of the song is particularly chilling, saving this song from obscurity. So where’s the feel lacking? The solo is the answer to that question. In my opinion, that solo (or should I call it The Solo?) was perfected on De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, where the high notes sounded utter black metal perfection. Here it’s in a more embryonic state and Euronymous seems to have made it a bit more, dare I say it, accessible than the band’s live efforts at the time of the recording. On an interesting side note, listen to the Ha Elm Zalag bootleg and you’ll hear probably one of the earliest recordings of Freezing Moon and the solo is a very much raw and ripping affair (recorded in 1989 if I remember correctly).
So this is the record that could’ve gained Mayhem so much more exposure on a musical basis, but it hasn’t. People of course still fellate this due to its status as Dead’s only studio work with Mayhem, but it’s quite simply poor compared to the band’s other efforts. Not to say it’s bad by any means, but for a band that has produced far more brilliant records (even in the Dead-era, just listen to Dawn of the Black Hearts and Live in Zeitz for raw black metal perfection) this isn’t up to scratch. I’ll give the points for the effort, and for the fact that these really are two brilliant songs, but it just could’ve been so much better.

Highasakite is an indie pop and indie rock band originating from Norway. The band formed when vocalist and songwriter Ingrid Helene Håvik met drummer Trond Bersu whilst studying jazz at the Trondheim Jazz Conservatory. In 2010, after just six months, the duo started working on their debut album. The album All That Floats Will Rain was released in 2012 via Riot Factory in Norway.

It was only last June that art-pop personality Jenny Hval released her fifth album, Apocalypse, Girl. Now, the Norwegian songstress has announced that she’ll release a follow-up called Blood Bitch on September 30 via Sacred Bones.
Hval described the album’s themes in a statement, which you can read in full below.
Blood Bitch is an investigation of blood. Blood that is shed naturally. The purest and most powerful, yet most trivial, and most terrifying blood: Menstruation. The white and red toilet roll chain which ties together the virgins, the whores, the mothers, the witches, the dreamers, and the lovers.
Blood Bitch is also a fictitious story, fed by characters and images from horror and exploitation films of the ’70s. With that language, rather than smart, modern social commentary, I found I could tell a different story about myself and my own time: a poetic diary of modern transience and transcendence.
There is a character in this story that is a vampire Orlando, traveling through time and space. But there is also a story here of a 35-year old artist stuck in a touring loop, and wearing a black wig. She is always up at night, jet lagged, playing late night shows – and by day she is quietly resting over an Arp Odyssey synthesizer while a black van drives her around Europe and America.
So this is my most fictional and most personal album. It’s also the first album where I’ve started reconnecting with the goth and metal scene I started out playing in many years ago, by remembering the drony qualities of Norwegian Black Metal. It’s an album of vampires, lunar cycles, sticky choruses, and the smell of warm leaves and winter.
(VIA SPIN)

Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen is a Norwegian guitarist, vocalist and composer. She is known for a series of album releases and collaborations with musicians like Jon Eberson, Jarle Bernhoft and Hilde Marie Kjersem.

On the new album “Field Day Rituals” the doom piano trio Splashgirl exceeds the high expectations that have been building up since the release of the group’s album “Pressure” in 2011. That album was described as “an instant classic” by Uncut Magazine and “a triumphant artistic exercise” by Jazzwise, and won a place on a number of “year’s best” lists. With its fourth album, “Field Day Rituals”, the group is taking yet another giant step up and forward.
The album is detail-rich, dramatic, full of atmosphere and massive, despite the sometimes viscous and reserved quality of the music. The players themselves describe the music on the album as “lighter and more optimistic than on the previous album”, although the soundscape remains so bass-heavy that the average kitchen radio will be under threat of extinction. Here Splashgirl refines its personal idiom, although at the same time the influences of post-rock, classical music and, not least, jazz are even more apparent this time around. The album was recorded in the course of two intense weeks at Avast Studio in Seattle, USA, together with engineer and producer Randall Dunn (Akron/Family, Black Mountain, Sun City Girls, Boris, Kinski, Sunn O))) and Earth). This recording marks the first time the trio has given a producer the authority to take decisions on behalf of the band. “We found that Randall evoked qualities in the music that we ourselves had overlooked. He has an impressively broad musical perspective, and heard the music from angles that were often totally new for us. He got us to play some of the music as though it were classical jazz, which we haven’t done for a long time. Randall inspired us to take a favourable look at jazz again.” Violist Eyvind Kang (Beck, John Zorn, Marc Ribot) plays on three tracks, and Timothy Mason’s subtle modular synths are a welcome surprise in several places on the album.
Available as CD/DL and in a deluxe 2LP edition (500 copies, gatefold cover, 180g vinyl, 45 rpm)

2003 marks Ulver's 10 years with this remix as part of the celebration. The variety and quality of tracks and artists such as Fennesz, Merzbow, Third Eye Foundation and Neotropic sum up the great impact Ulver has had on metal and tomorrow's music. Jestar.

Crafted Norwegian dreampop artist Ellen A. W. Sunde aka SEA CHANGE has shared some details on her debut album. Breakage is the name of the longplayer which will arrive on February 23 and what you see above is its artwork. Already today Mrs. Sunde presents Above, a first track from it. NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION also did a little ‘Introducing’ Q&A with SEA CHANGE a while back.
The artist on her new single: ”Above’ is about wanting something and just not be able to see what’s good for you. Wanting it more and more even though some part of you know it will end bad. I think everyone has had a relationship like that. Not realising your destructive self, wishing things were different. It is a vulnerable song.’