#nordwave

[synthjam]

Nord Wave 2 #synthjam #synth #nord @nordkeyboards #nordwave #nordwave2 #fm #sample #virtualanalog #red #sweden #live #studio #namm #wnamm #namm2020 #wnamm2020 https://www.instagram.com/p/B7QY-4zB3pd/?igshid=r1t5h9yar1rd

[fedconti]

“If things don't come easy to you, you have to pull a #rabbit out of a hat” (qt S. Coogan) . . . . . #PROGedia #randsrecords #nordkeyboards #nordwave #prophet #producerlife #studiorecording #musicproducer (at Fantasy World) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTru6HsDPn3/?utm_medium=tumblr

[bitebitsmusic]

HILLS art by unknown / music by @bbbbitebits . Quick one for sake of keeping busy and working on stuff. Can’t seem to find who made this awesome gif, let me know if you’re it. @elektron Octatrack beat, @makenoise DPO sample I had laying around and some @nordkeyboards Wave loaded up with a Whimsical Raps Mangrove eurorack module sample featured on this one minute soundtrack. Hope you like it . . #gif #gifart #computergames #synthwave #mountains #hills #flying #idm #electronicmusic #electronica #elektron #octatrack #modularsynth #eurorack #whimsical #mangrove #nord #nordwave (at Utrecht, Netherlands)

[arbitrarygreay]

Sorry, but I honestly would rather watch The Bandman play this live than the girls. (even if grumblemumblegrumble the trumpet part of the the brass wasn't too good) LOL that synth solo. One of my favorite things about this corner is how all parties involved crack themselves up with how awesome they are. They have just as much fun playing and being impressed by good music as we do! (Now, if we can just have a song where Daisuki Kawai and Wata-boo have a riff battle...) Also, Jump Man's shoes are awesome, can I have a pair

[sinceileftyoublog]

Hedvig Mollestad Interview: Move Inside the Weather

Photo by Francesco Saggio

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Tempest Revisited (Rune Grammofon), the upcoming album from Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad, is all about moments in time. For one, the music itself was composed as part of a commission to celebrate the 20th anniversary of cultural house Parken in 2018. (When Parken opened in 1998, legendary composer Arne Nordheim debuted The Tempest; Mollestad’s new album is a self-described “bookend” to The Tempest.) The album, one the other hand, was recorded in 2019, and in the recording process, Mollestad wished to revisit the past, namely the winter storms of Ålesund, where she was born (and home to Parken). Opener “Sun On A Dark Sky” opens with reeds, rumbling percussion, and distorted voices, the unease of an approaching storm that belies gently moody guitar and tenor sax. The threats of bad weather are mirrored by wavering vibraphone, bluesy guitar riffing, and speedy nordwave and drums. “Winds Approaching” sways like gusts, with a two-note mirrored saxophone and guitar riff, and ends with some serious shredding. The funky “Kittywakes In Gusts” recalls the way birds play in the wind. “418 (stairs in storms)”, named after the number of stairs you have to climb to get to a scenic overlook in Ålesund, like the first two tracks on the album, begins unassumingly, trickling guitars, warm reeds, and tapping drums, but builds up to prickly blues riffing. 

Over a Zoom conversation last month, Mollestad told me about the topography of Ålesund and how she attempted to have the instrumentation of the album correspond to different natural elements. She also talked about where Tempest Revisited fits within her discography and songwriting tendencies and playing the songs live. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: Did you go into Tempest Revisited intending for it to be a bookend to Arne Nordheim’s The Tempest?

Hedvig Mollestad: I don’t know if this is a regional thing, but in Norway, it’s very common for cultural houses, festivals, or big organizers to invite composers or musicians to do commissioned pieces of music for celebrations and anniversaries. This was one of those things. Where I grew up, there is a cultural house, Parken, and they were celebrating twenty years. Their manager contacted me and asked me if I wanted to do 1 of 4 commissions, one for each season: spring, summer, autumn, and winter storms. None of the other commissions came through, so I was the only one left. That was the winter storms idea. This manager, I went to school with him when I was a kid, so we know each other quite well and had a lot of conversations on how this should be. This culture house is not very commercial, but it’s very beautiful. It’s in this city center, close to a mountain. For him, he wanted to connect this commission to the culture house and winter storms and the city of Ålesund where I grew up.

When we started to converse more about it, I wanted to embrace my kind of weather and Ålesund and storm I lived through when I grew up there. I thought a lot about the philosophical aspect of it before making the music.

SILY: The songs on here sound like they have intentional moods and correspondence to natural elements. Can you talk more specifically about how you came up with those correspondences?

HM: This is not program music. You’re not supposed to hear whatever the title refers to. But as a composer, it’s a privilege to put a name for the piece. What I was thinking when I was making this whole piece was the view from where I grew up. I can see straight west, and to the left, it’s a big long mountain. When a storm is approaching, I can see it 20 minutes before it hits the place where I’m at. “Sun on a Dark Sky” is when the sun is still with me, but I can see what’s coming in the horizon. That was trying to embrace the light, the shadows, the contrast between the warmth of the sun and what I see from the west. I wanted to move inside the weather aspect of it.

"Winds Approaching” was more light and not so meditative. It was supposed to be “winds approaching, but nothing severe.” The birds are playing on the wing. I wanted it to be light and anticipating what was about to come. What is crucial to note here is it was written in 2018, more than one year before I wrote Ekhidna. It was earlier in my composing career. In this music, I can hear a lot of the ideas that come out later in a monstrous way. I can hear that I’m working on ideas on a more basic level. I’m going back to the root of working with the reeds and trying to make them sound good together and not going crazy loud rock guitar. I’m trying to pinpoint something else.

[With] “Kittywakes In Gusts”, I wanted to have this fun-to-play jazz/blues theme in the middle of the commissioned work, because I knew the players that were going to play. Just something more rock-ish and straight. It’s fun to watch the kittywakes play in the gusts. It’s kind of artistic.

We turn into the “418″, which in the middle of the city where the cultural house is, there’s a viewpoint all the tourists are brought to by bus. My grandparents used to live by this city mountain. It’s so great because you can walk there from the city centers, but then you have to do 418 stairs. When I was a kid, there was rough weather--nothing like the hurricanes in your country--but the power went, and the roofs were flying, the trees were breaking, and I was thinking when I wrote this, to humans, the weather is something that can kill you and devastate, but to this mountain that’s been there for however long, it’s just very, very quiet or subtle. I was trying to think of the storm from the mountain’s point of view.

SILY: It’s increasingly relevant these days with climate change, as weather related disasters affect more people, but from the standpoint of nature, it is what it is.

HM: There’s no value to it. It’s not good or evil; it’s just happening. Everything with life happens without a sense of meaning unless we humans put [meaning] in it.

SILY: Did you try for certain instruments to correspond to specific aspects of weather?

HM: The saxophones were kind of free, but I was very into the timpani together with the flute. That was the closest I could get to capturing the visceral darkness and the streams from the sun cutting through everything. That was the instrumentation idea and important for me to keep as an opening and a closing to the album. For the reeds, I just wanted them to be together like the birds that work together as they fly together.

There is a piece that didn’t make it to the record that was quite fun, in the middle of this, a solo part for Ivar [loe Bjørnstad], the drummer. It was called [in English] ”Ivar is tying up all the garden furniture”. He was getting on this big percussion kit. It was fun having him do that in the middle of this piece, but unfortunately, it didn’t make it in the record.

SILY: You mentioned wanting to stray from rock and roll guitar, but there are still some places on here where they show up, like on the end of “Sun on a Dark Sky” and “Winds Approaching”. “Kittywakes” and “High Hair” are these funky stomps. To what extent were you trying to make something raw and fun with those last two tracks?

HM: “Kittywakes” is a little rockish, but playing it was a big difference playing with the reeds as opposed to just the basic drum and bass. When you play it acoustically, whether live or in the studio, you have to relate to them. I couldn’t play as loud as I wanted because it would fuck up the dynamics of how you could listen on stage. I think it’s important within a band to relay to each other what you can do decibel-wise. You have to be polite. You have to level onto each other. They had to play stronger and more powerfully, and I had to ease a little up. So in my hearing, even though it’s full tilt, I think “High Hair” was the one song where I really thought I wanted to do the things I usually do that I love the most. It was that intention that everybody was going to let loose and finish this off in a manner that’s expected. That’s what I love to do at the end of a set. It was very natural to finish it off and get us as close as possible to this stormy climax.

SILY: How often do you visit where you grew up?

HM: I have two children now, so they’re very much the reasons I go back, so they can visit their grandparents. I’m there about 4 times a year with them. I regularly play there. I was probably there a couple months ago.

SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art for this record?

HM: The cover art on all Rune Grammofon records are made by one artist, Kim Hiorthøy. Since I’ve released records there, I’ve always felt the artwork is important. All the records I’ve been listening to since childhood and that I still love, the artwork is very important. I’ve always wanted him to do photos on my records, which is what he’s done, but this time, he wanted to put something on top of my face to do something other than what we had been doing. When we tried to do this session, I was lying on a bench, and he put very many things on top of me. Bananas, clay, so many different things just to see how it worked. He dropped these shiny pearls on me and moved them around a little bit. Two of them were on my eyes when he took the picture. He [had] the artistic freedom to take it. I didn’t see any of the other [photos]. I thought it was really mystic, cool, and freaky, because as I’m lying down, I think the expression in [my] face was weird. I think it’s pretty scary.

SILY: Have you played these tracks live before?

HM: We played [them] in 2018 when it was first finished for the actual anniversary of the cultural house. I also played a couple of these tracks with the [Hedvig Mollestad] Trio. We brought in saxophone players as part of the Trio show; we played “High Hare” and “Kittywakes” and had horn players for a big ending to a special show. As a big ensemble, it’s been hard to make a whole tour of it. Ekhidna is still touring. We’re doing one release show here in Oslo. It looks like there might be some touring next year.

SILY: What else are you working on and do you have coming up?

HM: Last year, I was writing a big commission work for 12 musicians, the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. I finished it last year. It’s called Maternity Beat, and we just finished recording it in the studios in Norway. We’re mixing it in a couple weeks and it will be released next autumn, because it takes so long for the vinyl to press these days. I’m really excited about it.

SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

HM: I’ve been reading two books that have made a big impression on me. They’re both Norwegian writers. Dag Hoel’s Fred er ei det beste, which is about the ammunition production in Norway. Norway produces a lot of war materials. It made such an impression on me, especially when I was about to record Maternity Beat. There’s another one called Liv by a professor named Dag O. Hessen. It’s about the meaning of life, but in a very entertaining way.

I just read George Orwell’s 1984 too, which I hadn’t read before. I knew what it was going to be about and what was going to happen, but I still felt nauseous at the end of it. It’s absolutely fascinating and very relevant, especially after I read the book on Norwegian ammunition about how we ignore things that matter because we just care about having the easiest way of living.

[whatgear-blog]

@seismal_d sound starship control room... #nordwave #synthporn #synthesizer (à Hypnos Studio) https://www.instagram.com/p/BoJI4zTHT-Q/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=m7rn5coli6zy

[bitebits-blog]

GROWTH art by @petergodshall / music by bark . . . #gif #gifart #electronic #electronica #soundtrack #sounddesign #idm #oddmeter #ableton #ableton10 #moog #sub37 #norddrum #nordwave #elektron #analogfour #livedrumming #drums #modularsynth #eurorack #clap #morecowbell #houdini (at Utrecht, Netherlands)

[waaacollective]

The secret sauce in the magic mug. Let's see what the muse brings today! #musicproduction #coffee #moog #zoomh4n #focusrite #ableton #nordwave

[unwelcome-ozian]

hello! hope this question finds you in good health. are there any government/military-affiliated white supremacist/neo-nazi groups in the orlando area from the years 2000-2005 or later? thank you =D

TW white supremacist groups/hate groups

For 2000-2005

Orlando: American Front; National Socialist Movement; The Kinist Institute; National Vanguard; Nationalist Coalition; NationalAlliance; Stormfront; The Creativity Movement (formerly World Church of the Creator); Aryan Nations; and Nordwave.

Unknown locality: Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; Women for Aryan Unity

White supremacists have been in the military and government agencies since the beginning.

Here’s a document regarding that concern. White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel since 9/11

If you want more information please let me know.

Oz

[hoshinega]

I just started my YouTube channel!!

hoshinega☆; （作曲／編曲家／サウンドデザイナー） 作曲編曲家 “秋田博之” の一人ユニット エレクトロニックミュージックにオーガニック楽器、ヒーリング楽器などを取り入れた音楽を制作。 テーマは森や自然のある環境で鳴っていても調和する音楽。

[bitebitsmusic]

LEAF art by @joe_ryba / music by bitebits Thank you all for voting and your support. Special shoutout to all Redditeers! . . . #gif #gifart #waltz #sounddesign #electronica #groove #idm #soundtrack #moog #sub37 #fender #rhodes #elektron #analogfour #norddrum #nordwave #drumming #ableton (at Utrecht, Netherlands)

[theforbin]

Something about keyboards I can't get enough of #nordwave #synth

[aaronkraten]

If you come over don't stay.

[stephan-lostindesire]

September - Songwriting in Seclusion

By September I firmly thought that the production of our album would be complete and was proven wrong. Still, we organized a week of songwriting in seclusion somewhere in Burgenland, Austria, with nothing but food, wine and a ton of instruments. It was the first time ever we did something like that. Until then I basically had written all songs by myself and we started rehearsing after I thought they were finished. Now we were jamming and developing ideas from the scratch together. One of us would start playing a riff, and the others just tuned in playing whatever came to their mind…

I had no idea if this would work at all, so I was quite a bit nervous at first, but I can assure you, there was so reason to be. In just a few days we recorded 10 demos where I'm certain that at least half of them will become new LiD songs. Amazing. 

[bitebits-blog]

SLICE art by @joe_ryba / music by bark) Now off working on LEAF 🍁, which is also by @joe_ryba. And that’s one strange coincidence… . . . #gif #gifart #cube #slices #sounddesign #electronica #triphop #idm #soundtrack #moog #sub37 #elektron #analogfour #norddrum #nordwave #jazzbass #ableton (at Utrecht, Netherlands)

[waaacollective]

Back in the home studio. With my @themangoalley mug and obligatory Apollo mission Earth image :) #weareallastronauts #moog #minitaur #nordwave #apc40 #focusrite #ableton #studio #prisma #ambient