Music I Liked From Norway

AURORA

My first exposure to AURORA was her set at KEX, live streamed during Airwaves 2018. The Stavanger native’s Animal fits right in with Sofi Tukker, Sunflower Bean and other infectious pop favorites currently on high rotation in my house.

Pom Poko

An Oslo-based Norwegian art-rock quartet named after a Studio Ghibli movie? Sign me up for Pom Poko’s Birthday.

Alan Walker

Different World is the debut studio album by Norwegian producer Alan Walker (who doesn’t seem to have a web page). It’s a little bit out of my wheelhouse, but my travel companion has been playing with apps to make her own music, and this is her jam. She found this album and shared it with me, so it makes the list.

Abyssic

I guess it’s a little weird to say that funeral doom is my happy place. Abyssic‘s High the Memory has just the right combination of abyssal vocals and soaring keys. To me, this kind of atmospheric is hygge.

1349

To celebrate the opening of the new Munch Museum in Oslo in June 2020, the Museum challenged four Norwegian artists to create music inspired by Edvard Munch’s paintings. Norway being Norway, and Munch being the muse, one of the bands had to be black metal. 1349 chose the painting
Dødskamp, or Death Struggle. It’s pretty accessible as far as black metal goes. Like Munch.

9 grader nord

The name 9 grader nord does not refer to freshman year. It’s a reference to Jaffna in Sri Lanka where the two female band members, sisters Mira and Dipha Thiruchelvam, are from. Together with Jakob Sønnesyn and Jakob Sisselson Hamre, the Bergen-based band make their own brand of “folk” music, with lyrics in Tamil and a free use instruments like bamboo flute and cajón drum, and influenced by musical genres as diverse as flamenco, baila, and jazz. For their challenge, they chose Munch’s The Sick Child.

Here’s another one.