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This is the first solo release for Norway's singer/songwriter Hilde Marie Kjersem. Kjersem was born and brought up in the northwest coastal town of Ålesund, with seven brothers and sisters and a father with a passion for science fiction and Kenny Rogers. Like many of her young contemporaries in Norway, she studied at the Music Conservatory. She has released two albums, Red Shoes Diary (2004) with her now-disbanded TUB Quartet and Twelve O'Clock Tales (2005), a duo album of standards with jazz guitarist Jon Eberson. The last couple of years, she has worked on A Killer For That Ache, the first proper album under her own name. Far from being a jazz album or your typical melancholy Nordic singer-songwriter album, Kjersem names some of her inspirations to be David Lynch, Roger Rabbit, Finn Graff (legendary Norwegian newspaper illustrator), Danny Elfman, Robert Wyatt, José Saramago, Kate Bush and Tim Burton. With her present band, including Shining main-man Jørgen Munkeby, she has delivered some stunning performances that have been extremely well-received in the Norwegian press. A Killer For That Ache can be called a concept album of sorts, in the way that Kjersem sets out to critique the media by stepping into various disguises and characters using comments, facts, lies, repetitions, assumptions, exaggerations, humor, irony and absurd observations on things that might have happened, things that never happened and things that never will. Not surprisingly, the result is an eclectic selection of songs that are completely indescribable. Let us just say it is pop music with many twists, making it a dramatic, beautiful, mysterious, seductive, intricate, fascinating and unique musical ride. Hilde Marie Kjersem (vocals, keyboards, autoharp), Jørgen Munkeby (saxophones, clarinets, flute, guitar, vocals), Torbjørn Folke Zetterberg (bass, guitars, banjo, Moog, Rhodes, vocals), Sjur Miljeteig (trumpet, vocals), Peder Kjellsby (drums, percussion, piano).
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