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01. THE WHITE BIRCH - Air
02. THE WHITE BIRCH - Breathe
03. THE WHITE BIRCH - Silly Malone
04. THE WHITE BIRCH - Love Is So Real
05. THE WHITE BIRCH - Beauty King
06. THE WHITE BIRCH - Star
07. THE WHITE BIRCH - Riot
08. THE WHITE BIRCH - Donau Moves
09. THE WHITE BIRCH - Glow
10. THE WHITE BIRCH - Atlantis
ARTIST
TITLE
Star Is Just a Sun
FORMAT
LP+CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
GR 854LP GR 854LP
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
12/11/2015

LP version. Includes CD. First vinyl edition. Rodge played keyboards and bass in The White Birch. Together with Hans Christian Almendingen and Ola Fløttum he released four albums and one EP between 1996 and 2005. After that the band disappeared, until Fløttum returned with the album The Weight of Spring in 2015 (GR 830CD/LP). Thirteen years before, The White Birch released its masterpiece, Star Is Just a Sun, on Glitterhouse Records. Keyboard spaces, piano melodies, soundscapes, a slow pulsating bass, and quiet drums, with Fløttum's warm, high voice adding even more gentle textures. The White Birch are from Oslo, Norway, and were musical comrades to Savoy Grand. It was the second wave of slowcore. Unlike their British label-mates from Nottingham, The White Birch spread out a warm carpet, on one side depressingly heavy and on the other gentle. Their sound was painted in a dark, blurry yellow, like falling leaves in autumn. Maybe Star Is Just a Sun could only have emerged in that period. A monument to silence. At that time print media was the gatekeeper to most music aficionados. It was word of mouth -- and occasionally blogs -- that spread the news of the existence of this new band. They brought pop into slowness. Like Mark Hollis's masterpiece The Colour of Spring (1986), Slint's Spiderland (1991), Codeine's Frigid Stars LP (1990), or even Savoy Grand's Burn the Furniture (2002), Star Is Just a Sun stands the test of time. A painting without darkness can't be warm and beautiful. Remastered from the original tapes by Helge Sten (Supersilent, Motorpsycho, Nils Petter Molvær).