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viewing 1 To 6 of 6 items
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SONATA 666CD
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For Susanna, nothing happens in a vacuum. Every creative act responds to what's come before. And by exploring this dialogue, you can learn new things about ourselves and the world. This idea has inspired the Norwegian artist throughout her near two-decade career. It's behind her unforgettable covers of classic songs and her interpretations of the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch. And it found its purest expression on 2020's Baudelaire & Piano, a stripped-back song cycle setting texts from the 19th century French poet's "The Flowers of Evil". In Elevation, its follow-up, Susanna's engagement with Baudelaire's work blossoms into a collaborative enterprise, combining tape, spoken word, and song. The result is a unique musical conversation spanning centuries and disciplines; a "time travelling" project, as Susanna puts it, that moves between creative dimensions. She brings collaborators back into the process, nurturing connections made over a series of Baudelaire & Piano live shows presented in 2020 and 2021. Composer improviser Delphine Dora offers teasing renditions of the original French texts, layering spoken recitation and otherworldly singing in a set of atmospheric vignettes. And tape recorder soundscapes from Stina Stjern -- familiar from Susanna's Hieronymous Bosch project Garden of Earthly Delights (2019) -- frame the album with hiss, hum, and soft fingers of melody, like mist settling on a landscape. These contributions deepen the album's mystery and its evocative power. The result is an engrossing interleaving of sounds and registers; and, as Susanna describes it, "an intuitive and collective ceremony of the ethereal and mystical in life." Elevation features work by American occultist artist Cameron (1922-1995), an adherent of Aleister Crowley's Thelema movement. Her illustrations "Witch Woman", "Pan", and "Danse" adorn the release.
Oslo-based artist Susanna has released music as Susanna and the Magical Orchestra and "just" Susanna since 2004, through labels like Rune Grammofon, ECM Records, and her own outlet SusannaSonata. She has collaborated with artists like Jenny Hval, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and John Paul Jones, highly active with different projects, songwriting/composing, and making personal interpretations of other people's songs.
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LP
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SONATA 666LP
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LP version. 180 gram clear vinyl. For Susanna, nothing happens in a vacuum. Every creative act responds to what's come before. And by exploring this dialogue, you can learn new things about ourselves and the world. This idea has inspired the Norwegian artist throughout her near two-decade career. It's behind her unforgettable covers of classic songs and her interpretations of the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch. And it found its purest expression on 2020's Baudelaire & Piano, a stripped-back song cycle setting texts from the 19th century French poet's "The Flowers of Evil". In Elevation, its follow-up, Susanna's engagement with Baudelaire's work blossoms into a collaborative enterprise, combining tape, spoken word, and song. The result is a unique musical conversation spanning centuries and disciplines; a "time travelling" project, as Susanna puts it, that moves between creative dimensions. She brings collaborators back into the process, nurturing connections made over a series of Baudelaire & Piano live shows presented in 2020 and 2021. Composer improviser Delphine Dora offers teasing renditions of the original French texts, layering spoken recitation and otherworldly singing in a set of atmospheric vignettes. And tape recorder soundscapes from Stina Stjern -- familiar from Susanna's Hieronymous Bosch project Garden of Earthly Delights (2019) -- frame the album with hiss, hum, and soft fingers of melody, like mist settling on a landscape. These contributions deepen the album's mystery and its evocative power. The result is an engrossing interleaving of sounds and registers; and, as Susanna describes it, "an intuitive and collective ceremony of the ethereal and mystical in life." Elevation features work by American occultist artist Cameron (1922-1995), an adherent of Aleister Crowley's Thelema movement. Her illustrations "Witch Woman", "Pan", and "Danse" adorn the release.
Oslo-based artist Susanna has released music as Susanna and the Magical Orchestra and "just" Susanna since 2004, through labels like Rune Grammofon, ECM Records, and her own outlet SusannaSonata. She has collaborated with artists like Jenny Hval, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and John Paul Jones, highly active with different projects, songwriting/composing, and making personal interpretations of other people's songs.
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CD
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SONATA 014CD
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What happens if you bring together two of Norway's most special voices, both in terms of songwriting, performance and presence in music? How will it work to merge two creative worlds into one beast? These were questions Norwegian artists Jenny Hval and Susanna were curious to find answers to. "It felt like an adventure to open the door to Jenny's universe -- to invite her into my space, and to be a part of hers." Susanna says. The composing of the music and lyrics for the festival Ladyfest in 2009, turned out to be an exciting exchange of ideas, images and resonance of two very different voices. An exploration in how to melt together and how to cultivate each other's strengths. The result became some sort of a modern fable about human mind and body combined with the mystery of nature, where a black lake both threatens and comforts, a feast of beautiful melodies and harmonies to be interrupted by expanding noise and reverb. We meet lust and fear and pondering, milk running down the bones, apples dreaming, and calling of divinities for the truth. Inspired by the bestiaries, the surreal architecture of Antoni Gaudi and Maya Deren's experimental film Meshes of the Afternoon from 1943, the two artists explored the contrasts in a material drifting in and out of both a sparse shimmering, and a loud, violent-sounding landscape. A pallet of instruments like grand piano, guitar, electric harmonium, effects and electronics, prepared piano and percussion mixed with a mesh of voices, became this moving and groundbreaking new music.
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LP+CD
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SONATA 010LP
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Minibus Pimps is a duo featuring the legendary John Paul Jones -- former bassist in Led Zeppelin -- and prolific electronic musician, improviser, and producer Helge Sten (Deathprod, Supersilent), which has existed since its first performance in 2011. The debut album Cloud to Ground contains seven tracks, all recorded live at different venues, from London's Café Oto to venues in Norway and Denmark. The secret of Minibus Pimps' colossal sonic gas giants is their use of the Kyma computer system (created by Symbolic Sound). Instruments such as guitar, bass and violin are fed into the system and radically transformed by self-designed digital instruments and processors until their sources are barely recognizable. This method continues John Paul Jones' experiments with computer music which began as far back as the late '70s. With titles referencing what scientists call "remarkable luminous phenomena in nature," the tracks are scintillating exercises in bending timbres and refracting sound signals. "Black Aurora" is an electronic suite in four movements, pulsing and hovering like some collapsing dark star. The title-track is a monstrous duet for icicles and cathedral organ, and the other pieces are masses of sound and noise explored in different densities. John Paul Jones played as a session musician with Donovan, Herman's Hermits, Jeff Beck, Françoise Hardy, and many others until co-founding Led Zeppelin with Jimmy Page. He has collaborated or produced a range of artists including Diamanda Galás, R.E.M., Foo Fighters, Peter Gabriel, Paul McCartney, and many more. His most recent group is Them Crooked Vultures. Helge Sten has been making electronic music since the early '90s, both under the name Deathprod and, since 1997, as a member of the improvising group Supersilent. One of Norway's most innovative and uncompromising artists, his "audio virus" has spread across the music of many collaborators including Motorpsycho, Susanna, Biosphere, and more.
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CD
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SONATA 008CD
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Barely one year after the Rune Grammofon-release of critically-acclaimed Wild Dog (SONATA 004LP), Susanna returns with a new album, released on her own label SusannaSonata. Susanna is known for both her own songwriting, with songs such as "Believer" and her huge range of highly personal interpretations of other people's songs. She is an intensely arresting performer; holding audiences captive with her hypnotizing vocal timbre and the powerful, all-consuming sound of her band, her concerts are truly magical. Active for more than a decade, through eight albums so far as Susanna And The Magical Orchestra/Susanna/Susanna Wallumrød, the Oslo-based artist has recently been taking great steps towards greater independence and autonomy, while increasing the range of her considerable talents as a songwriter, vocal interpreter and producer. Combining the antique notes of the Baroque theorbo, woodwinds and strings, and Susanna's sparse piano, The Forester -- a co-production with the Norwegian Ensemble neoN -- features Susanna's strongest songwriting to date. The Forester began to take shape when composers Julian Skar and Jan Martin Smørdal requested some material from her to arrange for the Norwegian contemporary music group Ensemble neoN. Picking from new tracks and several already released songs, the composers made new arrangements suited to the eight-piece group, and extended the title-track into a 15-minute, three-part suite in which dark woods shroud a wanderer in a symbolic landscape of searching and loss. Being lost, or deliberately straying from the chosen path, are recurring themes on The Forester, whose subject matter ranges from disturbing natural environments to alien visitors, painted on an eerily exquisite canvas that recalls Mark Hollis, Tim Buckley, Kate Bush and Claude Debussy, while remaining uniquely Susanna's soundworld. Recorded entirely live in one single, emotionally-intense day at Oslo's legendary Rainbow Studio, produced by Deathprod and Susanna and engineered by Jan Erik Kongshaug.
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LP
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SONATA 004LP
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180 gram vinyl version. Wild Dog is Susanna's eighth album, including three with Susanna And The Magical Orchestra, her "Norwegian" album Jeg Vil Hjem Til Menneskene (GRCD 4337CD) and the ECM album with Giovanna Pessi. That is effectively one album a year of quality releases since her debut in 2004, indeed, a very rare treat these days. Possibly best-known for her unique and striking interpretations of iconic songs like "Jolene," "Hallelujah" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart," she has also proven herself as an original songwriter with a strong signature. Bonnie "Prince" Billy has performed and recorded her songs and MOJO named her song "Believer" as "one of the greatest break-up songs ever." The ten originals on Wild Dog are darker, wilder and more intensely seductive than ever. Susanna has assembled some prominent guests on the album with Emmett Kelly from Bonnie "Prince" Billy's band and Jeremy Gara from Arcade Fire appearing on all ten tracks while Shahzad Ismaily is credited on seven tracks and Norwegian Jo Berger Myhre on two. Co-producer Helge Sten (Deathprod) is typically credited with "space and beyond" on one track while The Sheriffs Of Nothingness (Ole Henrik Moe and Kari Rønnekleiv) do their thing on another track. Recorded at legendary Atlantis Studio in Stockholm, Ocean Sound Recordings in Giske and Audio Virus Lab in Oslo, this is yet another superbly-recorded and produced album, all overseen by Helge Sten. First release on the new SusannaSonata label.
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