ARTiST: Silje Nes
ALBUM: Ames Room
BiTRATE: 172kbps avg
QUALiTY: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.97 Final / -V2 --vbr-new / 44.100Khz
LABEL: Fat Cat
GENRE: Indie
SiZE: 55.46 megs
PLAYTiME: 0h 42min 27sec total
RiP DATE: 2007-11-14
STORE DATE: 2007-12-03
Track List:
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01. Over All 2:13
02. Drown 2:29
03. Shapes, Electric 3:36
04. Ames Room 2:19
05. Giant Disguise 4:12
06. Dizzy Street 3:51
07. Long Shadows Left Around 2:12
08. Bright Night Morning 3:48
09. Recurring Dream 3:43
10. Searching, White 1:46
11. Magnetic Moments Of Spinning 2:59
Objects
12. Melt 2:43
13. Escape 3:08
14. No Bird Can 3:28
Release Notes:
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We first became aware of Norwegian singer-songwriter / multi-instrumentalist
Silje Nes through a unique and utterly charming demo we received out of the blue
in 2005. Intrigued and enchanted by the quirkily sprawling mixture of
instruments, electronics and sweet vocals, we have been regularly talking with
her since, with Silje working on and submitting new tracks and slowly piecing
this debut album together. Boldly Inventive and broad-visioned, æAmes RoomÆ
announces the emergence of a hugely talented and distinctive young artist. With
the sole exception of the opening track - written and recorded with Kristian
Stockhaus from Ungdomskulen - the entirety of the album is SiljeÆs own work and
sounds like someone clearly reveling in the act of creation.
Entirely home-recorded, the album gathers together material created between
Autumn 2004 and Summer 2007. Attesting to the primacy of the recording process,
the songs were actually written as they were recorded. Silje notes the
importance of this presence that comes from recording spontaneously, with all
its imperfections. ôItÆs the recording that I enjoy, and I canÆt separate that
from the songwriting.ö Whilst the early recordings were largely instrumental
(often wordlessly using her voice as an extra instrument) and more heavily
electronic, over the past year her lyrics and vocal have come increasingly to
the fore, as has the use of guitar and drums. Gentle and wispily imbuing songs
with an almost childlike sense of wonder and awe, SiljeÆs voice is breathy and
beautifully measured, calmly sitting at the centre of the webs she spins like
some playful, benevolent animating spirit.
Whilst creating a sound-world entirely her own, æAmes RoomÆ shows a similar
single-mindedness and (autodidactic) adventurousness to fellow peers like Tujiko
Noriko, Islaja, Lau Nau, Eglantine Gouzy, Foehn, or Leila Arab, also sharing
something of the homespun, sprawling beauty of the likes of The Pastels, Pram,
or Crescent. Beautifully pieced together, tracks unfurl like a series of
intricate constructions, or like some kind of strange blown-up world of insects
or curious creatures - the whole teeming with life and a great sense of fun.
Broad ranging and full of character, the album moves from languid dream-pop to
stomping, upbeat tracks, to more introspective or abstract numbers. With
sparkling melodies at times exuding a music-box sweetness, spindly electronics -
barbed, bubbling, and tinkling - weave around a vast array of instruments
including cello, electronics, drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, recorder,
glockenspiel, xylophone, melodica, and trumpet, as well as percussion played on
all manner of found objects. Playful rhythms increasingly accumulate, with
machine programming cohering alongside layered live syncopations.
Silje grew up in the tiny town of Leikanger, in Sognefjord, the largest fjord in
Norway, before moving to the rainy, larger town of Bergen in 2000. She began
making her own music in 2001, recording on 4-track demo software through a tiny
inbuilt microphone on a laptop. Though sheÆd previously studied classical piano,
when she started recording she decided to do so with guitars and instruments on
which she had no previous experience of playing. Simply guided by finding sounds
she loved and the excitement of discovering new instruments without learned
conventions, she made use of whatever equipment she could get hold of - guitars
and an old synth, a cello, a drum kit, a laptop, as well as loop pedals to build
layers of her own playing. Little by little she also found ways of including her
own voice in the mix, both as texture and song, and her music has organically
evolved from there. Although she made a successful live debut outside of Norway
with a set at FatCatÆs æOpen CircuitÆ festival in Belgium in February this year,
during this period Silje has played her songs for just a very few people
locally.
At that Belgian show, she did everything herself and it was mesmerizing to watch
- gradually building loops on a loop-station through guitar picking, singing,
playing a drum kit and other percussion (tambourine, glass bottle, etc) and a
xylophone, sometimes being accompanied by a little robot that was beating a kick
drum.