Our personal notes

BO
I met Halvard through a gay dating site, we hit it off, and decided to also form a band together. He gave me the tools to make music and this was probably the singular most important revelation of my life so far. I thought making music wasn't in the cards for me since I didn't play an instrument. Boy was I wrong. I instantly immersed myself in it, composing around the clock like one possessed, and out of hundreds of sketches I finished six tracks for our debut album.

Stereotypes is rich in diversity but both I and Halvard said yes to all, nothing (or very little) seemed impossible to take on. And I didn't believe in manifesting in a singular style anyway, I chose to encompass whatever came into mind after forming in the back of it for so many years. It's a labour of love, for music and inspiration, an unbending statement of who I was at the time and of what had shaped me up until then. Technical know-how took a backseat for the sheer joy of expression for sure even though I never looked at it like that, I just did what I wanted to the best of my abilities.

Our mastering engineer said about his work on Stereotypes that it was like reining in a horse in full throttle. I liked that analogy, and I still do. I wanted it to come across as bold, headstrong, taking cues from everything that had influenced me in the past, touching electronic ground in the now but not least propelling forward. Like in a race, maybe not to win, but to wear itself out. I'm as proud of it now as I was then. To my mind it's still running, a little rough around the edges (that goes for my tracks) but built with and for speed.


HALVARD
A baroque pearl with it's imperfect shape yet beauty has always been my artistic ideal.
Maybe this was in the back of my head when I started penning the songs for Stereotypes.
Having a background in industrial techno, experimental noise/metal music I gave myself a personal challenge to create music from a pop perspective.
Why pop? A lot of factors played a part in this. Growing up with a sister 14 years older than me who was obsessed with 60's pop music sure had its impact on me. During the 80's and 90's I had done my fair share of screaming with my band Sadomaoistan and my affection for electronic and dance music had just grown stronger over the years.
The most important factor was that I now had a boyfriend who happened to be seriously into music and had a stellar taste in music. Our life was like a ping pong match played with melodies, beats and records. I found myself in a constant flow of new musical impressions and Bo exposed me to artists I hadn't been exposed to or paid any attention to. Exploring the electroclash genre also became a huge inspiration and bands like Adult., Ladytron and The Knife was a breath of fresh air. They were all like candy coated razor blades. Weird, wild, full of surprises and all wonderfully melodic.

Writing for the album was as always a conflicting process for me and a constant roller coaster between writers block and outburst of creativity. A track like The Machines Are Rocking was written in hours while other tracks were meticulously crafted, torn apart, rebuilt, re-envisioned, deleted and restored. Mon Coeur is one of them and it exists in at least 3 radically different versions. The only constant in this track was my muse, the legendary actress Sossen Krohg who the age of 80 made her recording debut with us.
Coming from a tiny fishing village at the edge of the world with 900 people and finding myself in the studio with this queen of norwegian notoriety almost made me burst with pride and joy.... It did then and it still does!

But did I manage to make pop? Yesno! It was exciting for me to challenge the genres and for the first time in my life I found myself writing melodies instead of soundscapes and beats.

The years have passed and Stereotypes has been unavailable for a long time and never had a proper digital release.
Now it is re-emerging in its first digital form and will start its journey into the digital universe.
It's been refreshing to revisit the album and those two music lovers who happened to be us.