Unmistakably Nordic in flavor, Sofia Talvik somehow still conforms to American interpretations of her own original music, a North Sea siren blending sparkle and melancholy, creating a special niche of folk music.
In the fall of 2012 (gosh it already sounds long ago doesn’t it?!) I did a Salem Songwriter Session when I visited Oregon on my tour. It’s now airing on CCTV all month, but you can also check it out on youtube!
Salem Songwriter Sessions is a new program on CCTV (Salem, OR.). Songwriters have the opportunity to talk about their music and to play several of their songs in a relaxed atmosphere. Host Tom Phillips interviews songwriters about their interests, influences an inspirations.
You can check out the Salem Songwriter Session Facebook page here!
Ho Ho Ho! Earlier this year I played a few shows up in Oregon and did something called the Salem Songwriter Sessions, which is basically a local TV show on CCTV (Salem, OR.) featuring artists playing live with the Salem Songwriter crew!
Sofia Talvik live at the Historic Grand. Photo by Levi Phillips.
I played a concert at the Historic Grand Theatre in Salem, OR earlier this fall and it’s now airing on CCTV all month along with a Salem Songwriter session of my new Christmas single “One Last Wish For Christmas“.
The 30 minute Salem songwriter session with me will be aired in January. Salem Songwriter Sessions is a new program on CCTV (Salem, OR.). Songwriters have the opportunity to talk about their music and to play several of their songs in a relaxed atmosphere. Host Tom Phillips interviews songwriters about their interests, influences an inspirations.
You can check out the Salem Songwriter Session Facebook page here!
[quote] The people in Talvik’s songs are weary, but they’ve also, miraculously, retained the stars in their eyes, those blazing gleams that they’ll be damned if they ever let get rattled or ripped from them. [/quote] – read more…
Sofia Talvik on Daytrotter
My Daytrotter session is released today, and for all of you who asked about which album the Wichita Lineman cover is on, and I’ve said none – here it is! For all of you who asked on which album the Swedish folk song is on – you’ll have to wait a little longer.
I’m super excited to be a part of the Daytrotter tribe and I hope you enjoy my session. Courtesy of Daytrotter you can also grab a free copy (or pay what you want) of my new album The Owls Are Not What They Seem!
For you who are unfamiliar with Daytrotter (shame on you!) here’s a little description on what it’s all about:
Daytrotter is a website for the recording studio Horseshack, which hosts recording sessions with many popular and typically upcoming indie music acts. The sessions can be compared to that of a radio station’s lounge recordings, where musicians passing through the town can record live in the studio. Due to their tendency to offer an eclectic sampling of music, and their production style the sessions have been compared to that of the legendary Peel Sessions. Daytrotter have served more than 21.5 million song downloads. Other noted artists that have been featured on Daytrotter is Bon Iver, Counting Crows, Fleet Foxes Ani DiFranko to mention a few.
Soon the last part of H.A.T.E will be released by Swedish metal band Akribi. We managed to keep them still for a few minutes to ask them some questions about the meaning of life and metal…
Hi Akribi! You guys are doing “E – Part Four of H.A.T.E”. How has the experience been so far? Definitely different. We’re not at all used to interpreting other musician’s materials, nor working with such tight deadlines, but it’s been a very fun and rewarding experience so far.
Great! Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves? We’re a female-fronted progressive metal band based in Gothenburg, Sweden. The band started out back in 2003, based on the idea of playing ambitious metal with strong songwriting. It’s an ideal that has remained intact through countless lineup changes over the years. As a consequence of this, we like to work with a slightly expanded palette of scales, chords and time signatures in our music. Oh, and let’s just get one very common misconception out of the way… “female-fronted” in this case does not mean “gothic” or “operatic”.
Just like Badmouth you’re releasing this EP only a few months after your album release. Are you always this productive? Given the right circumstances, sure. As hinted above, the band has had a bit of a rough history with lineup changes and whatnot. We have begun writing the next album and it’s going surprisingly fast so maybe we’ve learnt a thing or two about efficiency.
Did you think it was hard to interpret Sofia’s songs into your own style or did you get ideas straight away? We decided to transcribe the chords and scales that Sofia used. After we had done that we stopped listening to Sofia’s versions and began working. We sent note sheets with ideas to each other; “Could this be something?”, “Would this passage sound better if we changed scales to Lydian?”, “What happens if we add this chord there?” and so on and then we tried playing the ideas. We changed a lot, added riffs and details to make it more Akribi. It took us about a month and then we recorded it, sent it to our mixing guys in Brazil and voilà.
Which of the songs are you most pleased with and why? It’s difficult to pick a song. It sounds weird but when you live with a song in the intense way that’s required for writing and recording it it sort of becomes your baby. The song we play the most often nowadays is The Garden. The guitar solos are great and Alexander gets to play his Chapman Stick and that always makes him happy. Our songs are usually pretty long and that makes set lists tricky to do so it’s good to have a shorter-than-four-minutes-song up our sleeve.
What’s your favorite gig memory? That must be the first time we were on stage and the audience sang along with our song Carry the Rain. It’s an incredible feeling. But if you’re looking for an awkward anecdote it must be when the guards didn’t let our drummer back into the building after a sound check. He tried to convince them that he was in the band but the guards told him “yeah right, that’s what everybody says”. The rest of us were backstage ready to go on stage not knowing where he was.
Can you tell us a little bit about the recording sessions and what was most fun with being a part of this project? Well, the recording workflow was the same that we always follow. When we’ve written the chord progressions, melodies and overall structure of a song, we record (or in this particular case, program) a drum track and have everyone record their parts individually to that. All recordings are then assembled in a sequencer and a rough pre-mix is done. Feedback is sent out, obscene words are exchanged, and adjustments are made. When everyone is sufficiently satisfied, the tracks are sent away for mixing. The most interesting and fun part of this project was that is was far out of the realm of what we usually do. Apart from on a few auditions, we don’t play or record external material. Oh, and we finally got to put a growling part in a song, courtesy of Rafael Basso of “Unlit Face”.
What’s next on the agenda for Akribi this winter? In October we got a new drummer and we’re in the process of getting to know each other musically and he’s learning all our songs. Parallel to this we’re in contact with booking agents and promoters around Europe. Music is always better live and life on stage is great so we’ll play live as much as possible.
If you would record a Christmas metal album, which three songs would be on your list? Hey, we’re a metal band! We don’t do Christian things 😉
Thanks for hanging out! We look forward to hearing the songs 🙂
