Nordic Records have another great release with Norwegian’s Synne Sanden and their new EP Swallowed. We found out more about the mysterious and cinematic sounds of the artist.
Where are you from and what are your favourite places to experience there?
SYNNE : I’m from a little place called Treungen in the west of Telemark, Norway. I love the mountains, woods and the water there but my favorite place there is called Jettegrytene. It´s a very special and exotic place to be in the summer where the mountain has a lot of different beautiful shapes made from water and rocks over time.
ØYVIND: I’m from Lillehammer, Norway, and my favorite places in this area is right outside the tent, in the middle of nowhere, looking at the nature and seeing my fishing rod. When it starts smelling coffee, I’m in heaven.
How would you best describe your sound?
Our sound is filmatic, experimental and expressive.
Dark, sore, aggressive, orchestral and massive.
What have you got planned for the year?
SYNNE: Our plan for this year is to release our ep Swallowed the 5th of march and then to start composing and producing another ep together. That ep will be connected to Swallowed, but still different. We will also finish producing my 5th soloalbum, that Øyvind is producing. Øyvind will also score a film, and I will work on some other new projects as well, and maybe start writing another soloalbum. We both have this continuous need and wish to develop and be creative, so I think we will keep ourselves busy.
When can we expect to see you start to play some live music?
SYNNE: That is very hard to say. The pandemic makes the live part hard to plan, and our music is very massive and orchestral, so it’s a challenge to perform live. Maybe we will perform it just the two of us, with a lot of the music played electronically, but we haven’t planned to do this. In an ideal setting we would perform it with a huge orchestra, but that’s not possible in the near future, but hopefully one day. In other words, we don’t know when or where we will play live, but we hope and think that it will happen. Øyvind is a studio musician, making film music and producing in studio, but I play live with my solo project and other projects, so when it’s allowed to play live again, I hope and guess I will do that.
What can we do to help support your music and where do we need to go to do that?
You can help support our music by buying it on iTunes and simply listening to it on Spotify or Tidal. You can also see the music video for Skeleton remix on YouTube. Another way to support our music is by talking about it to people you would recommend it to, and posting about it on instagram where you can tagg us: @synnesanden and @oyvindblikstad. If you post in your instastory with tags we will repost. We would appreciate that a lot! In the future, when we’re done with our second ep we hope to get them both printed on a vinyl. Then we hope you will buy it and listen to the vinyl, if you like the music off course!
Finally, what was the last thing you read, watched, and listened to?
SYNNE: I’m listening to Joni Mitchell right now. When it comes to books the last book I finished was Dum naken (Silly naked) by my friend Ane Barstad Solvang, but these days I´m reading Min Kamp (My fight) 5 of Karl Ove Knausgård. The last thing I watched was a series called Ulven Kommer (The wolf is coming) on NRK, and it was really good. It triggered a lot of strong emotions.
ØYVIND: The last book I read was Hendig Montgomery – Foreldremagi (parental magic) – About how to raise happy kids.
The last film I watched was actually Avatar. Great to see it again. The last music I listened to was a track from Synnes forthcoming Album. Trying to figure out how to solve it.
Don’t forget to follow and listen to our New Nordic Music playlist on Spotify (link below)
Interview by Alex Minnis
