Geir Sundstøl has made a name for himself as an innovative session musician on hundreds of Norwegian and international albums. 2015 saw the release of Furulund, the first self-composed long player from this Master of Strings. Langen Ro, Norwegian Grammy winner Brødløs and St.Hanshaugen Steel, followed soon after.
Now, the stage is set for something quite different. The Studio Intim Sessions, Volume 1, Sundstøl's fifth solo album, has taken a trip on its own, away from the cinematic Nordic noir and genre-crossing soundscapes we know, and ended up somewhere south of the Kattegat.
In the words of Geir Sundstøl:
In the late sixties, my uncle was a restless kid in our hometown of Halden. Just like many young men, he dropped out of school and went to sea. Uncle was particularly good at peeling potatoes, and very soon he got hired on the fruit freighter M / S Kingfisher. He worked aboard the freighter for several years, and he rose through the ranks at a steady pace. The work took him increasingly further south. Among many other missions, the boat carried bananas from Kingston to the ports of Baltimore and Brooklyn.
Sometime in the seventies, when my uncle was no longer a young and pale novice mariner, but an experienced and tanned sailor with an unfathomable gaze, he decided to return to the motherland. He came back to Halden with two large ships chests, in which he had stuffed his two special interests. One was packed with exotic women’s shoes. With this booty, my uncle opened the store Hi Heels!; a business focused solely on selling these items of footwear. The other chest was full of LPs.
When my interest in music awoke a few years later, it was partly because my uncle, on several occasions, had rested his enigmatic gaze on me, and then led me to the ships chest to behold the treasures within. For a long time, merely looking was sufficient. The record sleeves, with their flashy colours, beautiful women with far-out hairdos, and magic mushrooms, was unlike anything I had laid my eyes on.
I inherited all these records when I turned sixteen. There were first pressings by American artists and bands such as Rick Derringer, Allmann Brothers and Jerry Lee Lewis, alongside LPs by the inimitable Frenchman, Serge Gainsbourg. The collection also had several Jamaican records including Lee Perry & The Upsetters, Augustus Pablo, Max Romeo, The Aggrovators and King Tubby. These albums have inspired this new album, The Studio Intim Sessions, Vol.1.
Whenever I make music, I always strive to make something that is me; pure self-expression, my own favourite music, or even better, something I’ve never heard before. I wanted to make a record without too much thinking involved; less head, more heart. This time, I think I succeeded. What my first four albums have in common is that they come from somewhere above the waist. This record, on the other hand, comes from a place below the waist.
I never set out to make a reggae album, and perhaps it’s not. Rather an ambient raga-country reggae-beat record! As always, I’m playing the American pedal steel and the Indian Shankar guitar. On this album, I’m also handling most of the keyboard and bass playing.
The name Studio Intim refers to the fact that, in our humble beginnings, we shared a building with a rather dubious massage parlour. Ever since ’97, we have been making records under this moniker. Thanks to my lack of technical talent, and the recording rooms’ limited acoustics, Studio Intim has its own, distinctive sound.
During a two-month period this winter, I gathered an eclectic group of musicians for Wednesday sessions. We wrote, and recorded, one track each time. Maria Due, Lars Horntveth, Håkon Brunborg, Jarle Berhoft and Hans Hulbækmo were new and rewarding acquaintances. Daniel Sandén Warg, Audun Erlien, Erland Dahlen and Nikolai Hængsle, are old and dear ones.”
1. Gem. Raga Reggae!
2. Dogg. Cover - I like including one on my albums. This time, I tried to record a version of Ornette Colemann’s Lonely Woman. That did not work out. I wrote Dogg instead. The kinship may not be apparent.
3. Snik. This is where I made my debut as a harpist. When The National Opera House moved, I got their large, old, harp.
4. Jekk. Back in 2009, together with folk musician Daniel Sandén Warg, I spent time in India. I studied the Shankar guitar under the guidance of Dr. Kamala Shankar. She is the master of this instrument.
The guitar is played like a western slide guitar/ dobro, but it has resonating strings, just like the Indian sitar and the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. I have used it on all my records. On The Studio Intim Sessions, Vol.1, it’s on all the tracks.
5. C’est vide en ville. At over nine-minutes long, this piece was born in The Underground between Punjab and Paris.
6. Whole. This is the closest I’ve come to making normal music. One could say that it’s inspired by Genesis. Late Genesis.
credits
released September 30, 2022
Musicians:
Geir Sundstøl, Maria Due, Daniel Sandén Warg, Audun Erlien, Nikolai
Hængsle, Håkon Brunborg, Lars Horntveth, Hans Hulbækmo,
Gulzar Butt, Kjell Pop, Jarle Bernhoft, Chimta Raja Abdul, Sofi Jonas, Bashir Rydhem, Erland Dahlen.
Recorded, mixed and produced by Geir Sundstøl at Studio Intim, Oslo.
Digital-to-analog-to-digital transfer: Henning Svoren at Ocean Sound Recordings, Giske.
Daniel was recorded by Kjetil Carolis Jore at KC lydstudio, Valle.
Mastered by Espen Høydalsvik at Oslo:Fuzz.
Photo: Raymond Mosken
Design: Aslak Gurholt (Yokoland)
Released with support from FFUK, Komponistenes
Vederlagsfond, NOPA and FFLB.
Guitarist and instrument collector Geir Sundstøl appeared on over 260 albums as a session player and sideman before he
released his solo debut “Furulund” in 2015. After 27 years as a professional musician he finally took the big step, and was rewarded with glowing reviews and a Norwegian Grammy (Spellemannspris) nomination....more
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Earthy and magisterial, haunting yet familiar in the bones. When the CD arrived, I played it 3x in a row. A fantastic folk album. Tip of the hat to The Guardian for writing about Harr. Otis Nugatory
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