Susanna & Ensemble neoN — The Forester (2013)

 

   ^{Susanna & Ensemble neoN — The Forester}
♦♦   Norwegian singer/pianist with a unique blend of atmospheric jazz, rock, and electronica. Singing, playing, composing music... have released nine albums as Susanna/Susanna and the Magical Orchestra/Susanna Wallumrød. 
Born in 1979
Location: Oslo, Norway
Album release: 25 November, 2013
Recording date: February, 2012
Record Label: Susanna Sonata
Duration:     33:34
Tracks:
1. The Forester I, II & III     15:38
2. Hangout     5:08
3. Oh, I Am Stuck     4:19
4. Intruder     5:29
5. Lonely Heart     3:00
CREDITS:
♦♦   Inga Byrkjeland  Cello
♦♦   Deathprod  Producer
♦♦   Ensemble neoN  Primary Artist
♦♦   Karin Hellqvist  Violin
♦♦   Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen  Percussion
♦♦   Jan Erik Kongshaug  Engineer, Mixing
♦♦   Magnus Loddgard  Conductor
♦♦   Magnus Voll Mathiassen  Artwork, Cover Design
♦♦   Yumi Murakami  Flute, Flute (Alto)
♦♦   Solmund Nystabakk  Theorbo
♦♦   Ida Kristine Zimmermann Olsen  Sax (Alto)
♦♦   Julian Skar  Arranger
♦♦   Jan Martin Smørdal  Arranger, Mixing
♦♦   Helge Sten  Mastering, Mixing
♦♦   Susanna  Mixing, Producer
♦♦   Kristine Tjøgersen  Clarinet, Clarinet (Bass)
♦♦   Susanna Wallumrød  Composer, Piano (Grand), Vocals

Product Description
♦♦♦  Barely one year after the Rune Grammofon–release of critically acclaimed Wild Dog , Susanna returns with a new album. Released on her own label SusannaSonata on CD, vinyl and download in September 2013. Susanna is known for both her own songwriting, with songs such as 'Believer' and her huge range of highly personal interpretations of other people's songs. She is an intensely arresting performer; holding audiences captive with her hypnotizing vocal timbre and the powerful, all consuming sound of her band, her concerts are truly magical. Active for more than a decade, through eight albums so far as Susanna and the Magical Orchestra/Susanna/Susanna Wallumrød, the Oslo based artist has recently been taking great steps towards greater independence and autonomy, while increasing the range of her considerable talents as a songwriter, vocal interpreter and producer. Combining the antique notes of the Baroque theorbo, woodwinds and strings, and Susanna's sparse piano, 'The Forester' a co–production with the Norwegian Ensemble neoN features Susanna's strongest songwriting to date. 'The Forester' began to take shape when composers Julian Skar and Jan Martin Smørdal requested some material from her to arrange for the Norwegian contemporary music group Ensemble neoN. Picking from new tracks and several already released songs, the composers made new arrangements suited to the eight–piece group, and extended the title track into a fifteen–minute, three–part suite in which dark woods shroud a wanderer in a symbolic landscape of searching and loss. Being lost, or deliberately straying from the chosen path, are recurring themes on 'The Forester', whose subject matter ranges from disturbing natural environments to alien visitors, painted on an eerily exquisite canvas that recalls Mark Hollis, Tim Buckley, Kate Bush and Claude Debussy while remaining uniquely Susanna's soundworld. Recorded entirely live in one single, emotionally intense day at Oslo's legendary Rainbow Studio, produced by Deathprod and Susanna and engineered by Jan Erik Kongshaug. ♦♦♦  SoundCloud: http://snd.sc/11CDuf2 'The Forester' captures Susanna's composition, and all the nuances of her distinctive voice, in neoN s deceptively simple chamber–folk tapestry. Rob Young (The Wire, author of Electric Eden)
REVIEW
John Fordham;  Score: ****
♦♦   theguardian.com, Thursday 21 November 2013 22.45 GMT
♦♦♦  The quietly spinetingling Norwegian singer–songwriter Susanna Karolina  Wallumrød follows 2012′s edgily soulful Wild Dog (May 8, 2012: http://www.allmusic.com/album/release/wild-dog-mr0003618874) with this equally gripping but texturally softer collaboration with compatriots Ensemble neoN — an octet featuring strings, reeds and the lute–like theorbo. The music has a spacious early–music ring that marks it out from Susanna’s electronic and percussion–driven ventures, but her pristine voice still evokes the same journeys through dark landscapes — lost–in–the–woods fairytales that summon up the fears and wonderings of childhood. The three–part title track moves from tentative beginnings accompanied by a fragile piano motif to soft clouds of strings sounds against a lissome folk-song melody, and concludes in whispered dissonances. Marimba tones and the deep jangle of the theorbo underpin the quietly pleading Hangout; Oh, I Am Stuck describes a sense of being psychically stifled all the more scary for being expressed with such tranquillity; and the concluding Lonely Heart stirs Susanna’s soul–vocal inflections as a more angular arrangement winds around her. There aren’t many laughs, or much jazz, but it’s exquisite and unique music–making. — Guardian
Website: http://susannamagical.com/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/susannawallumroed
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SusannaMagical/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susannamagical
Selection of releases:
♦♦   Susanna and the Magical Orchestra "List of Lights and Buoys"   2004
♦♦   Susanna and the Magical Orchestra "Melody Mountain"   2006
♦♦   Susanna "Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos"   2007
♦♦   Susanna "Flower of Evil"   2008
♦♦   Susanna and the Magical Orchestra "3"   2009
♦♦   Susanna Wallumrød "Jeg vil hjem til menneskene"   2011
♦♦   Giovanna Pessi/Susanna Wallumrød "If Grief Could Wait"   2011
♦♦   Susanna "Wild Dog"   2012
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Susanna & Ensemble neoN — The Forester (2013)

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