Three years after releasing the masterpiece The Mechanical Fair, Ola Kvernberg returns with a new magnificent, imaginative, rhythmic deluge of an album: Steamdome. The title of Kvernberg’s latest project was not chosen at random. Steamdome presents thoroughly percussive music. It lunges brutally ahead like a runaway train. As enthusiastic, surrealistic and swelling as Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns.
Three drummers
Steamdome changes track, and barrels along into a landscape where rhythmical patterns, beat and groove are the dominant elements. The Mechanical Fair was described as belonging to a “mutton western” genre, and this description is, if anything, even more appropriate now. With three of the country’s most innovative drummers on board, the bows, strings and resin have been replaced by sticks, metal and a variety of drums. Steamdome is seething with visual energy. The music winds its way through steep cliffs, far-ranging vistas, sharp curves, sheer drops and nocturnal landscapes where the only anchoring point is the suggestive rhythm of a train that never stops.
Hard-hitting team
Ola Kvernberg has hand-picked a hard-hitting team of musicians for Steamdome. The locomotive is propelled by drummer Erik Nylander (Mechanical Fair, Liarbird), Børge Fjordheim (Sivert Høyem, Monical Heldal) and Hans Hulbækmo (Broen, Atomic, Moskus) along with bassist Nikolai Hængsle Eilertsen (Elephant9, Band of Gold). In addition to Ola Kvernberg himself on fiddle, viola, etc., the music is kept at the boiling point by guitarist and jack-of-all-trades Øyvind Blomstrøm (El Cuero, Odd Nordstoga) and the innovative organist Daniel Buner Formo (Trondheim Jazzorkester).
About Ola Kvernberg
Fiddle ace Ola Kvernberg has held a prominent place in the Norwegian music community since his early teens. His family is full of folk musicians, but Ola has carved his own distinctive path. So far he has composed the music for seven films, has been remixed by Todd Terje, and has collaborated with saxophonist Joshua Redman, crime writer Jo Nesbø, Stian Carstensen, Mathias Eick, Motorpsycho, Pat Metheny and Jimmy Carl Black from the Mothers of Invention – to name just a few. He received a Spellemannspris (Norwegian Grammy) for Liarbird in 2012 and the Amanda Award and the Kanon Award for the film music for “Jag Etter Vind” in 2013. He has been nominated for an additional Spellemannspris (The Mechanical Fair), a Kanon Award and an international Grand Scores prize for best film music (‘Two Raging Grannies’).
