INTO PRIMARY
Oslo is covered in snow—it cooled off in the first days of the year enough to make for endless layers of fluffy white, which has the nice effect of quieting down the city—the ambient noise of traffic and such has a harder time reaching my ears—and with all the activity in the studio as of late, my ears need as little reaching them as I can arrange! As I write, I’m in bed at the flat, and my roommates are sleeping—in fact, when I came home around midnight everyone was already in bed. So, it’s dead silent here. The city is beautiful, walking to the tram tonight every stop light, every railing, that would be more industrial blandness most days, was a setting for a sculpture fallen from the sky.
Dominique came to visit, and I was so happy to have her here. Being that my room is tiny, my bed is tiny, and I have roommates, we checked into a hotel for the two nights we were in Oslo together, the 30th of December and New Year’s Day. I love staying in hotels with Dom, we always have fun—and it wasn’t the same when she left early on the second—suddenly, it was just a room.
Due to Dom’s living on the edge planning style, and some other work biz she had to take care of before the year was over, I didn’t know Dom was coming for sure until the day before she arrived! So, I was all a-flutter when I left the studio on the tram, and went up to the National Teatret station to meet her. Her flight was a bit late getting in, but finally at about 11 she arrived on the airport express train, and we were together. It had been like two and a half weeks, but it’s also true that I had been incredibly busy all of this fall—so, much of the time I was home in recent months I was in studio for 12 hours a day, or playing a show, or just getting back from or heading to the airport. But, even tho’ it was a really short visit, it was so nice that time seemed to slow down in a good way.
On the 31st Claus picked us up, and we drove down to Larvik with Bjorn and his g.f. Tonje. Actually, we drove past Larvik, to the village of Stavern, which is more or less looking like 1895 from most angles. My bandmates’ old friends Gunder and Kaja, and their daughter Selma, live in a lovely old farmhouse there. Gunder is one of two main organizers of the post-Christmas shindig we played this year and the year before. So, Claus and his wife Nanna, myself and Dom, Bjorn & Tonje, Gunder & Kaja, Bård, Lise from Briskeby and Magnus Tingsek, Gunder’s brother and his g.f., and another pair of old friends/Larvik peeps had dinner and rang in the year. There were lots of long toasts, and a reasonable amount of drinks—although, truth be told, I just couldn’t make that much of a dent in the champagne. At midnight we went down the street, which seemed like miles in the subzero, but was probably 100 yards, and gathered in an empty yard where people were shooting off fireworks at an alarming proximity to, say, me. Actually, fireworks were going off everywhere, as far as you could see. We were too cold to stay more than 5 minutes, but you could look out over a bay and see all of Larvik, and fireworks were popping up and blooming all along the horizon. And right over our heads. Alcohol and explosives. Hmmm. We went back inside pretty quickly. I DJ’d for awhile, and then Gunder put on more of a dance mix—70s disco and such!—and people were dancing in Gunder’s tiny office, which is where his stereo is set up. Dom and I claimed a kind of big square cushion thing, kind of a giant ottoman, but big enough to lay down on, and pulled a sheepskin thingy over us and crashed, long before we were drunk or whatever, so we woke up hangover free! At one point a quite drunk Bård woke us up to complain someone ‘had stolen his snuss’. I know the feeling!
The next day we headed up to Oslo, and Dom & I checked back into the hotel, and had dinner there in the hotel bar. Now, this is the kind of thing—alone, having dinner in a hotel bar on New Year’s Day would be, like, suicide-inducing. But with Dom, it was like the most fun imaginable, talking, swapping food, and just being side by side. We watched TV in Norwegian, and then I couldn’t sleep (I often make the mistake of having my Taille de Guepe tea in the evening, and this stuff is like herbal meth), so I tried to be still enough to let Dom get in a couple of hours. Then at 4, I got her up and put her on the bus that goes directly to the airport from the hotel. She was on that brutal 6.50am Norwegian flight—there’s only two cheap flights to Paris a day—as she had to be in the studio with an artist she manages at midday. On the 2nd!
I went back to bed, and got up for the breakfast, and suddenly it wasn’t fun anymore, it was just…breakfast. I went back to bed, and then went to the flat. We worked a little that night, but since then we’ve been working really hard, and the songs are sounding huge. I’m trying to be cool, but every now & then I get very excited about what we’re doing, and I have to text Dom or jump up and down, or other related outlets for my pride and joy.
Usually at the end of the night I get a ride home from Claus, or I take the tram. Tonight I went to Revolver (where I’ll be playing solo and with the Disciplines during the
By:Larm music conference next month—see the tour page for details). As always, I ran into tons of musos, and quite a few fans came up to me and said nice things—including, oddly, a guy from Finland, who just two days ago I mailed a Disciplines mail order vinyl to! I found out that there’s a tiny recording studio in the back, but in the room where you set up and play, the beer kegs that feed the taps in the bar are just there along the wall, and in fact the tap machinery is in a panel right there in the wall.
Also, this week, as I mentioned already, the Disciplines signed a deal for the release of our album with Voices Music, for Norway and Denmark. This is a great first step, I’ve had really good experiences working with Joakim with the last Posies album and my record, and I think he’ll do a great job with us. Plus, Voices distributes, like—everything—Domino, Warp, and 100 more indie labels, so…I should have the ability to knick some killer promos! As I still like CDs and artwork. Even Radiohead does (as Thom Yorke just said in an interview with the BBC).
Ah, yes, as promised, here is the skinny on the best coffee I’ve had in Europe:
Tim Wendelboe’s establishment on the edge of Grunerlokke. Tim has won the world barista championship (2004) and the ‘
cup tasters’ award, etc…he takes his craft as seriously as anyone I’ve encountered, and in fact his shop is also a school for learning to roast and pour at the highest level. He just sells coffee (but, unlike the asshole in Tulsa I mentioned, his place will gladly make you a macchiato). On the counter lately have been some delicious cookies, but other than that—no tea, no croissants, just mind-blowing espresso and filter coffee. There’s just two seats. You can buy beans, and coffeemaking gear, and they do sell some chocolate. But, the focus is on espresso. When I had my first macchiato there, the guy just put a tiny bit of milk in it, and I was skeptical at first; usually milk helps cover the fact that what you’re drinking is essentially bitter, ground up burnt stuff. But here it was eureka moment—I could taste…coffee! Like, a nutty, exotic and complex progression of flavor came forth in the first sip. I realized that even in a café-obsessed Paris, hell, even Milan—essentially we are drinking Sutter Home when for the same price, if we’re lucky enough to live near Tim Wendelboe or a few of the ultra serious Seattle caffeineastes, we could be drinking Chateau Petrus every day. And life is WAY to short, especially in the morning. I will miss this place immensely. Unfortunately, as snobbish as France can be about so many things, I haven’t found a café that really cares about its café. If you know otherwise, please write me!
The coolest thing is that I was chatting with not Tim W. but another Tim, a barista there who hails from Australia, and Ole, the guy who made me that first, life-affirming macchiato, came in from the back, and said—“hey…aren’t you in the Posies?”
Oslo = good.
Speaking of which, we resurrected the song “Oslo”, which was one of the first songs the Disciplines wrote. We had performed it as a kind of country song in Larvik the other week, but that version was a bit long and slow and acoustic, nothing to do with the record we’re making. But then we decided to make a new version very much like the demo from 2006, and lo and behold, it sounds really good. Good lord, I think it’s a hit, at least very apparently so by Norwegian standards. It took a lot of debate and effort and trying different things to make it right, but, I’m quite proud of the results.
Tomorrow is our last day in the studio, and then Monday I’m going home. I am ready to get home, I miss Dom & Aden, and I have a bunch of records I need to listen to! And lots of things to do…it seems that even tho’ I’m not playing any shows this month, and I’m only spending a few days mixing in the studio for other people, I have a ton of small projects to work on, and a lot of work to do to start getting this Disciplines album around, and…I have to itemize my 2007 receipts. But, I get to listen to records while I do it, so it’s OK by me!
And now, glorious sleep to prepare for the race to the finish tomorrow! Or, at least I will try—the only drink I had at Revolver was Taille de Guepe tea!
Love
KS
Oslo, NORWAY.
