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Silje Nes

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Location: Bergen, Norway

Website: http://www.myspace.com/siljenes

Bio: Welcome to the sweet and mischevious sound-world of Silje Nes!

FatCat first became aware of Norwegian singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist through a unique and utterly charming 2005 demo. ... (more) Immediately intrigued by the quirkily sprawling mixture of instruments, electronics and sweet vocals, the label remained in touch with Silje, as she slowly and gradually pieced together what would become her debut album, Ames Room. Boldly inventive and broad-visioned, Ames Room announces the emergence of a hugely talented and distinctive young artist. Excepting the first track, which was written and recorded with Kristian Stockhaus from Ungdomskulen, the album is solely Silje’s work, and is imbued throughout with her distinct joy in the act of creation.

The home-recorded album gathers together material created between fall 2004 and summer 2007. For Silje, recording is just as important as songwriting, and all the tracks were recorded spontaneously, as they were written, leaving in rough edges and imperfections. While her early recordings were largely instrumental (often using her voice as an instrument, without lyrics) and more heavily electronic, over the past year lyrics and vocals have come to the fore along with guitar and drums. Silje’s voice is enchanting: breathy and beautifully measured, calmly sitting at the center of the musical webs she spins like a benevolent animating spirit.
While Silje creates a sound-world entirely her own, Ames Room shares an autodidactic adventurousness with peers like Tujiko Noriko, Islaja, Lau Nau, or Foehn, as well as the homespun, sprawling beauty of The Pastels, Pram, or Crescent. Broad-ranging and full of character, Ames Room moves from languid dream-pop to stomping, upbeat tracks, to more introspective. abstract numbers. Sparkling melodies exude a music-box sweetness, while spindly electronics - barbed, bubbling, and tinkling - weave around an eclectic instrumentation that includes cello, drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, recorder, glockenspiel, xylophone, melodica, and trumpet, as well as percussion played on all manner of found objects.
Silje Nes grew up in the tiny town of Leikanger, in Sognefjord, the largest fjord in Norway, before moving to the rainy, larger town of Bergen in 2000. She began making her own music in 2001, recording on 4-track demo software through a tiny inbuilt microphone on a laptop. Though she’d previously studied classical piano, when she started recording she decided to do so with guitars and instruments on which she had no playing experience. Guided by finding sounds she loved and the excitement of discovering new instruments without learned conventions, she made use of whatever equipment she could get hold of - an old synth, a cello, a drum kit, a laptop, loop pedals, etc. – to create the unique instrumentation and songwriting style evident on Ames Room. (less)