An encouragement to lift your gaze from the weather report and up to the sky once in a while.
Joar Renolen has made electronic music since 2001, primarily under the artist name Foreground Set. His fresh melodies mounted on bouncy grooves have been the soundtrack for some hundred thousand listeners. There has always been an element of ambient in the music, and with Været, the complete attention is directed towards the slow alterations.
Været, released October 26th, 2018 on the Oslo-based label Dugnad rec, is a soundtrack to elongated horizons, dynamic landscapes, and massive twists. The soundscape is in continual change, even if the distance between chord movements and melodies is long. On the surface, it can seem stagnant, on a small scale the sound appears to be in a never-ending transition.
Renolen’s idea about Været was born during his year alone in the Norwegian mountains, where the weather played a significant role from day to day. These natural elements are present during the whole album in the form of field recordings, as a foundation beneath the tones.
Været begins in a cinematic landscape with the opening track Strømning (Current) before it moves into a less melodic clime with the track Vekst (Growth). A repeating chord culminates slowly towards a climax before slowly disappearing again and transitioning into the track Bølger (Waves). Swells of harmonies of different sizes arise and descend in a gradually declining tempo before it subsides. The title track Været (The Weather) ascends in the shape of one harmony that stretches calmly into a cloud of sound, where it dissolves, resolves and dissipates.
This release was initiated as a challenge from Bendik Baksaas, with the mantra «limitation is liberation.»
credits
released October 26, 2018
Produced and mixed by Joar Renolen
Mastered by Mattias Fridell
Cover design by Mattias Ditto Dittrich
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