SOUNDTRACK: SILJA SOL-Verftet Online Music Festival 2020 (April 5, 2020).
In April 2020, Norway’s Verftet Music Festival streamed an online concert:
Get ready for Verftet Online Music Festival, Bergen’s largest virtual concert festival, where we can enjoy great music together. We want to turn despair and frustration into innovation and positivity, and invite everyone to a digital festival experience out of the ordinary – right home in your own living room.
Sadly, most of the performances are unavailable, but this one from Siljia Sol (who is also Aurora’s backing vocalist) is streaming.
She plays ten songs in about 40 minutes, singing entirely in Norwegian.
“Kometen” is a two minute opener. It has trippy synths and feels like an introductory lullaby. Silja has an amazing voice, with quite a range. Here it is soft and childlike. But “Superkresen” turns into a fully 80s dance song. It fits perfectly with the totally80s visuals of her set.
“Hatten” continues the bounciness. This song feels poppier with a quietly soaring chorus. “Hultertilbult” is more guitar-based and feels more organic. As does “Ni Liv” which has a more prominent bass line. This song has nice soaring backing vocals from her guitarist.
I don’t know the originals of these songs at all, but this feels like a restrained rendition. Not quite unplugged, but perhaps more suitable for watching on your couch.
For “Stemning” she moves to the piano and plays a quiet ballad–her voice is lovely here.
The dancing returns for “Løgneren.” Throughout these songs, Silja’s voice reminds me of Aurora’s, probably because her voice is essential to all live Aurora songs (and because they are both Norwegian). With Aurora Silja hits incredibly high soaring notes and she really doesn’t do that in her own songs. Although she does hit some high notes here.
“Semmenemme” has a more rhythmic approach–with almost a rapping vibe. “Eventyr” cranks up the guitar more with a nice groove behind it.
“Dyrene” ends the set with the most catchy song of the bunch. It is more subtle but features some nice soaring high vocals in the chorus.
It’s fascinating listening to ten songs and having no idea (at all) what they are about. I’m very curious to hear if her recorded output has a more or less 80s vibe going on.
You can stream the set here.
[READ: July 10, 2021] “Curving Time in Krems”
This story was really cerebral and metaphysical. as such it took a really long time to get to the point. It was also an incredibly long story for what amounts to: boy calls girls he had a crush on and wished he had done so sooner.
The main character is an academic invited to a dinner party in Krems, a city that “resembles Vineta, the city submerged by waters.” Snow had fallen making the oblivious old town even more deserted.
A woman at the dinner insists that her cousin attended classes with him and spoke about him recently. He tells her this is impossible as he did not have female classmates.
He figures out that the woman is talking about Nori S. But Nori was a grade ahead of him and there’s no way she would remember him.
For a seventeen-year-old boy, a beguiling eighteen-year-old girl is more inaccessible than a Hollywood diva is to a professor [that’s a weird simile, there].
