Hanne Kolstø new album While We Still Have Light due 18 December
Album release: While We Still Have Light by Hanne Kolstø
Release date: 18 December 2015
Label: Jansen Plateproduksjon
More info: Artist website
'Five albums. Five years of my life. Five years where the lyrics gradually have become more important, where I feel I’ve found out more about how I look upon life and people around me and myself in all this. Five years with many different emotions.'
For every year since 2011 Hanne Kolstø has been fighting to discover her place in the world, with the release of an album every 12 months, and December sees the arrival of the final chapter in this ambitious five-albums-in-five-years saga; an album, fittingly, of goodbyes – 'While We Still Have Light'. An over-ambitious project for most people, Kolstø says that the concept for the new record was a natural one to pursue, and in the years that have passed since her first solo album Riot Break was released, we find Hanne in a suitably fidgety state of mind as she no doubt contemplates what comes after such an emotionally draining period of creativity.
Continuing, Kolstø says; ''While We Still Have Light' mirrors the goodbye theme, which can be interpreted in many different ways. In the middle of this is doubt; the doubt before a decision, the doubt before you choose to break out of bad patterns, the doubt before you choose to leave a friend or a boyfriend, before you choose to enter a darkness, in the hope that maybe there’s more light on the other side'.
And restless and anxious is just about where we pick up with Kolstø on the new album. From the shuffling percussion of opening track Bordermind through to the fragile and hopeful title track, and the uneasy scenes she sets in I Hate You Don’t Leave Me, this is a record that ultimately beats with a hopeful heart at its core – it just happens to be a heart with a long road behind it, and long road ahead of it. One hopes that this isn’t a final goodbye from one of Norway’s most special of contemporary artists.
While We Still Have Light will be released on Jansen Plateproduksjon, 18 December. Three out of Kolstø’s four previous albums were nominated to the Spellemann award (Norwegian Grammy).
Eivind Buene, one of Norway’s most renowned contemporary classical composers, wrote the string arrangements.
Hanne Kolstø has previously released these albums: Forever Maybe (2014), Stillness and Panic (2013), FlashBack (2012), Riot Break (2011).
Press Reaction to date
- 'entices you over the threshold with sweet, addictive melodies, then evoking the Brothers Grimm in the form of waves of brutal synth bass, shards of dissonance, and lyrics of torment and rage' - The Sunday Times Culture
- 'haunting synth-pop…' - Q
- 'As beautiful as it is ugly' - The Line of Best Fit