It’s said that 95 per cent of all people have experienced dreams about falling. To be hit by a sudden panic as the ground disappears under your feet, feeling your body being pulled towards the ground like a heavy object dragged towards the earth’s magnetic field. And then you wake up just in time, drenched in sweat with a racing pulse, a millisecond before you hit the ground.
The title of Misty Coast’s third album “When I Fall From the Sky” is a play on experiences like this. An immediate strong and genuine panic attack occurs just as fast as it passes. Many have experienced it. Some of us know it well. And others got it a little too close and would love for it to magically disappear. The lyrics are filled with thoughts, ideas, fiction and references, but throughout the album, we keep returning to the title, each song offering, in its own manner, a survival strategy of sorts for an anxious millenium.
Misty Coast is the dream-pop child of Linn Frøkedal and Richard Myklebust, known from the Norwegian noise rock act The Megaphonic Thrift. After ten years on the road with amplifiers turned to 11, tours supporting indie heroes like Dinosaur Jr and Steven Malkmus, a Norwegian Grammy (Spellemannprisen) sitting on the shelf, mild tinnitus and odd jobs back home to add on the rock’n’roll salary, Frøkedal and Myklebust decided to adjust the recipe and cook up a new witch’s brew. No melodies were allowed to be tucked under a cover of noise but kept on top of the blanket. Let’s call it a picnic where the pure flavours get to shine without fancy wrapping. We are talking strawberries straight from the field and milk tapped from the udder.
Producer Emil Nikolaisen (Serena-Maneesh) sums up the recording of “When I Fall From the Sky” as a little lesson from Mr. Less Is More:
“After years of spiritual decline and musical desperation, many once guitarists (including yours truly) sick of their ways. Turning to semi hobbyist synth players, staring at the sun of our screens. Looking to the vast wastelands of plugins for answers to our prayers. So here’s to cutting through some ‘production’ bullshit.”
Perhaps as a counterpoint to the abundance of pompous and over-produced commercial pop music, this album can be something resembling tangible proof that you don’t have to apply all the production tricks in the book to make a fantastic album. Sometimes it’s better to stay grounded and play with what’s right in front of you. As producer Emil nicely describes it:
“Drums can be drums, like skinny legs, dry matchsticks to the edge of porous. Drums. Bass can be ballsy, blown-out yet feminine without trying hard in all those boutique ways, a small guy with big toys syndrome. Bass. Voices. Real and simple. In conversation. Mourning. Celebrating. Songs can be songs. It’s just music and no games. The good side of simplicity. All things that made me love working on this record.”
“When I Fall From the Sky” was recorded at Malabar Studio in Oslo with Emil Nikolaisen, and partly in Christensen’s Library in Kirkeveien by the duo themselves. Jørgen Træen has mixed and mastered the album at Duper Luftgrotten in Bergen. All instruments and vocals by Frøkedal and Myklebust, except for drums and percussion performed by Kim Åge Furuhaug (Orions Belte, Sigrid, Lars Vaular), certain lines and stardust by Emil and guest vocals on ´92 by Hilma Nikolaisen. Cover art is made by Steven Duke.
“When I Fall From the Sky” is a testimony from an atomic pop dyad that can evoke the strangest figures; you can sense the little friendly ghost of Nina Persson fronting Boss Hog, other times a cosmic demi-god is manifested with a motorik groove and a contempt for western rock. You may even risk meeting yourself; looking for reasons to fall a little further – but not too far.
https://mistycoast.no
https://www.instagram.com/mistycoastmusic
https://www.facebook.com/mistycoast
https://twitter.com/mistycoastmusic
