Therese Aune is a musician who hails from Norway and is the focus of this week’s luistertip. We shed light on her distinctive sound and share a new video for one of the tracks off her debut album, featuring some stunning Norwegian landscapes that might just entice a spot of escapism.

The album Billowing Shadows, Flickering Light was released earlier this year (on Red Eye Transit Records), following an initial release at the end of 2012 in her native Norway (on Riot Factory), and was recorded with the Icelandic producer Sturla Mio Þórisson (Owen Pallett, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy).

Some of the tracks on the record hint at melancholy just from the titles alone – ‘Grey Ghost’, ‘The Lonely Ocean Roar’, ‘Through The Darkness’, ‘Broken Bird’ – and there may be shades of sadness but in all we are treated to carefully-crafted indie-folk-pop stories set to an atmospheric soundscape.

Various instruments & emotive vocals

A mini-orchestra creates a swirling sonic backdrop to Aune’s emotive vocals throughout, with ‘Vapid House’, being a good example. For this album, she is accompanied by violin, cello, accordion, tuba and drums, with herself playing piano (she studied classical piano since age 10), as well as harmonium, wurlitzer and celesta on the track ‘Chameleon’.

Her voice has a haunting quality, that also soars with cinematic grace before taking dramatic twists and turns. These changes of direction are evident on a number of tracks, with my stand-out being ‘In My Quiet Place’. This has all the elements of a track to accompany a film sequence of running through a Nordic forest in a snow storm, which is almost precisely how the video captures it, except the running is swopped for cycling and the forest for a fjord in the rain. I wouldn’t mind that being my quiet place to escape to, or any of the locations that feature in the video actually (which all can be found around Stavanger, in southern Norway).

Following on from this album, with its stunning arrangements and beautiful vocals that are bound to intrigue and delight in equal measure, Aune is currently working on a new EP. She has already built up a commendable festival roster – by:Larm, Øya, Iceland Airwaves and SXSW – and has also toured in Germany and Switzerland supporting Einar Stray. Hopefully we will be seeing more of this Norwegian songstress soon (maybe sometime next year?) as she starts planning some more tours. Watch this space!

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Billowing Shadows, Flickering Light – Released 6 August 2013: