The Captain & Me
This Oslo band consists of multi-instrumentalists Morten Krane and Even Vaa, who are pioneers in the musical genre of Balkan country, or, as more eloquently described in their own words, “maximalistic, epic, conceptual Balkan-country”.
The record is written, produced, recorded, arranged, played, and sung by Morten Krane and Even Vaa in Even’s home recording studio in his bedroom.
Guest appearances on the record include saxophone, trumpet and mandolin, and friends join in to sing some of the choruses. The mixing was done with help from Andreas Wickman.
Their musical inspiration comes from artists like Crosby, Stills & Nash, Goran Bregovic, Boban Markovic, The Decemberists, Bob Dylan, Wunderkammer, and Sufjan Stevens, without sounding like any of the above. In the multi-vocal harmonies, one is subtly reminded of those hair-raising moments of the Beatles at their best. Authors such as Thomas Pynchon, Alessandro Baricco and Gabriel Garcia Marquez inspire the lyrical content of “Automata”.
The Captain & Me are storytellers of grand human tales with an eye for the mundane details of life like their literary examples: wise men sitting around the campfire recounting tales of old, strangers telling of their travels, ghosts, and sometimes, the bottle or the dream speak for themselves. The band’s voices mix with the coloured voices of many different and interesting characters of stories from here, there, everywhere… and beyond. The Captain & Me’s music has the ability to bring you to far away places and into the depths of your memory. “I was so far away but it felt like home, it felt like home,” they sing in “We Could Stay Forever”. The red thread that runs through this record is, despite the occasional sad note, a great sense of hope and of joy.
When playing live, The Captain & Me grows to an impressive eight to thirteen musicians on stage. No matter how small the stage, they own it with passion and conviction, as recently demonstrated on the tiny, improvised stage in Indigo in Oslo during the Let’s Indigo festival, where, despite the warm summer evening, they lured everyone inside with their contagious melodies and life-affirming enthusiasm. Their music, whether listened to at home or at one of their concerts, lifts you up momentarily from your own life and into the strange and inspiring tales of other places and other times. So when you land again, things look different. They look different for the better.
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