Jue by Hanne Kolstø

In 2019, Hanne Kolstø celebrates 10 years as an artist. As one of the most productive and lauded musicians on the Norwegian indie scene, Kolstø now readies her ninth solo album Jue. With a more experimental sound than earlier and a party program proclaiming that music should be free, Kolstø challenges traditional song structures with these ten new songs.

Kolstø has always thrived in several different, musically diverse camps. With Jue she combines modern, minimalistic electronica with elements of new wave and new romantics, along with a more contemporary indie-vibe – all with great aplomb of course. One moment one might hear hints of Ultravox and Tears for Fears, and in the next modern artists like DJ Koze or Nicolas Jaar – always with Kolstø’s ear for melody and compositional finesse.

Speaking about the record, Kolstø says: “I made this album to remind myself that my music has to be free, it should be allowed to be, no matter what people might say or think. Because music is art and art should be free. When I wrote the album I said to myself that everything was allowed, exemplified with the song that actually stars with a drum solo, before transitioning into a lighter acoustic section, before it gets all heavy (“E det so farlig”). I want to remove myself from the thought process that one has to rearrange the songs to make them “fit in” somewhere. The album is supposed to be a goodie bag of artistic freedom.”

Hanne Kolstø has been a mainstay on the Norwegian indie scene for a decade. With an unparallelled production of 8 solo albums and several side projects, she has been continually critically lauded with several nominations for the Norwegian Spellemann awards (equivalent to Grammys).