Posts Tagged ‘magne furuholmen’

P2 radio interview with Magne

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Somehow I missed this when it was first broadcast, but Magne was interviewed on NRK P2’s radio programme “Mozart og Madonna” on June 15th.

The theme of the week was England, and Magne had been invited to talk about how a-ha went to London to make it in the music business. He says that staying in London had an important impact on Paul and himself as musicians:

“We discovered and opened up to more commercial music than what we had listened to before. We were rather stuck in the sixties, in a way. We had noticed punk music and thought it was cool, but we tried our best to hold onto the sixties-sound in the music we did ourselves.”

This month’s promotional push in the UK was also mentioned:

“We’re going to play and talk our way through July in London. There’s a surprising amount of interest and love directed towards the band over there these days.”

I have made a full translation of the interview, which can be found here.

And if you want to listen to it yourself, the June 15th programme is available for download from nrk.no as a podcast. The interview starts after 9 minutes.

Magne in Dagbladet Søndag

Cover of Dagbladet Søndag

Magne is on the front page of Dagbladet’s Sunday magazine today. Inside there is a 3-page interview. Here are a few quotes:

“On this album I wanted to find back to the time when we played everything ourselves, worked with synths and experimented with different sounds. For my part I wanted to stop being ashamed of the sound we helped create in the eighties. Because certain members of the band still are.“

– Did you ever consider not doing a new a-ha album this time?
“Yes. That’s what I’ve done every time since 2000. I think that’s how it is for all three of us. But we’re usually happy afterwards, that we gave it all we had. When I decide on a project, I have a “bulldog-approach”, I keep biting with my jaws locked. Which isn’t necessarily healthy.“

– Is there no end to your productivity?
“No, not really. There’s so much I want to do, I haven’t really gotten started yet.“

The interview is also available online here.
And if you don’t understand Norwegian, WOTM forum member Heidi has posted a full translation here.

 

Today’s chart update:
FOTM enters the official album chart in the Netherlands at number 83. (Thanks to Johannes)

Concert dates, album title and more

Magne and Morten in Chiswick, London last night

Magne and Morten in Chiswick, London last night

The upcoming concert dates in Germany and Norway are revealed in an interview with Magne and Morten in today’s paper edition of VG.

And the album title will be the same as the single: Foot Of The Mountain.

Read all the details plus Magne and Morten’s refreshing take on Norwegian journalists in a translation of the interview here.

Apparatjik recording new album

From the Apparatjik website

From the Apparatjik website

Apparatjik – Magne’s side project comprised of himself, Guy Berryman (Coldplay), Jonas Bjerre (Mew) and Martin Terefe (Kensaltown producer) – recorded the song “Ferreting” for the Songs for Survival charity album in connection with Bruce Parry’s Amazon BBC TV-series last year.

Now they are currently working on a full Apparatjik album. The clothing designers in Moods Of Norway recently visited the members at a cabin somewhere in Norway, where they were busy recording the new album. A few pictures from the visit can be seen on the Moods Of Norway blog:

Magne from Aha is showing us the studio (16 Jan. 09)
Moods is hitting the studio (16 Jan. 09)
Emailing: DSC00373 (16 Jan. 09)

No release date or any further details about the new album have been announced so far. And it remains to be seen if the Apparatjik album will be released before or after the new a-ha album.

But the official Apparatjik website was updated this week, with a bunch of heavily pixelated images, a sound clip and some random quotes. There are also official Apparatjik pages on Facebook and Twitter.

BTW, the Moods Of Norway blog also includes a few older items of interest:

Martin, Magne and Jonas with Elton John:
Magne from Aha looking sharp (17 Dec. 08)

The Moods guys hanging out with Magne and Morten in New York last fall:
Morten and Sim at Indochine (6 Oct. 08)
Aha in Soho (6 Oct. 08)

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