Happy day! The slow burning mayhem of Long Slow Distance has finally been unleashed. The reception by the press here in Norway is great. Big Norwegian newspapers like VG, Aftenposten, BA, Fedrelandsvennen and Dagsavisen all rated it to 5/6. Esteemed music journalist Audun Vinger in Dagens Næringsliv called it my "real moon landing". I couldn't agree more. The feedback I keep getting from fans all over the world is overwhelmingly positive. I thank you for that, after all this is your music now. It seems like everybody has understood what I am doing on this album, which feels extremely gratifying. We worked long and hard to make every song stand out as much as we possibly could, while still maintaining a strong mood throughout the album. There is some of my old band in there, but it marks a new direction too. I have gone full circle, and I'm still running. It has been a pretty intense week, the promo schedule has been particularly punishing this time. To talk at length to the press about such an honest and personal piece of work is exhausting, but tonight it feels like it was all worth it. The release party at Spacebrain here in Oslo was a good indication of how this new material is going to work on stage. I am confident that our shows this fall will be our best so far. The triple Telecaster set-up of the Moon Landing era is being toned down as I leave the guitar work to Cato and Chris, to focus once more on my frontman duties. It's good to be back as a mic-lead wielding Nordic soul man. The band also sounds tighter and nastier like this. My man Cato Salsa comes across as a cosmic Tony Iommi on his Gibson SG. I am a lucky man to front this great band. Most of the release party will be made available at VGTV some time during the day tomorrow. I will keep you posted. Tomorrow I will have a normal Sunday with time to spend with my family. On monday the show goes on with more TV shows, interviews and appearances on Norwegian radio. Thanks once again for all the great feedback, it really makes all the difference. I should sleep now. Goodnight. TC&BN!

Hey guys. The record is almost done now, we've spent 14 days mixing at Harry's Gym and now just a handful of minor tweaks remain. After our enjoyable, if much too brief, visit to Greece for the Rockwave festival Cato went off on vacation and left me with the paperwork. I'm spending my time listening to mixes, trying to piece together a good running order, I think I'm getting pretty close. The sequence I have now has emerged little by little during the three months spent in the studio, it will be hard to challenge it. I have always enjoyed the process of making album artwork, it's fun to play the total dilettante. For The Nightly Disease me and Jon spent days drawing with marker pens and charcoal on different kinds of paper, drenching our sketches in acetone to make them look blurred and faded, I broke out my crayons for the first solo album too. This time I'm working on a project with our light engineer Jan-Erik Holto, if it turns out the way I hope it should be pretty great, if not we'll think of something else. I'm going back to the studio this evening. Bjarne is already working on a new project, a band called Maribel(http://www.facebook.com/pages/MARIBEL/174556215022?ref=ts&sk=info) where he also plays a little drums. He's a busy man, but the way he's committed himself to this album is impressive. TATA!

I just got back from the studio after the synth shoot-out we arranged this evening with Børge on drums, me on vocals and amped acoustic guitar, and Cato Salsa and Ådne Meisfjord(120 Days) both hauled up behind their respective analogue synth castles. The song, Emotions, is sort of a synth take on the hard rock of Black Sabbath spiked with equal measures of Dr. John voodoo vibes and the demented assault of the Melvins, yet it's our own thing entirely. I can't wait for you to hear it. Børge's drumming was out of this world and Ådne thoroughly impressed us with his fine tuned synthetic mayhem, what a great musician he is! Cato was stellar as always, he is reinventing himself as a dark Synth Lord these days, I always knew he had it in him... Tomorrow we're adding congas and tubular bells to it, and then me and Anne Lise will sing as soon as I get the lyrics ready. We're getting close to the end now and there's a lot left to be done. Sessions will cease on May 16, hopefully we'll have it all ready by then. TC&BN

Last friday we went to see the legendary Amon Düül II at Rockefeller here in Oslo. They're one of my absolute favorite bands, and even if they came with a replacement drummer, a newly drafted keyboard player and with guitarist Chris Karrer still absent from the line-up, they managed to put on a great show, mostly due to singer Renate Knaup's heroic performance. At 62 she still has her voice and magnetic stage presence. Cato and I both thought that it would be a good idea to ask her to sing on the Record. It was a long shot, but it was worth a try, the worst we could get was a straight "no". Mind you, this was exactly the way we got Kalle Gustafson(TSOOL) to join us for the recording of Moon Landing, even if we knew him well already. We lined up and waited at the stage entrance alongside a few middle aged guys with their stacks of classic Amon Düül vinyl. The band came out to chat with their fans and we made our move. Renate turned out to be a very lovely lady. She agreed right away to extend her stay and record with us the next day, but first we would have to be brought before the mighty Düül to be scrutinized and approved. We must have made a fair enough impression. The next day we drove out for a quick stroll by the sea before retreating to the studio. The session was relaxed and extremely enjoyable. Most of the time we sang together, me giving cues, with Cato and Bjarne in the control room. She latched onto our thing immediately, adding her Bavarian doom to the already apocalyptic "Red On Maroon", one of my favorite tracks on the album. On "Animal Child" we ran her voice through a Roland Space Echo while she improvised Phallus Dei style, glorious! In the evening we caught a performance by Robert Wilson and Christopher Knowles at The Norwegian Museum of Technology and Science, and after that dinner at Kampen Bistro, a great local place near the studio. During that dinner we got the inside story of the Baader-Meinhof connection, Deutsch Nepal and the early days of German psychedelic rock. It's a day I'll cherish and remember for as long as I live, I'm so proud to have her singing on this album, I can't wait for you to hear it. In fact this album has already had a few interesting guests. Anne Lise Frøkedal of Harrys Gym works next door and frequently pops in to sing with us. She's a real singing machine and has a very fragile quality to her voice that adds to the ethereal texture on some of the songs. Ådne Meisfjord(120 Days and Serena Maneesh) plays some particularly sinister Moog bass lines on "Red On Maroon" and adds Vocoder to another track. Kalle Gustafson also dropped by. The list will get longer, there is an abundance of talent on the Oslo scene these days, and recording at Harry's Gym we're right in the middle of it. Happy Easter everybody! TC&BN!      

We're having a little break after the first five days in the studio, recording will start again on Sunday. In the meantime Bjarne is doing some work with his own band and I'm trying to unwind while planning our next move. We recorded live takes of five new songs this weekend, along with the eight or so backing tracks that we have from earlier on and the songs that don't have drums on them, that should give me and Cato plenty of material to work on. I can't wait to start again, there is so much great stuff there that we haven't touched yet. Last night we recorded two more songs from the "b-list", a "space boogie" called Truth Be Told and a punk rocker that clocked in just under two minutes, a new personal record... The variation in mood and style is huge, but somehow it all makes sense to me, the production and the individual sounds of the musicians sort of tie it all together. Everything I ever worked on, including Madrugada, has had great dynamic range and variation. Finding the "red thread" has always been a concern, over the years I've stopped worrying so much about it, and I've found that if you relax a little, the thread might materialize anyway. An older American musician, whom I admire greatly, once told me after seeing one of my early solo gigs, not to put on a "variety show". "Play simple emotional music", he said "and don't be so afraid of repeating yourself", I've kept that in mind, but it's a rule that I've found it hard to live by. I admire focus and consistency in other musicians, but my music can never be like that, I'm too easily distracted. If I have to choose I'll always go for feeling over style. TATA! 

It's been three days, and nights, of recording sessions for the new album. We already have three great tunes on tape; Animal Child, a snappy thing called Please and a song called Innovations, which was on my b-list but turned out real nice, sort of a cross between Smog and Glen Campbell(!!!), perhaps...  Tonight we finished early to catch Norwegian/American singer-songwriter Kreg Viesselman's set at Herr Nilsen. It's a real mystery why he isn't more popular here in Norway. It's my first time seeing him live and he really blew my mind. Check out his Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kreg-Viesselman/46979062890. I really like to go out and see live bands when I'm in the studio, it's really inspiring to see your colleagues in action, and to, maybe, pick up some of their tricks. Other artist that are playing here in Oslo while we're in the studio are; Black Mountain, my favorite band Amon Düül II, the great Ulver and the mighty reformed SWANS. Stay tuned for more updates, I'm going to bed. Take Care & Be Nice! 

I just got back from the studio after a 12 hour session recording Animal Child, a tune that might be familiar to those of you who came to our show at The Jazz Café in Camden. At just over 8 minutes it's the only "epic" on this album, so far. The initial idea was a sort of SWANS and Melvins inspired drone morphing into a grand cosmic ending, it still has some of that in it, but it's something else now too, you'll hear... I'm extremely pleased with the sounds we are getting, the ruff of Animal Child sounded almost like a finished mix when I listened back to it at my house after the session, in fact I'm so excited I can't stop listening to it. Tomorrow we'll have a late start and we'll keep going into the night. I want to get as many live takes on tape as I can before drummer Børge and bassist Rudi go home on wednesday, from then on it will be just me and Cato left to overdub guitars, vocals and keyboards, but that's gonna be fun as well. The rhythm section will join us again later to record more backing tracks, Børge also does other stuff, he can play just about any instrument and he's a great backup singer as well. Cato plays a huge variety of keyboards in addition to his guitar-magic, which is getting more and more insane these days. I should sleep now. TATA!    

Tomorrow the day has finally come when we'll commence work on the new album at Harry's Gym Recording Studio here in Oslo. We'll be there till mid May, this is "The Big One", the main recording session. The amount of work I'm bringing to the studio is massive, it's a good thing we have lots of time set off for recording. Most of the material is pretty new, written at Tricolor, my Oslo HQ, some of it in close corporation with Cato Salsa. But there are also songs that would have made it onto Moon Landing if they had been ready back then. Some songs take a lot of time to dream up, some sort of write themselves. There is no blueprint.

I got back from London late last night, having stayed a few days after the show at the Jazz Café on Saturday. Thanks to everybody who came out for that show, we had a great time rocking out in glorious mono(!!!). It was a loud and chaotic evening, the audience was fantastic and we sold out the venue, a first for me in London. I had the band in Oslo for a week leading up to the show to rehearse and write new material. With Børge living in Stavanger and Rudi way up in Tromsø we don't get to meet very often, most of the time it's just me at home with my acoustic guitar, or it's Cato and me at Tricolor, my HQ here in Oslo. Several new songs were rehearsed with the band last week, only "Animal Child" made it into our set list at the Jazz Café, it was a highlight along with songs like Sister Sonic Blue and Long Slow Distance. Yesterday I found time to visit The National Portrait Gallery where standing face to face with all those Tudors and Stuarts sort of felt like being re-united with old friends, I'm a university drop-out you know... I hope my travels will bring me back to London very soon, it really is one of my favorite places on this earth. TC&BN!