Kolbein Falkeid / Kjetil Bjørnstad: Solskinnsdypet
MIC's Listen to Norway series continues with Kolbein Falkeid and Kjetil Bjørnstad's 'Solskinnsdypet'
”Solskinnsdypet” means roughly ”sunshine’s depth”, and this title, its ambivalence and the profundity of the apparent contradiction, reveals the essence of this project.
The record was conceived as an aesthetic expression and companion to 2004’s national Norwegian TV charity fundraiser the focus of which was social and psychological distress.
In concord with the difficult and elusive nature of such problems a recording matching the poetry of the beloved Kolbein Falkeid and specially written music by multi genius Kjetil Bjørnstad furnished the entire project with a unveiling, profoundly “true” and lasting materialization. To give voice to these things artistically is both difficult and hazardous, for failing is no unimportant matter. Thankfully there is poetry in the world, and poets such as Kolbein Falkeid, who seem to have been bestowed with this special ability to say the elusive, that which in normal words would only veil the truth and magnify the distress. Such poetry needs no explanation, but music functions as a great auxiliary and the two expressions seem to mutually lift each other, towards truth and comfort, and therefore towards a unique source of hope and empowerment for those in distress.
Kjetil Bjørnstad’s music, attentive and beautiful like shy droplets of sunlit rain, does exactly this, and in combination with Falkeid’s words it manages that mystery: to voice the complex, dark but also glittering, motions of the soul, that which is compared to the depth of sunshine.
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