Scandinavian Star

Five years after Art of Complex Simplicity, Kerrs Pink came back with a revamped lineup and a very strong album. Longtime members Jostein Hansen (bass) and Harald Lytomt (guitars) are joined by keyboardist Freddy Ruud (who had stepped in just in time for the previous record), keyboardist Lasse Johansen, drummer Knut R. Lie, and lead singer Lasse Tanderø. The latter shares vocal duties with two female singers, Tracee Meyn and Lillian Høidal. Three of the seven pieces have been penned by Ruud. They take liberties with prog rock rules, introducing variety - like a blues-rock episode in "Moments in Life" - and more accessible melodies…

"More than any other art form, music touches people directly," is ACT founder Siggi Loch's credo. For nearly 30 years, the core of what the label does has been to find and to promote the artists who can inspire the mind, reach the heart and touch the soul, and who do so in ways that have a lasting impact. Perhaps this has never been more important than now in the time of the pandemic, when culture has been silenced, when people have felt emotionally isolated and – far too often – the only “reality” has been virtual.

The rare dance-pop opus that hangs together as an album first and a collection of songs second, the fourth full-length by Norwegian pop auteur Bertine Zetlitz - a bona fide star in her homeland though virtually unknown elsewhere - is a musical and emotional masterstroke: strange, stirring, seductive, spellbinding. Given her roots in electronic pop, and those of producer Fred Ball (aka Pleasure), with whom Zetlitz wrote every song on the album, it's surprisingly, refreshingly organic in sound. Over half of the tracks feature live drums, and even those that don't find some way of generating a resoundingly human warmth - washes of steel guitar here, a smoldering saxophone lead there - within a loose, underlying synth pop framework. Although it's not overtly retro, the effect recalls the lush electric pianos and full band feel of '70s funk and disco rather than the icy, synthesized, '80s electro that was such a prevalent 2000s touchstone…

This is her sixth career full-length album, she is therefore an experimented and already prolific artist. She is none other than Nina Kinert, hailing from Stockholm, who has recently released, in 2018, the album titled Romantic. It is a great ensemble of ten pop, folk and even at times electronic songs, displaying Kinert’s unique versatility and talent for experimentation. Often compared to the Norwegian star Ane Brun, and non-coincidentally having received much praise from her from the beginning of her career, Nina Kinert will have started to publish 14 years from today already, with her album Heartbreaktown, released in 2004.

Deutsche Grammophon presents Winter Tales – a new seasonal album featuring music from some of the label’s star composers, who were invited to reimagine the music of Christmas and Chanukah, drawing inspiration from their childhoods and homelands. The album, which is due for release on 21 October, comprises 12 very personal responses to that creative challenge, all of which have something fresh and timely to say about winter’s promise of renewal and light’s power over darkness.

That old discussion has broken out again: What is jazz? Who does it belong to? Where does it begin? The latter of these questions is at least not an issue for the Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala: "Johann Sebastian Bach and his music came into my life when I was six." So it comes as no surprise that Bach ties up his new ACT album "my history of jazz" - Rantala's personal history of the music that captivated him when he was 13 is embedded in the classically rendered aria: "Ever since then I always wanted to become an improviser, composer, stage performer and bandleader". A universal concept shown on the five greatly varied improvisations on the Goldberg Variations, upon which Rantala threads the album like a string of pearls.