Melody A.M.

• DWARA

  Finnish artist DWARA (Anni Kaismala) joins Melody A.M. for an in-depth conversation about all things music.  Hailing from Karttula - a part of Finland’s Kuopio region - Anni has lived in different corners of the world including India, Italy and the UK, and it was her collaboration with Spanish musician and producer, Khotton, which eventually brought about her move to Madrid, where she is currently based. Anni has been steadily building her musical body of work since 2020, when her first single, Power, came out just before the world went into lockdown. Anni’s rich and diverse range of releases means that it would be lazy to slot the DWARA and Khotton musical universe into just one or even two genres. Theirs is a much more involved and sprawling catalogue, covering pop, rock, folk and electronica. There’s a real strength in that, because it’s hard to get bored listening to DWARA with her discography offering surprises at every turn. Take, for example, the song There’s nothing I can’t do: it starts off as one thing and mutates through the bridge and then the chorus into something completely other.  In our interview, Anni tells Melody A.M. about the forthcoming EP, 'Plenty', as well as what her and Khotton’s creative process looks like. We also talk about being able to tell your friends “I love you” and living for the sake of the now. Check out our DWARA playlist with some of the best moments from Anni’s discography to date. You'll find it at www.melodyam.com/dwara

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  43:25
• PÄIVI HIRVONEN

  Päivi Hirvonen is a musician, composer and singer, who's a linchpin figure in the Finnish folk music scene. Blending tradition with innovation, she is best known for being a true virtuoso when it comes to the fiddle and the jouhikko - a traditional Finnish bowed lyre. It’s an instrument which musicians almost entirely assigned to history by the early 20th century but - good news! - it has, in recent years, started enjoying something of a revival.   Päivi was born in Jyväskylä, a city in the centre of Finland, that has been described as “The Athens of Finland”. These days, she lives in Tampere.  In our interview, Päivi talks about creating her last album, Kallio, during the pandemic and she also reflects on how the way she worked then has moved on to bear out on her next record, which will be out in the spring.  As a member of the band Okra Playground - one of Finland’s leading contemporary folk ensembles -  Päivi also gets to regularly collaborate with other musicians. Our conversation touches on how she determines whether a new emerging song would be going to Okra Playground or remain as a solo track and what it’s like working with her bandmates over the last 14 years or so.  Check out our dedicated Päivi Hirvonen playlist at www.melodyam.com/paivi with some of the gems from the Finnish musician's back catalogue, including some of her work with the band. 

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  35:05
• MIN STORA SORG

  Ann-Sofie Lundin, aka Min Stora Sorg, joins Melody A.M. for a conversation about divas, controversy, the challenges faced by independent creatives and making hypnotic, playful disco whilst also doing the laundry. A decade after the release of her debut album as Min Stora Sorg, Ann-Sofie reflects on the ups and downs of her career and the enduring collaborations (with close friend, stylist and costume designer, Daniel Åkerström-Steen, and her partner, the visual artist John Artur) that have sustained it throughout the past ten years.  Hailing from Gävle, a couple of hours north of Stockholm, Ann-Sofie grew up in a working class family and started playing music as a teenager. Friends thought she might end up as a politician, but her talent as an accomplished pianist meant it was inevitable that she’d become a professional musician.  Ann-Sofie’s admiration for Swedish icon, Camilla Henemark from Army of Lovers, her fascination with divas and popstars and a natural draw to Spanish culture have injected a heightened, camp and humorous sensibility to her visual aesthetic. Her most recent releases, created with former Melody A.M. guests, Pure Shores, and Swedish producer, Johannes Wikström (Yourhighness), bring euphoria, sexiness and hedonism to music designed to soundtrack a night out in the clubs.  You can also imagine these tracks (‘Klackskor’, ‘40+’ and ‘El Cielo’) being played - loud! - at Ann-Sofie’s own club night, Klubb La Reina, which she has been running with Daniel and John in Stockholm for the past several years. We’ve included these songs, alongside other highlights from the Min Stora Sorg back-catalogue in the playlist accompanying this episode at www.melodyam.com/mss

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  58:24
• IONNALEE

  The pod’s guest for this episode is Swedish singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, director, water-colour painter, mother - both in the parental sense and the meme sense - ionnalee (Jonna Lee).  With a career spanning over two decades and 9 studio albums, Jonna previously joined Chris and Doron for an interview in season 1 of Melody A.M. to discuss iamamiwhoami’s 2022 record, Be Here Soon. In the autumn, Jonna put out two new albums, Close Your Eyes, and its Swedish language counterpart, Blund. She has referred to the creative process of bringing this new music to life as making something “in colour, shimmer, playfulness” - a contrast to having been brushed by darkness.  In doing that, she reconnected with her iamamiwhoami album from 2014, BLUE, which took the independence she had carved out for herself as an artist with the first two iamamiwhoami records - bounty and kin - to a whole new level. Close Your Eyes and Blund, therefore, were created and presented as siblings to that seminal album, which came a decade before them.  At the time of the release of BLUE, Doron travelled to Sweden to undertake what is believed to be one of the very first filmed interviews given by Jonna about the iamamiwhoami project (filmed for online music and culture publication, The 405, on Djurgården in Stockholm).  Ten years on, Melody A.M. explored the possibility of revisiting that filmed interview together with Jonna and having another sit-down, outdoors in Stockholm, for a chat. Jonna said yes and we met for what is now Melody A.M.’s first audiovisual episode.  Our meeting was an opportunity to reflect on Jonna’s growth and development as an artist over the years as well as the connection between BLUE and the new music that shares a strong family connection with it. We also spoke about Jonna’s recent residency at Stockholm’s Fotografiska Museum and the exciting new addition to her own record label (To whom it may concern) - the Swedish artist, Jenny Wilson.  This episode is presented with a big thank-you to John Strandh, who undertook the filming of the interview, and To whom it may concern.  On the ionnalee page of our website you can also find a playlist with our favourite ionnalee and iamamiwhoami tracks from the artist's rich discography.

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  49:12
• MÖRMAID

  This episode’s guest is Oslo-based creator, Live Sollid Schullerud, who produces progressive electro-pop under the act name, Mörmaid. Whilst Live is now associated with futuristic electronica, her musical roots lie in a very different genre: jazz. Before evolving into Mörmaid, she spent years as a jazz musician, an experience that Melody A.M. reckons continues to influence her work in subtle but significant ways, particularly in her attention to rhythm and melodic complexity. Live’s first Mörmaid release came in the summer of 2020 with her debut single, ‘Turn Away’, but - as you’ll hear from our interview - the groundwork for her sound had been laid much earlier. She began conceptualising the Mörmaid project by experimenting with production and songwriting well before that. Signed to Beat Palace Records, the UK-based label, Live released her debut album, Pearlescent Dark, earlier this year. Recent single, ‘Wet Summer’, has received a lot of attention, first of all because it’s great and because of the eye-popping music video that accompanied it, created using the Generative AI tool, Midjourney.  The use of AI in art has long sparked debate and Live herself has expressed ambivalence about the part it plays in her artistry. In our interview, we talk about the reactions to the music video as well as the impact of AI. Very shortly after we spoke, Live put out her latest music video, ‘Bury All’, in which artificial intelligence didn’t play a part and which makes for a fascinating watch in its own right – we would highly recommend giving it a couple of minutes of your time. You can also check out the Best of Mörmaid playlist, which accompanies this episode, on our website at www.melodyam.com/mormaid

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  40:17

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