Maja S. K. Ratkje/Torstein Slåen/Sigurd Ytre-Arne ^(NO)

Maja S. K. Ratkje: vocals, bells

Torstein Slåen: guitar, electronics

Sigurd Ytre-Arne: synth, drums, samplers and electronics

This year we have two of All Ears' original festival organizers playing at the festival! The one and only Maja S. K. Ratkje is ending our friday night with a brand new trio, their first album 'The Swamp' being released in May.

'The Swamp’ is a get-to-know-you party where furniture is broken, wine glasses are smashed and walls are defaced with graffiti, but the living room remains more beautiful than the night before.

With a fair dose of anti-bullshit inherited from decades of jazz/improv/contemporary music mixed together in the Norwegian stew pot, they improvise new songs across time, aesthetics and genre affiliation. ‘The Swamp’ hovers between elongated drones, eruptive outbursts, romantic harmonies, soft and hard, noise and beauty. The title plays on a swamp that must be regularly drained with life-affirming, fantasy-promoting music to keep down the high population of totalitarian oligarch mosquitoes to stop them from infecting the surrounding population with conformity malaria.