Hanne Kolsto
Album: Forever Maybe
Label: Jansen Plateproduksjon
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.hannekolstoe.com/

As the internet continues to open up the world to musicians, it allows such a different broadening of our musical education, particularly if we are open enough to allow ourselves to listen to and absorb new musical influences. Scenes can open up to us as though they were next door and we can hear traditional music from any country in the world. More importantly it also allows artists to be influenced by music from where their wanderings take them.

Some artists take their local sound out to a wider audience, whilst other artists feel that they can be less bound by genre, people listen to music in a different way in the 21st century and whilst the album format remains a very valid method for delivering songs, it's not the be all and end all. Songs can be delivered in ones and twos, the next song by an artist may bear no relationship to the previous one, because it's been created in a different way.

Hanne Kolsto is just such an example of the later type of artist. She's produced four albums in as many years and the one connecting factor across the four has been the diversity of sound that those albums have portrayed, sometimes in the same song.

As regular readers of Fatea will know, I've been impressed with the quality of music coming out of Scandinavia at the moment right across the board, from the more traditional to the more pop and production sounds, there seems to be a feel for an individualism, rather than mass producing a sound to make it radio friendly, a feeling that quality will out.

"Forever Maybe" is on the edge of what we would normally cover in Fatea and if you are looking for a release of a more acoustic nature, then this cut from Hanne Kolsto may not be for you, there is a far amount of electronic and programming involved, there is a pop culture beating at its heart, but it's one that draws in many influences and one that allows for soundscapes that mash up those sounds and produces a number of songs that have a real appeal. That said, this is a song collection, rather than an album and I worry that it's too diverse to reach to a single audience, but that may be the point...

Neil King