sound

desember 5, 2015

Text Siw Maiken Jæger and Maren Serine Andersen

The Norwegian hip hop duo Fredfades & Ivan Ave met each other in the year of 2008. Ivan Ave, who at that time lived in Stavanger, a harbour town on the Southwestern coast of Norway, was travelling to the capital Oslo on the East side of the nordic country. Back then he went by one of his former artist names, Ivy League, and to our amusement the guys just can’t stop laughing as they try telling mon Dieu their memories of how Fredfades randomly recognized the young rapper in the street. That he actually stopped him, introduced himself as a music producer and declared right away how much he admired Ivy League’s lyrical skills at the duo’s first encounter, is an incident that the guys were quite happy for as they sat side by side having a chat with us many years after, and few days before releasing their new Fruitful LP.

At that moment in the street they instantly connected, and Fredfades quickly suggested that the two of them should make music together. The next day Ivy League AKA Ivan Ave was picked up by Fredfades in his father’s Mercedes Benz, and the new friends cruised out to his childhood home in the eastern suburbs. In Fredfades’ boy room, they went through something about a number of 180 beats made in the charming home studio. After the last beat had stopped, the young producer stared at the young rapper and broke the sudden silence by claiming honest feedback. «True producer style» Ivan Ave nods with a serious smile and a nostalgic look on his face. The two of them have made music together ever since. Seems like true hiphop bromance to mon Dieu.

The duo is in a crew called Mutual Intentions that is one of the many creative collectives making a part of today’s huge trend where talents from different creative fields work together in groups. Mutual Intentions recently hosted a party for Boiler Room that made the popular music platform’s debut here in Norway. The concept of Boiler Room is basically video streaming of live performances on their own website, and the guys explain how they really felt the pressure thinking of live exposure for a worldwide audience; “When I was going to take down the beat set due to schedule, I just held the machine tight and started to kick it loose – I had to get it off stage before the concert was about to start” Fredfades explains enthusiastically. Even though they experienced moments with stress, they are certain that the hard work paid off as they are happy with how the video streaming of their performances turned out.

Seeing that Boiler Room is a platform mostly for electronic music, Mutual Intentions consider their contribution as a fresh breath. As their productons stretch towards the softer, warmer and more hearty traditional music genres of soul, jazz and funk, mon Dieu can’t ignore the irony considering that the crew now slightly confuses the international reputation of Norway, that many associate with macho metal music and the brutality of our viking ancestors. The contrastingly laid-back, pleasant ans sensuous genres that characterize the sound of Mutual Intentions have built enormous fan bases across both age and culture over many, many years. As mon Dieu sees it, this is an aspect that possibly makes their music sound kind of familiar and appealing even for untrained ears. Regarding that benefit, hopefully some new fans outside the duo’s regular genres have discovered them during their Boiler Room session.

Yesterday was the release of Fredfades & Ivan Ave’s second LP, Fruitful via record label Jakarta Records, and today mon Dieu sais toi toi only hours before the release concert that they are doing this evening. At this performance the guys will be presenting their album track by track. That they are working with the German label is actually the very reason why mon Dieu Sound’s attention was drawn in the first place. See, Jakarta Records is more than familiar to us as the label previously has released music by artists that have created some of our Le List-favourites. mon Dieu Sound really admire playful and daring music pioneers such as Ta-ku, Kaytranada and IAMNOBODI that some years ago took modern hiphop to a new level. Canadian Kaytranada’s amazing remix of Janet Jackson’s «If» was a unique milestone reaching sky high from the blossoming wave of good music flowing from Toronto these days.

As we now reflect back on international admirable artists it should also be mentioned that the album «Fruitful» includes collaborations with international artists such as Fresh Daily (New York, USA), Jalal Salaam (New York, USA) and Juju Rogers (Germany). The duo has also collaborated with musicians like Kristoffer Eikrem (Norway) and Arthur Kay Piene (Norway). This indicates that the album certainly offers a wide blend of artistic expressions.

mon Dieu congratulates Fredfades and Ivan Ave on the album release and wish them all the best for the future.