Oh Land emerges from cold, dark, mysterious Denmark with a playful and meticulous vocal-heavy dance-pop sound all her own. Born Nanna Oland Fabricius, she was a ballerina until a back injury threw off her career plans, and she began to consider the music behind her dancing.
Born to an opera singer and a composer, the musician route had always appeared too obvious, but once she started writing it sort of all fell together; after posting three songs to her MySpace a Danish producer contacted her and offered to sign her to his label. Oh Land says that Copenhagen's intimate and experimental music scene and with the freedom of working with a small label allowed her to realize all of her ideas on debut album
Fauna.
The album samples the sounds of walking in the rain and of flies buzzing, among other things, and sort of floats around the surreal world of Oh Land's imagination with an at times ethereal, underwater sound. She's compared her live show to "Mary Poppins on acid," cites bizarre/charming/dark/dreamlike TV show Twin Peaks as an influences, and compares her exploratory nature to that of Alice in Wonderland; all leading to a portrait of someone whose far-out creations are something much harder to categorize than just "trippy." Her musical inspirations are also pretty diverse; she claims never to have listened to the radio until she herself was played on it, drawing largely from classical music, as well as some favorite contemporary artists, including Bjork, Portishead, and CocoRosie.
Her
preposterously awesome album cover gets her a secure spot on my list of people to whose minds I would like to take a field trip, but last time I checked that's not actually possible so the music's as close as I'll get. See photos of Oh Land's recent Guest Apartment shoot
here, and check back later for video of the session. -
selden paterson
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MP3: "Son of A Gun"
Oh Land on Myspace 