Årabrot

Årabrot (also Arabrot) is a Norwegian Grammy award-winning noise rock band, originally from Haugesund, but now with a creative base out of Djura, Sweden, and the Oslo-based record label Fysisk Format. Arabrot has been an outsider on the Norwegian music scene since their beginning in 2001. During the first few years they received little recognition from the music establishment in their homeland, but Arabrot carved their own path and quietly built a reputation among music fans out in Europe. Arabrot first received widespread recognition with the Steve Albini produced third album, The Brother Seed (2009). Following this album, Arabrot went into a creative blaze the succeeding years. For instance, they did live scores at silent film showings (“Faust” from 1926 in Trondheim, “Häxan” from 1922 at Øyafestivalen, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” from 1920 and “Die Nibelungen” from 1924 at Verdensteatret in Tromsø) and did commissioned work for the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. In the middle of all this, Arabrot produced the exploratory EPs AbsoluteNegativism, I Rove and Mæsscr, two albums under the Nernes Skagen moniker, as well as two full length albums: The gargantuan Billy Anderson-produced double album REVENGE and the needle-sharp Solar Anus, again featuring Steve Albini as a producer. Arabrot’s flourishing lyricism adds an unmatched depth. Macabre renditions of classic works like the Bible and Dante’s Inferno meet philosophical themes derived from the historical avant-garde. The existentialism of Camus and Sartre; the surrealism of Bataille and Lautréamont; the eroticism of Henry Miller and de Sade; the romantic writings of Coleridge, Poe and de Quincey; mystic thinkers such as Aleister Crowley and Jorge Luis Borges, oppositionals like Féderico Lorca and of course Norway’s chief contrarian Jens Bjørneboe all make their way into Arabrot’s character. Arabrot’s much anticipated self-titled sixth album, with artwork by Johannes Høie and recording duties by Emil Nikolaisen (Serena-Maneesh), was released in August 2013 to 8/10′s in NME, Rock Sound, Metal Hammer & Terrorizer.

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