
Listen to Scandinavian Melancholy, the new album from Norwegian producer LEIF
On Friday, Lisbon-based Norwegian Leif Haaland will release his new album under his LEIF moniker. It's called Scandinavian Melancholy and we're bringing you a full stream of it a day early.
We've already brought you the "expansive and rave-y" "New Beat", and the rest of LEIF's new album is just as good.
Produced with Daniel Tjäder (The Radio Dept., Korallreven) Scandinavian Melancholy is an exploration of Haaland's experiences of bisexuality, Christianity, dark clubs and the great Norwegian outdoors.
"One of life’s great paradoxes is the yearning for something you never had, the feeling of loss over something that never happened," says LEIF. "It can be simple things like the chance to study abroad or learn to play the guitar, but it can also be deeper things like finding a romantic partner, having children, or like me: exploring your own sexuality whilst you were still young. It’s not necessarily too late, but the time that’s lost you’ll never get back. I believe that you can find a melancholic undertone in most of the art and music from Scandinavia. You find it in Grieg and Munch, but also in Røyksopp, Knausgård and even Ace of Base! Long dark winters stuck halfway down a fjord combined with the knowledge that we’re far from the Centre, where 'it’s' happening, creates a uniquely Scandinavian type of melancholy. One that’s full of longing - with a tiny dash of hope."
The album is an interrogation not just of what it means to be LEIF, but what it means to be Scandinavian...and, well, what it means to be human. Listen above.
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