At First Light - Plak

'At First Light' is the second-best-selling jazz album of all time in Silje Nergaard's native Norway. With this (her seventh album), she's already made it big in the rest of Northern Europe, and in the proud words of the Norwegian Embassy. Silje's voice is as childlike as Lisa Ekdahl's, and as if that wasn't enough she has a baby on backing vocals! Her songwriting, though, is mature. She can write an expansive melody that's well structured but isn't straitjacketed by chorus and verse. Although Silje writes her music at a distance from lyricist Mike McGurk, the producer of their relationship sounds organic as if words and music developed together. In fact, Silje sees the nature of Scandinavian jazz in the need to try to let the melody breathe and it's this sense of space that her voice demands if it's to be at its most individual and expressive.

Recording: at Waterfall Studio, Polar Studio and Short List Analog, all Stockholm

Production: Tom Garretson'