release date: Feb. 7, 2007
format: digital
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,64]
producer: Ane Brun
label: DetErMine Records / V2 - nationality: Norway
Track highlights: 2. "To Let Myself Go" - 6. "A Temporary Dive" - 8. "So You Did It Again" - 9. "The Dancer" - 10. "Changing of the Seasons / Fight Song" - 12. "So Real"
Live album by Ane Brun with 17 tracks from a series of concerts in Norway and Sweden recorded from Sep. 10 to 20, 2006. Although, the album quite nicely draws attention to the whole of Scandinavia (where she rightly toured) the songs are taken from eight performances, of which nine are from Norway and eight from Sweden. And of these eight Swedish concerts, seven are from one and the same show on 20/9 in Södra Teatern in Stockholm, while the last one is from the night before at Katalin in Uppsala. The concert recordings in Norway, on the other hand, stem from six different locations. The album has a total running time of 75 minutes.
The songs are mainly from her two studio albums, Spending Time With Morgan from 2003 and A Temporary Dive from 2005, and in addition there has been room for three covers by PJ Harvey, Jeff Buckley, and Henry Purcell, with the latter's song also featuring on her 2005 album.
It's not the big traditional backing band that Brun brings with her on these concerts. When she isn't playing alone on guitar or piano, she's often accompanied by either the string quartet The DMF String Quartet, by guitarist Staffan Johansson, pianist Nina Kinert, and / or by percussionist Erik Arvinder. Whether playing with minimal instrumentation or as soloist, she has said, "There is something about the focus in playing by myself that fascinates me", she says. "There’s nothing to hide behind when I'm alone on stage and it becomes almost meditative for me when I play."
Live in Scandinaviais a fine rendering of Ane Brun on a stage where you can almost sense her abilities as a great and present live artist, which her early career as a street musician has clearly had a positive effect on.
