Huntsville performs on July 1st as part of the series, Out of Scandinavia: New Indie Music from the Nordics at Scandinavia House in New York, and July 2nd at Joe's Pub.
Norwegian band Huntsville delves into an adventurous crossbreed of rock, drones, country, jazz and electro-acoustic improvisation featuring Ivar Grydeland (guitars, banjo, and pedal steel guitar), Tonny Kluften (electric bass, double bass, bass pedals) and Ingar Zach (percussion, tabla machine, sarangi box, sruti box, drone commander).
After their debut For The Middle Class (Rune Grammofon, 2006) Boston Weekly wrote, “armed with a banjo, a double bass, a pedal steel, a bizarre tabla machine, shruti boxes and a fondness for freeing folk from its folk songs — from Santa Fe to Bombay.”
Huntsville’s unexpected sounds and textures, allied with echoes of traditional genres in a radical new conceptual language have been described as abstract drone Americana and yoga country. Rock-A-Rolla (UK) wrote, “…they alternate between brief Americana-esque instrumentals and lengthier excursions into fast, fluid motion, attaining trance-velocity like some rare amalgam of Miles Davis, Steve Reich and early Tortoise.”
On their second album, the double release Eco, arches & eras (Rune Grammofon, 2008), they dig even deeper into their striking and original sound world – this time with riffing electric guitars, hard-hitting drums and their secret weapon: a drone commander. During the making of Eco, arches & eras, Norwegian singer Sidsel Endresen joined in on one track, while guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Glenn Kotche (both of Wilco) visited Huntsville on an hour-long track captured live in 2007.