Helge Lien Villingsberg

Using just piano and a Weissenborn guitar, Helge Lien and Knut Hem sculpt a timeless sound that conjures up images of endless planes, feelings of freedom and nostalgia. They make use of the harmonic vocabulary of jazz, and the feeling of Country and Bluegrass while occasionally hinting at ambient and film music. Journalists have come up with clever genre names such as Nordicana to try and capture this direction. But although Hem and Lien share influences with these acts, their style feels like a distinct own branch within this fascinating scene. At its very core, Villingsberg is music for inner wandering, a cosmos of solitude, in which the silence behind the notes is as important as the actual sounds made.