Erik Honoré

NEWS
Punkt remix of J. Peter Schwalm/Brian Eno available
Our remix of the J. Peter Schwalm/Brian Eno track "No Orders" is now available for download here. Jan Bang and I remixed it at the Punkt Studio in Kristiansand earlier this year.
BIO etc
If you've come here, you're probably a fellow musician. So here it is: a small "CV" of my musical and literary work.
Punkt is the duo project I have together with Jan Bang (and also a festival - see the Punkt page .) The other tracks featured here are production work, which is my main occupation, the rest of the time spent writing novels and working on my own music projects.
Please feel free to send a mail regarding production work or whatever. But if you are interested in playing at the Punkt Festival, please use this address: [email protected].
There´s also a Myspace-site for the "singer/songwriter/laptop" project Elsewhere here .
About the songs in the player:
Arve Henriksen: ”Chiaro” (Henriksen/Bang/Kleive) from ”Chiaroscuro”
I can truly say that Arve Henriksen’s “Chiaroscuro” is one of the most fulfilling projects I have been lucky enough to be involved in. It is a great album, deeply emotional and brimming with a sort of desperate beauty, without ever being sentimental. I can allow myself to be this euphoric because the record isn't "mine" - I’m just co-producing and mixing on this one. The compositions and performances and arrangements are by Arve, in collaboration with Audun Kleive on percussion and Jan Bang on live sampling and electronics. The album’s based on live recordings from a Norwegian tour, overdubbed and edited/mixed at the Punkt studio in Kristiansand. Even though Arve Henriksen is primarily a trumpeter, this track features him singing.
Elsewhere: ”Year of the Bullet” (Honoré), unreleased
The third Elsewhere album is soon finished, and here is an excerpt. For more info about Elsewhere, go here .
Punkt: “Comfort” (Bang/Honoré) from “Crime Scenes”
The collaboration with Jan Bang, going back to when we were teens, has been extremely important to me. On "Comfort" it was very nice to build a song mostly with synthesizers again, playing the old Roland track by track without midi/quantization, and then editing. Very much like the first things I did on a Tascam four track cassette recorder a very long time ago. Jan sang his phrases into a sampler while sitting in the control room with his young child on his lap, and then triggered the samples to fit in with the track.
Velvet Belly: “The Conversation Stops” (Almedal/Velvet Belly) from “The Landing”
In contrast to “Chiaroscuro”, Velvet Belly’s “The Landing” was a production process more like the ones that I’m used to: Wearing different hats; being a producer, engineer, mixer, co-writer, and working a lot with programming and treatments. We never could afford an engineer when we started out, and that was probably a good thing - it forced us musicians to learn engineering, long before the laptop era. Velvet Belly are from Kristiansand, so we’ve grown up together, socially, geographically and musically. Although it was the next album, ”Lucia”, that won a Norwegian grammy and spawned a minor hit, I still prefer "The Landing". It's more adventurous and at the same time coherent, despite some beauty marks. The track featured here represents the “pop” side of the album.
Eivind Aarset: “Family Picture 1” (Aarset/Bang/Honoré)from “Connected”
I just like the sound of this. The combination of "strange" and (relatively) "accessible" is always a good one. And the atmosphere during the recording was very much like what Jan and I have been fortunate enough to experience at the Punkt festival these 3 last years: A sort of “relaxed, intense, curious openness”. Made possible by people like Eivind, who come to the session ... “i godt ærend” (an archaic Norwegian phrase that means approximately: "in a positive spirit/with good intentions").
Apart from these featured examples, here’s some more productions I still can listen to without blushing:
Most of the 6 Velvet Belly albums, my "learning period" (so: except the first one, which sounds like I accidentally dropped it in a pool of late 80's reverb)
David Sylvian: Remixes on “Camphor” and “The Blemish Remixes” (together with Jan Bang)
J. Peter Schwalm feat. Brian Eno: “No Orders” remix (with Jan, available here. )
Elsewhere (trio with vocalist Greta Aagre and guitarist Jørgen Rief, see www.myspace.com/elsewheresounds): The albums we've released, and also "Year of the Bullet" (a planned album of songs recently written, being recorded now)
Claudia Scott: "Soul on Soul" (recorded in New Orleans with stacks of tube equipment, nominated for the Spellemann award)
Books
As an author, I consider myself just started. Three novels published so far, the fourth will be finished this year.
“Orakelveggen” (“The Oracle Wall” - Gyldendal 2002)
A novel dealing with (and partly taking place in) the digital reality, "Hyperspace", and written in a way clearly inspired by the Internet’s hyperlink structure. Meaning: not linear, following a different kind of logic, in many ways closer to how the mind works. Nominated for the Sørlandets Litteraturpris (a regional litterature award).
“Ubåten på Nørholm” (“The Submarine at Nørholm” - Gyldendal 2003)
An attempt to tell a very different story using some of the same methods that I used in the debut. An experiment, definitely. Nørholm was Knut Hamsun’s home, not far from Kristiansand, and the novel revolves around real and imagined stories about the controversial author.
"Kaprersanger" (“Hijacker’s Songs” - Gyldendal 2005)
On the surface, at least: a lighter novel, and much more traditional in form than the first two. A “pop song”. But actually (to me, at least) a more “important” story; a book about regaining the passion for life, and in life.
Reviews (book reviews in Norwegian):
(Of course, only the positive ones. Bad reviews, and artists’ responses to them, always make me think of the old Black Adder episode where John Cleese, dressed as an orthodox jew, comes backstage after performing with his group “The Jumping Jews of Jerusalem” to no applause. He looks puzzled, and says: “I don’t think they really understood it.”)
Punkt “Crime Scenes”:
“Bang and Honoré are masters at sonic conception, so regardless of how much is going on and how experimental things get, the music remains uncluttered and approachable. Their vision of electronica incorporates elements of world music, techno, spoken word and more into a genre-busting mix. By retaining a spirit of spontaneity that distinguishes it from the more simplistic view many have of music stemming from electronic means, they manage to shape Crime Scenes into a truly forward-thinking album. Purists may balk, but Punkt is one vision of future music that, while awaiting greater recognition in North America, is already becoming a brand name elsewhere in the world.” - John Kelman, All About Jazz
Orakelveggen:
"En dypt original roman som strutter av talent og kløktig skrivekunst. Jeg tar neppe munnen for full hvis jeg spår at «Orakelveggen» vil vekke stor oppmerksomhet. Det fortjener den i alle fall. I «Orakelveggen» har nemlig Honoré stilt opp et speil for oss nåtidsmennesker, et speil som på illusorisk vis skjuler og avslører vårt sanne ansikt - i den grad et slikt fortsatt fins. " - Øystein Rottem, Dagbladet
"Skremmende god. (...) Det som imponerer mest, er debutanten Honorés evne til å binde sammen alle trådene til en tett og flott historie som likevel har noe av det gripløse og illusoriske ved seg." - Geir Vestad, Hamar Arbeiderblad
Ubåten på Nørholm :
"... eg tillet meg kategorisk å slå fast at Noreg med Erik Honoré har fått ein ny diktar av format." - Bjarne Tveiten, Fædrelandsvennen
Kaprersanger:
”Klang av raffinement - en fiffig fortelling komponert rundt en gåtefull Billie Holiday-klassiker. Forfatterens tredje roman er chic og modernistisk, samtidig som den flekser stilistiske muskler. En forfatter med kontroll over virkemidlene.” - Stein Roll, Adresseavisen