PRESSE: Sammlung Presseberichte zum FOTM-Album
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Apparatchick -
4. Juni 2009 um 20:28 -
Erledigt
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Interview mit Morten Harket
"Wir wollten sehen, ob wir noch gut sind"
Dienstag, 14. Juli 2009
Die Band a-ha knüpft mit "Foot Of The Mountain" an ihre Erfolge aus den achtziger Jahren an. Auf dem neuen Album widmen die Norweger sich wieder verstärkt dem Synthie-Pop, klingen aber modern genug, um nicht in der Nostalgieecke zu landen. Olaf Neumann traf den a-ha-Sänger Morten Harket in Berlin.
Berliner Morgenpost:
"Foot Of The Mountain" stieg in die deutschen Charts direkt auf Platz 3 ein. Hatten Sie mit diesem Erfolg gerechnet?Morten Harket:
Ich hatte bei dem Song auf jeden Fall ein gutes Gefühl. Das wurde jetzt von den Plattenkäufern bestätigt.Manche sehen das Album fast als ein Comeback. Dabei waren Sie eigentlich nie weg...
In gewisser Weise ist es sogar eins. Denn für dieses Album sind wir zu unseren alten Synthies und Programmierern zurückgekehrt, die wir zusätzlich zu modernen Instrumenten spielen. Sowas taten wir zuletzt 1985 bei unserem Debütalbum in London. Wegen dieses komplizierten Prozesses dauerten die Vorbereitungen für "Foot Of The Mountain" mehrere Jahre. Das Ganze war wie ein großes Reinemachen. Es sollte uns helfen, herauszufinden, ob wir weitermachen sollen oder nicht. Um als Band relevant zu bleiben, muss man seine Gewohnheiten immer wieder infrage stellen.
Es gibt genug Musikhörer, die für "Retro-Trips" dankbar sind. Geben Sie den Leuten, was sie wollen?
Ich glaube, viele werden das Album mit unseren frühen Arbeiten vergleichen. Vielleicht werden sie sagen, a-ha haben zur alten Form zurückgefunden. Das war aber nicht unsere Absicht. Den Sound der 80-er wieder einzufangen, war ein echtes Bedürfnis der Band.
Die meisten Songtexte stammen von Paul Waaktaar-Savoy. Denkt er beim Schreiben an Sie?
Ich glaube nicht, dass er dabei ständig an mich denkt. Natürlich ist ihm klar, für wen er schreibt. Oft passiert das in einer Tonart, die eigentlich gar nicht zu meiner Stimmlage passt. Ich singe die Songs trotzdem, weil ich mich gern herausfordern lasse. Mit jeder Platte erobere ich mir neue Bereiche. Das ist Teil der Evolution der Band. Von Natur aus bin ich ein Bariton, aber ich singe wie ein Tenor.
Versuchen Sie sich auch in Genres außerhalb der Popmusik?
Bei bestimmten Nebenprojekten singe ich zum Beispiel Soul-Songs. Auch meine Soloalben haben nichts mit a-ha zu tun. Da strahlt meine Stimme etwas völlig Anderes aus. Das ist aber nicht geplant, es geschieht unbewusst.
Sind Sie manchmal von Ihrer eigenen Stimme überrascht?
Nicht mehr. Aber ich bin extrem sensibel, ob sie ehrlich und wahrhaftig klingt. Heute beherrsche ich mein Handwerkszeug. Anfangs passierte bei a-ha vieles im Affekt. Das lasse ich heute nicht mehr zu. Man würde es sofort hören.
Spielen Sie bei Streitereien zwischen den Songschreibern Paul und Magne den Vermittler?
Ich vermittle nicht. Ich sage ganz einfach Nein, wenn ein Song nicht zu mir passt oder nichts in mir auslöst. Ich nehme an der Entwicklung von Songs aktiv teil, egal ob ich sie geschrieben habe oder ein anderer.
Ab wann wurden Sie in den kreativen Prozess einbezogen?
Ein a-ha-Album ist ein lebendiger Prozess. Da gibt es keine Regeln. Das Schreiben geschieht in der Regel so: Paul schnappt sich seine Gitarre und summt dazu. Genauso macht es Magne. Ich bekomme dann meist eine Melodie und einen halbfertigen Text präsentiert.
Diesmal arbeiteten Sie mit drei Produzenten, darunter dem Deutschen Roland Spremberg. Braucht a-ha im Studio eine treibende Kraft?
Wir hatten bislang fast immer Glück mit unseren Produzenten, aber nicht jeder passt zu jedem Projekt. Eine Band ist keine statische Angelegenheit.Machen Sie sich bei der Arbeit an einem neuen Album auch Gedanken, ob die Songs live funktionieren?
Nein. Das beraten wir erst, wenn wir eine Tour vorbereiten.
Im Oktober geht es wieder los. Wie schwer ist es, ein Programm zu erstellen, das sowohl den neuen Songs als auch Klassikern gerecht wird?
Diese Tour wird eine interessante Herausforderung. Bisher spielten wir die alten programmierten Sachen immer mit einer Rockband-Attitüde. Diesmal tun wir genau das Gegenteil und spielen unsere rockigeren Stücke mit Synthies. Ich bin gespannt, wie sie sich dabei verändern werden. Ich hoffe, wir können den Songs ein paar coole neue Aspekte hinzufügen.Werden Sie Ihrer Hits "Take On Me" und "The Sun Always Shines On T.V." niemals überdrüssig?
So lange wir sie neu interpretieren, nein. Wir können unser Live-Programm in jeder erdenklichen Stimmung spielen. Alles ist möglich.
"Take On Me" wurde oft gecovert. Gibt es eine Version, die Sie ganz besonders schätzen?
Es gab brillante Adaptionen, aber ich habe keine Lieblingsversion. Auffällig sind die unheimlich vielen schwarzen Künstler mit unerwarteten Versionen von HipHop bis R&B. Generell fand ich die am besten, die eigen klingen. Die Version von A1 ist weniger interessant, weil sie sich stark am Original angelehnt hat, aber ihnen gelang mit "Take On Me" der Nummer-1-Hit in England, den wir selbst nicht geschafft haben. Dank A1 haben wir nun auch dort eine Nr. 1. (lacht)
Viele große Bands und Künstler geben zu, von a-ha beeinflusst zu sein, darunter U2, die Pet Shop Boys und Robbie Williams. Gefällt es Ihnen, solche Stars als Fans zu haben?
Für mich sind das keine Celebrity-Fans, sondern Künstler mit einer starken Identität. Insofern fühle ich mich geehrt, wenn sie Respekt vor unserer Arbeit haben. Das ist das größte Kompliment.
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14.07.2009 12:23 Uhr
Popgruppe
a-ha sehen neue Platte als Comeback-Album
Die norwegische Band a-ha („Take on Me“) sieht ihr neues Album „Foot of the Mountain“ als Comeback-Platte - auch wenn sich die Gruppe nie aufgelöst hatte.
„Für dieses Album sind wir zu unseren alten Synthies und Programmierern zurückgekehrt, die wir zusätzlich zu modernen Instrumenten spielen. Sowas taten wir zuletzt 1985 bei unserem Debütalbum in London“, sagte Sänger Morten Harket der „Berliner Morgenpost“. Wegen dieses komplizierten Prozesses hätten die Vorbereitungen für „Foot of the Mountain“ auch mehrere Jahre gedauert. „Das Ganze war wie ein großes Reinemachen. Es sollte uns helfen, herauszufinden, ob wir weitermachen sollen oder nicht.“
http://www.haz.de/Nachrichten/Fe…-Comeback-Album -
Hallo! Ich bin neu hier.
Haben wir das schon?Neu auf CD
A-Ha besitzen die ewige Wirkungsmacht
Samstag, 13. Juni 2009 15:00 - Von Michael Pilz* Slideshow
Die Qualität ihres neunten Albums macht tatsächlich sprachlos: Mit "Foot Of The Mountain" stellen A-Ha erneut ihre Wirkungsmacht unter Beweis. Außerdem gibt es wenig Bemerkenswertes von den Black Eyed Peas, und Tony Allen trommelt was das Zeug hält. Morgenpost Online bespricht die Platten der Woche.
A-Ha: Foot Of The Mountain (We Love Music)
Musste das denn sein? Die Weltpremiere ihrer neuen Hymne fand in einer Kölner Mehrzweckhalle statt, bei Heidi Klum und ihrer Mädchenselektion. Danach traten A-Ha beim 50. „The Dome“ in München auf. Aber es ist ja so: Wenn Morten Harket singt, mit 49 Jahren, blicken vor der Bühne weinende Mädchen zu ihm auf. Das sagt zum Einen etwas über das Verschwimmen der Begriffe jung und alt im Pop. Zum anderen spricht es für die ewige Wirkungsmacht der norwegischen Band A-Ha und ihre ständige Erneuerung. Der Auftakt ihres neunten Albums in inzwischen 27 Jahren macht einen schlicht sprachlos. Pal Waaktar hat hübsche House-Programme in den Synthesizern aufgespürt, und Harket preist dazu von Arbeitsplatz, „The Bandstand“. Anschließend fallen die Stücke etwas ab wie immer bei A-Ha. Aber was heißt das schon.
Anzeige
4 von 5 Punkten
http://www.morgenpost.de/kultur/article…kungsmacht.html -
hallo ibsen! viel spaß hier - und ich hoffe, du machst deinem namen alle ehre.
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Bisher spielten wir die alten programmierten Sachen immer mit einer Rockband-Attitüde. Diesmal tun wir genau das Gegenteil und spielen unsere rockigeren Stücke mit Synthies. Ich bin gespannt, wie sie sich dabei verändern werden.
Da bin ich auch gespannt.... :cry: ich mochte die "Rockband-Attitüde" und es ärgert mich irgendwie, dass sie sich jetzt fast dafür entschuldigen -
Da bin ich auch gespannt.... :cry: ich mochte die "Rockband-Attitüde" und es ärgert mich irgendwie, dass sie sich jetzt fast dafür entschuldigen
ja...diese stelle ist mir auch unangenehm ins auge gestochen . -
foot of the mountain ist heute "song of the day" bei popjustice:
http://www.popjustice.com/index.php?opti…3839&Itemid=279 -
ja...diese stelle ist mir auch unangenehm ins auge gestochen .
Ja, mir auch.
Lassen wir uns überraschen, bleibt eh nichts anderes.
Oder MP3 mit ins Konzi nehmen und nur schauen?:-P Nööö, oder? -
Ja, mir auch.
Lassen wir uns überraschen, bleibt eh nichts anderes.
Oder MP3 mit ins Konzi nehmen und nur schauen?:-P Nööö, oder?Das ist ja mal ne Variante - da wär ich ja gar nicht drauf gekommen...
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warum sie werden z.b. the sun always shines on tv mit e gitarre spielen (die letzten live auftritte zb in norway denke ich zeigen doch wie sie die songs spielen werden) und der song rockt doch auch. schauen wir mal vieleicht spielen sie dan ja auch mal move to memphis in der ersten version die zum greatest hits album rauskam live, da wahr ja auch mehr synthie mit drin. Und hurry home möchte ich bitte auch mal live hören.
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A-ha: Foot of the Mountain
4 von 5 Sternen
Any group that sticks together long enough, no matter how unfashionable, gets to enjoy their what-goes-around- comes-around moment. Nevertheless, even A-ha must be taken aback by the extent of their ubiquity this decade. Coldplay and Keane have paid frequent and glowing tribute to the group whose biggest hits — Take on Me, The Sun Always Shines on TV — were in the charts more than two decades ago. Now, the partial return to simple synth earworms on the ninth album gives the Norwegian trio the air of a Nordic Uncle Remus to callow synth-prodders such as Little Boots and Frankmusik.
But what might have sounded like a grisly midlife crisis is, happily, nothing of the sort. Refracting any idea through the default desolation of Paul Waaktaar-Savoy’s melodies and Morten Harket’s sad goatherd timbre is what ultimately turns it into an A-ha song. On the title track and new single Harket exhorts his partner to relinquish the chattels of the material world and help to him commune with nature at, well, the foot of the mountain (or, if you will, allow him to be her fjord escort).
Rummage through the rest of Foot of the Mountain and you’ll find that our piffling place in the cosmos is a recurring theme here. On the digitised disco noir of What There Is, Harket invokes a world that will keep on turning long after any imminent apocalypse. Less effective is the weedy eco-dirge Mother Nature Goes to Heaven. But there’s plenty else here — the ominous Casio-jabbing of The Bandstand and karmic finger-wagging of Sunny Mystery in particular — to redeem it. On the epic Shadowside, Harket cuts loose with words and notes that soar in inverse proportion to the emotional freefall that they describe. It’s a trick they first aced on the crashing mental collapse of the single I’ve Been Losing You in 1986. On this evidence, there’s no reason to believe they can’t keep on doing it for 23 more years.http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_e…icle6716556.ece
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BBC Review
It is difficult to see where they go from here
A-Ha bowed out in 1993, usurped in teen bedrooms by Take That, and in the charts by novelty rave; it was not their finest hour. Seven years later, they reappeared with the wistful Minor Earth, Major Sky. Their ninth album Foot of the Mountain is a welcome return to the electronica of their early hits and a glorious reminder of their soaring melodies.
Since their return, A-Ha Mk 2 have distanced themselves from their 'pin-up period' with anthemic, chiming guitar pop, so it is ironic this album returns to their debut sound. For most bands, returning to their roots involves stripping back on studio polish. For A-ha, it is the opposite and dance producer Steve Osborne brings an early 80s Depeche Mode sheen to elegant, simple riff-led, songs.
The sad heart at many of A-ha songs is often overlooked, and here Real Meaning unfolds with a plaintive piano motif and brilliantly dispenses with a chorus; it's heart breaking, as is the strings-soaked Shadowside. Despite lyrics that probably make more sense in Norwegian, there's a profound yearning throughout, suggesting Scandinavian winters cut more than cheekbones. Most importantly, Morten Harket's voice, already a national treasure, has matured, competing with the late Billy Mackenzie for pop's greatest voice.
As with earlier work, Morten has not contributed to songwriting, which judging by recent efforts is a shame. However, his increasing eccentricities have resulted in songs about orchids. Their solo careers are evidenced by occasional jostling for the microphone, though Pal and Mags successfully underpin Morten with weighty melodies such as on The Bandstand, which has most in common with Take On Me.
The title track is assuredly Keane-esque, but the album is not perfect. There are moments of poor judgement such as the shaky combination of a Rough Guide to Space Travel and Bontempi organ on Start the Simulator. However, while continuing their trend for imperfect albums, this brings A-ha mk2 full circle, dovetailing so neatly with their original sound that it is difficult to see where they go from here. -
A-ha interview: A new take on them
Norwegian rockers A-ha, Magne Furuholmen (left), Morten Harket and Paul Waaktaar-SavoyPublished Date: 18 July 2009
By PAUL LESTER
THERE IS A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE between 1980s teen-pop sensations A-ha and the boy bands who emerged in their wake, even though they had an audience of excitable young females in common. For a start, the Norwegian trio wrote their own songs and played their own instruments. And those songs had about them an air of disquiet and existential doubt that was very Scandinavian, making them seem like a Joy Division for anxious, adolescent girls.
It was easy, because of their poster-boy appeal – especially singer Morten Harket, whose chiselled features could have earned him a fortune as a model – to dismiss them as purveyors of pap, but from their global debut hit single from 1985, Take On Me, onwards, it was clear that A-ha were doyens of exquisitely dolorous synthpop, sung with soaring yearning by Harket: imagine Take That produced by Ingmar Bergman. What's most surprising is that their "pocket symphonies", as main songwriter (and guitarist) Paul Waaktaar-Savoy calls them, songs as achingly sorrowful as Here I Stand And Face The Rain, Summer Moved On and There's Never A Forever Thing, have proved so popular – A-ha have sold almost 40 million albums."All music that's meaningful is pain-condensed and made into something you can relate to," decides keyboardist Magne Furuholmen, as we settle into the band's smart West London hotel suite. "Happy music makes me sad," he laughs. "It's like watching a Hollywood movie where you know the ending and (are) told what to feel." The most garrulous member, he fails to see why so-called "dark music" should make you feel depressed. Quite the opposite, in fact. "People find consolation in the way that someone can articulate conflicting feelings and turn them into some sort of beauty," he says. "That's the attraction of Joy Division to me – their music's beautiful."
Waaktaar-Savoy is literally a pale imitation of his former self – wan and exhausted from his journey (he's just flown in from New York), he sinks back into the hotel sofa, from where he issues occasional comments as though from a faraway place. Harket is more voluble but is the one most troubled by the perception of A-ha as pop pin-ups. Furuholmen is the easiest to talk to, and the one most likely to discuss the groupies "lined up like a pussy rack" outside the dressing-rooms over the years that he had to turn away (he has been faithful to his wife since he was 18), the conflicts that led to the trio's break-up in the 1990s, and the way being misconstrued as manufactured muppets "screwed with our heads".
Has making A-ha's music, I wonder, been therapeutic for them, an opportunity to exorcise all their negative feelings? "Well, you say 'negative', but I strongly oppose that," says Furuholmen. "Because to a Scandinavian melancholia is not negative; it's more like an itch you must scratch. It's a big part of our make-up."
A-ha were, like one of their idols Jimi Hendrix, prophets without honour in their own land, who had to come to Britain in the early 1980s to find success, which they used as the launch-pad for international stardom. Fans of The Beatles and The Doors, they had their heads turned by the synthesised pop music then reaping huge commercial rewards for the likes of Soft Cell and The Human League. "That was the big change for us," recalls Furuholmen, "coming from Norway, with our stylistic orientation towards 1960s music, and then being in England and opening up to a whole new set of influences after years of thinking music ended with John Lennon's Imagine album."
Sensing a link between The Doors and "the darker synth stuff like Soft Cell", they set about recording their first album, Hunting High And Low. Suddenly, thanks to the success of Take On Me and its video, with its revolutionary pencil-sketch animation/live-action combination called rotoscoping, A-ha found themselves caught "in a hailstorm of pop stardom", when really what they wanted was the acclaim of the serious music press.
"We didn't control it, we were controlled by it," says Waaktaar-Savoy of their new-found teen fame. "When my wife saw the first album and the poster it came with, she went, 'Uh-oh'."
According to Harket, the problem lay not in the music but the marketing of the band. "They (the record company] didn't know what to do with us. They failed to recognise the different aspects of A-ha." They were, admits Furuholmen, regarded by their label as "awkward". "People would say, 'There's no Take On Me' on this record, and we'd say, 'Yeah, great!' We knew that the expectation was to regurgitate our own success and that wasn't what we were about."
"We wanted the freedom to be playful," explains Harket, "to experiment and do what we felt like doing, but we were heavily affected by the success that the first record gave us."
It was hard to know what direction to pursue after the 10-million-selling debut album, so they opted for a harder sound on their second album Scoundrel Days (1986), then returned to pop for 1988's Stay On These Roads, which featured their James Bond theme, The Living Daylights, a sure sign of their ubiquity and commercial enormity. Collaborating with John Barry was a mixed blessing, and remains a source of some tension. Waaktaar-Savoy admits to enjoying working with the legendary Bond composer, which baffles Furuholmen, who has different memories of their sessions. "I can't remember you loving that at the time, correct me if I'm wrong," he says, one of several quietly barbed exchanges during the interview.
They toughened up again for 1990's East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon, part of what Furuholmen calls their "crystallisation process, away from the ornate and structurally complicated", towards a more organic, live-band sound.
But after 1993's sombre Memorial Beach the writing was on the wall, and despite A-ha discovering a huge audience in South America, they chose that moment to split. They worked on a variety of solo projects, and Furuholmen, "tired to the bones", began exhibiting art work and even worked for a year in a sound recording library where he digitally archived the experimental music of John Cage and Stockhausen.
"That album (Memorial Beach] felt like a requiem," he says. "It was clear we wanted to get out of the pop business."
It brings back particular unhappy memories for Harket. "I didn't feel like I fitted in," he reveals. "I felt like I was a hindrance to A-ha." Confusion reigned during this period. "We were at the peak of denouncing ourselves and what we had been," says the singer. "When you're at war with yourself you will go under. I don't think we were focused. We were fighting too many demons, and trying to avoid things."
They were mainly trying to avoid the truth: that they were exponents of deliciously downbeat synthpop. When they reformed in 2000 for Minor Earth Major Sky, they appeared finally to have come to terms with that, as had the rock press whose attention they had for so long craved.
"Every grudge was gone," says Waaktaar-Savoy. "There were open arms everywhere, and people seemed genuinely happy to have us back."
Furuholmen remembers their opening show in Hamburg being "a real shocker – like, 'woah!'" There were, adds Harket, not just screaming girls this time, but "hordes of grown people going apeshit". It was, says the guitarist, "the same in every country. We thought we'd have to start from scratch and build it up, but we didn't. We had a totally new audience, with a big spread in demographic, from people our age and older to the really young."
And the really credible: since A-ha's comeback, it has become acceptable to proclaim their greatness: U2, Coldplay, Oasis, Keane, Morrissey and Bloc Party have all come out of the closet in recent times – indeed, Coldplay's Guy Berryman and Will Champion have collaborated with Furuholmen on various solo projects.
"Only now, with the reappraisal of the band and new acts citing us as a musical influence, is our idea of the band finally coming out," says Furuholmen. "We were the most important band in the world in our minds! We were The Beatles! We wanted to make great album statements! We didn't just want Top 10 singles."
They did have another Top 10 single, Analogue (All I Want), in 2006, their first for nearly 20 years. And now they've made their first purely synth-based album for almost as long: Foot Of The Mountain, a return to the electro-melancholia that made their name, recorded with Steve Osborne, producer for New Order.
"It has," says Furuholmen, "some of the vitality of our early stuff without plundering our own mausoleums," while the icily pretty synthscapes, he feels, provide the perfect accompaniment for "Morten's eerie, otherworldly, fourth-dimensional vocals".
A-ha are finally happy with their sound, and with their new position in the pantheon of electro-pop alongside the likes of New Order and Depeche Mode.
"Is that the company we'd like to keep?" the keyboardist repeats the question, slightly tartly. "What, you mean intelligent individuals making interesting pop music? Yes, absolutely."
As for what it is that U2, Coldplay et al like about A-ha, that is even more obvious, according to Furuholmen. "They just like the way we look."
• Foot of the Mountain is released on 27 July.
http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment/…take.5467983.jp -
A-Ha: We're more than cheekbones
Friday, July 17, 2009
A-Ha have insisted they are no longer "misplaced poster boys".Magne Furuholmen, one third of the popular 80s pop group, said he was pleased the impact of their music, such as 1985 hit Take On Me, on contemporary artists shows the band were "more than cheekbones."
"That's part of the vindication on our part that we get credited for the music that we left behind these days," he said.
He added: "That's the inheritance you want to leave behind, not the frustration of being an awkward pop star or a misplaced poster boy, that's just kind of a headf**k that's not something you wish to leave behind as a legacy."
Talking about Foot Of The Mountain, which is the group's ninth studio album, he said: "It was a real thrill to re-examine our formative elements and use them hopefully in ways that rejuvenates them and makes us move forward as opposed to backward."
Front man Morten Harket added the new album has been exciting to make, saying: "It's been a great kick."
http://www.metro.co.uk/fame/article.h…47&in_page_id=7 -
From The Times
July 18, 2009
Guest List: The pop singer Morton Harket
The world as listed by the A-Ha frontman
Ed PottonAll tight T-shirt and bulging biceps, Morten Harket looks more like a veteran baseball player than a Nordic pop god as he pads into the bar of a swish central London hotel. Now 49, he doesn’t wear those funny leather things around his wrists any more. It’s just the lustrous hair and those (suspiciously unravaged?) cheekbones that mark him out as the singer with A-ha — still easily Norway’s most successful musical export.
Yet popstatic adulation never sat easily with Harket and his bandmates Magne Furuholmen and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy. Even in the mid-Eighties, when they were slaying teenage girls all over Europe with their flawless bone structure, glittering pop gems such as Take on Me and The Sun Always Shines on TV and groundbreaking comic-strip videos, inside they were riven by good old-fashioned Scandinavian turmoil.
“We were just torn heavily in two opposing directions,” admits Harket, who ponders every question with furrowed-brow intensity. “We were very ambivalent about being pop stars even then. So we started doing the opposite of what would get us a chart hit.” Such anti-commercial perversity didn’t do them any harm in Norway, where they enjoy U2-style rock-statesmen status. But it meant that we didn’t see too much of them on these shores.
That began to change with their 2005 album Analogue, which featured Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills and Nash on backing vocals and whose title track became their first UK Top Ten hit since 1988. It turned out that it wasn’t just girls who had loved A-ha, as other celebrity fans such as Chris Martin nailed their colours to the mast. “Although I don’t how vocal he was in the Eighties,” Harket smiles. “A lot of people were closet fans.”
The trio’s return to the bosom of the UK, where all once made their home, takes another step with the release of Foot of the Mountain, which revisits the soaring, melancholic synth-pop melodies with which they made their name. “The similarities are the immediate thing that strike you,” agrees Harket, whose rumoured five-octave range (“I’ve never counted, quite honestly”) sounds in fine fettle a year short of his 50th birthday.
Age has not dented his virility. Last September his personal assistant Inez Andersson gave birth to their daughter Karmen Poppy, which makes him the father of five children by three women. His two bandmates have three between them: “I’m the promiscuous one!”
Fatherhood has not eased band friction: “With three of us together you do have something to deal with.” That might explain why Waaktaar-Savoy lives in New York, while Harket and Furuholmen remain in Oslo. But they’re still together, making new music, which is better going than most Eighties’ outfits. And, as Harket says: “It was about time we reached out a little more.” -
A-ha play the iTunes Live festival on July 24. Foot of the Mountain is released on July 27
Name your favourite . . .
Famous Norwegians
Ole-Gunnar Solskjaer Famous Noggies? Let’s start with football. [former Manchester United striker] Solskjaer is an obvious choice: it’s the momentum of his legacy. We’re a small nation, just 4.5 million people, so for someone to do what he has done creates some waves. He conducts himself admirably as well.
Thor Heyerdahl He’s the other immediate one that springs to mind. He passed away a few years ago. Mr Kon-Tiki? Yes. See, why would you know? But you do. A lot of the theories that he was proposing are today put aside, but he was an impressive man.
Vocalists
Sam Cook, Otis Reading, Otis Rush They all inspired me, and helped me to be playful.
Freddie Mercury A great range, and also a great approach to singing. He knew how to use the stage, he knew how to use the media — by not taking it seriously, by understanding how unimportant it really was. I think he was a deeply honest man. I never met him properly but he was a good friend of my former manager, who always loved him.
Christine McVie Although a lot of people regard her as a great singer, but I still think she’s underestimated. Her ability to express things, the sheer beauty of her singing: she has definitely influenced me.
Bob Dylan He’s making use of that fact that he doesn’t have a classic singing voice, so he might as well mock it. It’s almost cartoonish.
Artists
Egon Schiele Why? Isn’t that obvious? He is a brilliant painter: very simple lines, three-dimensional shapes, but very expressive. It’s just done with an outline, but I really respond to it.
Magne Furuholmen Magne has always been central to A-ha. He is by far the most playful of the three of us, the most impulsive, and he has very strong instincts. He has developed so much as an artist. Some of his work really hits me, other stuff not so much. He’s always had that artistic element to him, he’s always on a search. What I like about him is his honesty and his determination to peel away anything that doesn’t belong. What is the true essence of this or that? He never rests. It’s inspiring to be around. He has an ability to carry things, though; I’m much more laid-back.
Global issues
Climate change We’re scared now, terrified that something might be going wrong here. It’s up to us how we want to deal with it, asking ourselves what matters to us more and what we want to be. If we do decide to do something, things can happen really fast. What would I do if I were a politician? No 1: honesty. Go after the facts. Who are we? Who are the media? Do we deal with them in an honest way? Would I like to go into politics? [Says nothing and smiles.]
Albums
Rumours — Fleetwood Mac I’ve all of a sudden been picking up on this again. It’s just a magic album: it’s a pop album but more than a pop album. You knew it was a classic pretty early on.
Night at the Opera — Queen This was a real climax, although I loved some of the earlier Seventies stuff too. What strikes me more than anything else about Queen is character. Technical singing is secondary and flamboyance doesn’t mean that much to me. Character is everything.
Anything by Jimi Hendrix This is difficult! Which album would I save if my house was on fire? Oh no, I keep them in my heart; let them burn! It’s so much easier to go back in time. The one artist that really afffected me was Jimi Hendrix. It’s a different world, almost, what he did. The first song that blew me away was Hey Joe. I bought it on vinyl at high school and I never played it again because it really shook me. I realised that I knew nothing.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_e…icle6709027.ece
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A-Ha - Foot Of The Mountain (UMRL)
UK release date: 27 July 2009
A-Ha's big '80s pop hits are, in the best possible sense of the word, ridiculous. The Sun Always Shines On TV stamps a big, steel-plated boot in the face of subtlety. Cry Wolf sounds like an audacious attempt to re-write Thriller as a massive orchestral pop song. And let's not forget Morten Harket's falsetto on the chorus of Take On Me (how could we?).
Foot Of The Mountain, the Norwegian trio's fourth album since their reunion at the start of the decade, is, by contrast, a tasteful and restrained affair. Both acts might baulk at the comparison, but A-Ha's career has panned out a lot like Take That's. Much like Gary Barlow and company, A-Ha underwent a lengthy hiatus before re-emerging with a sound more becoming of men of their respective ages.
In A-Ha's case this means they've abandoned their inclination towards bombast in favour of producing gently chugging, mid-tempo pop-rock. These are songs that would slot into most contemporary radio playlists with the minimum of fuss: Foot Of The Mountain's third track, What There Is, reveals what Coldplay would sound like if they ever get round to having a synth-pop phase.
Indeed, Foot Of The Mountain has been billed as A-Ha's return to their synth-pop origins. That's sort-of-true - keyboards feature prominently on tracks such as the OMD-like Riding The Crest - but the term 'synth-pop' seems an inappropriate one to use in relation to an album as unexciting as Foot Of The Mountain.
The standard of the songs never rises above the mildly pleasant, and occasionally - as on the self-consciously 'widescreen' title track or the wetter-than-a-fish's-wet-bits Mother Nature Goes To Heaven - it's pat and drab. The strangest track here is also the worst: the closing Start The Simulator is an unspeakably naff extended spaceflight metaphor ("Clear in the tower...Steady as she goes") complete with a tittersome reference to "docking". It's also disheartening to hear Harket's formerly fruity vocals flattened into nondescript homogeneity through apparent AutoTune abuse.
If the function of Foot Of The Mountain is merely to provide some competent new material to pad out the live set, then it performs it without breaking a sweat. But if A-Ha want some tips on how a veteran pop act can enter middle age without drifting off into irrelevance, then they should get on the phone to a certain Mr G Barlow.
- Christopher Monk
http://www.musicomh.com/albums/a-ha-2_0709.htm -
Aha`s take on fame
http://www.mirror.co.uk/video/celebs/2…115875-21534519 -
a-ha reveal the secret to their longevity:
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- Offizieller Beitrag
Hab ein bisschen "Angst" hier was zu posten da kein Überblick. Hoffe, das gibt es noch nicht irgendwo, konnte es aber auf 1. Blick nicht erkennen
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