As the long list of free downloads below this post will attest, we’re inundated with music. Daily. And however welcome the task is to preview each track, it’s hard to rise above the digital fray.
No so when Danish singer, keyboardista, and composer Katrine Ottosen, or CALLmeKAT hit our radar. The often too flowery press bio rarely hits the mark, but it does indeed in this instance: “With her vintage keyboards and a voice that sets her apart from the masses, she creates music where live samples meet haunting bass lines, team up with a broken omnichord, and end up dancing together in the night.”
Since her two 2008-releases, CALLmeKAT has toured as a solo headliner, opened for artists such as Au Revoir Simone, Okkervil River, Nouvelle Vague, The Dø, and Sebastien Tellier and played numerous festivals including SXSW, NXNE (Canada), EuroSonic, Northside Festival (NY) and CMJ (NY). At the 2010 SXSW Festival CALLmeKAT was invited to perform on NPR’s All Things Considered followed by a pick on Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton’s (NPR) “Who We Liked-list.”
Living in New York for most of 2010, Ottosen collaborated with Joe Magistro (Prophet Omega, The Black Crowes) on finishing her international debut “When Owls Are Out” Mastered by Chris Athens of Sterling Sound, NYC. A hand numbered, limited first edition, will be for sale exclusively at CMK shows and at select stores, in 2011.”
As in introduction for the rest of you, we’re spending the full week with CALLmeKat—and oddly, after a weekend where we saw our fair share of record stores, Katrine confesses:
“There were really no good record shops where I grew up…”
As a kid I grew up in the Danish country side. It was a little sleepy town where time stands still in a strange way and has only one street with shops—one record shop—with a dull, maybe even bleak and very commercial selection. So record shopping was honestly never really exciting at that point.
I would listen to the radio and make little tapes instead, or listen to the music that my mom and dad had. We’d dance to the records in the living room. It was great. Or pretend to play along on a yellow plastic keyboard. (I thought the actual sound of the toy keyboard was so terrible that I turned the sound off and just air-played, ha!)
In that shop in town though, I only remember getting excited when they got the Bjørk records in. So excited, that I went in there to ask-slash-beg for the whole window decor when they were done with it. I got it! I had the very orange and very 90’s Bjørk window decor for the Post album hanging on my wall for a couple of years.
It was a big crisis when a guy stole the poster that came with the album. It was folded inside the paper cover and I cherished it and left it in the cover so ‘the package’ was intact. This was at the time when you’d bring the physical album to your friends’ place when hanging out. I made the mistake of leaving the album behind, and alas, the dear poster parted ways with me.
Another album from that time was Nirvana’s Unplugged. I heard that album so many times in my teenage past, that it’s beyond counting! Later I remember that a German guy opened a record store with an actual more interesting selection. That was the place to go. It was a weird scene but it was cool because he had used albums for sale which meant less expensive.
CALLmeKat | My Sea
I guess I only really got into purchasing vinyl much later when I was working on my first EP, I’m In A Polaroid – Where Are You? I stayed for some time in Brooklyn while writing material for the project and I got really into searching through the more obscure piles of vinyl at a record store right around the corner from the sublet—Academy Records on N6th. I found some amazing stuff which became a huge inspiration and was deeply integrated in the soundscape of the EP.
More about that later. For now – have a great day and see you tomorrow!
