Formed at the end of 2017 on the foundation of friendship and cultural affinities developed while taking part in the music collective “Kono Dischi“, Biella, Italy based NORSE deliver a heart-rending, gloomy, psychedelic hardcore with some post-punk and shoegaze influences. Their new EP “blu” comes as one of this year’s most compelling and deep dark post hardcore offerings, bringing all the standards of the genre, but with modern sound, sinister atmosphere and almost monumental feel. To celebrate, we have teamed up with NORSE to give you an insightful first hand take on their story, local music community, and the cohesive new masterpiece, available now via Konodischi, Vina Records, Fresh Outbreak Records, Longrail Records, The Ghost is Clear Records, Tomb Tree Tapes, and Clever Eagle Records.
Kono Dischi label was born in 2015 as a response to the needs of many local musicians sharing similar experiences and knowledge. We sat down with Edoardo, one of the main personas behind the project and also a member of NORSE, to share the story of their craft and give us a proper insight into their local cultural scene.
“During these years we developed the project with the aim to be eventually able to work on every step of the production of an album.” – says Edoardo. “Thanks to this horizontal approach, every band that joins the collective can actively help the others, bringing new skills, abilities and contacts. This idea gave life to a lot of side activities inside Kono, like a homemade recording studio with analog machines, loud amps and weed, freely used by all the bands. What comes out of the “Nostudio rec.” is then moulded into a physical release such as tape cassettes, vynil LPs or shaped into videoclips. We try to have care about every little piece of the whole, working on visuals and cover arts, printing t-shirts and merch thanks to the screen printing studio Desert Serigrafia Casalinga.”
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While Kono might look like a label, it is not focused on a specific genre but on the way we look at and think of music. Completely DIY, where every band must contribute to the develope of the project as they can.
The bands orbiting around this reality can range from the psychedelic rock of Sabbia to the stoner of Concrete Mountain, from the dark electronic of Crushed Curcuma to the alt-folk of HO.BO.
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…especially regarding the strictly political aspect of an area governed by the right (more or less βcentristβ). This is where the necessity to bond between people who share similar views about music and the way to propose it arises, in a DIY manner totally unbound from compromises.
In these pandemic times of our lives, live music, an essential stress valve to the balance needed in order to keep the project productive and that helps in widening contacts, is in fact stopped to a halt. But from this situation new proposals and alternatives are born, that try to keep alive a vital net, aiming at reciprocal support and inter-connections between different bands and territorial realities. Among these we would like to name Storm{O}’s new release βReboot Systemβ in help to βNessuna da solaβ (Nobody Left Alone), a campaign in support of the sexworkersβ world.
All of this is fundamental to the release of βbluβ, our last Wp published the 17th of October, also thanks to other labels, all of them part of an independent and international culture, that coworked to the production of our music. (Fresh Outbreak Records, Vina Records, Longrail Records, Tomb Tree Tapes, Clever Eagle Records and The Ghost is Clear Records).
This strengthens the idea of self-production and knowledge sharing, to grow what is generally known as βsceneβ. As time goes we believe more and more that all of this has to be liberated from stylistic clichΓ©s to promote an attitude. In short, to identify ourselves in music intended more as βhowβ itβs made than βwhatβ itβs played.
