Full Name Pal Moddi Knutsen Role Musician | Name Pal Moddi Website moddi.no Years active 2005 – | |
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Associated acts Einar Stray Orchestra, Farao, Monograf, Angus and Julia Stone Members Katrine Schiott - celloErik Normann Aanonsen - bassJorgen Nordby - percussionEinar Stray - pianoTruls Olsen - sound Similar People Einar Stray Orchestra, Einar Stray, Krakesolv, Ingrid Olava, Team Me Profiles | ||
Record label Propeller Recordings | ||
Moddi house by the sea music video
Pål Moddi Knutsen (born 18 February 1987 in Senja) is a Norwegian musician. His music has been described as a blend of folk music and pop, although he refers to himself as a singer and storyteller. Moddi is also widely recognised as a political and social activist.
Contents
- Moddi house by the sea music video
- Moddi smoke music video
- Personal life
- Career beginnings
- Floriography
- Set the House on Fire
- Km va du
- Unsongs
- Political Activism
- Other releases
- References
Moddi is famous for his interpretations and translations of other artists, such as Vashti Bunyan, Pussy Riot and the Norwegian poet Helge Stanges.
Moddi smoke music video
Personal life
Pål Knutsen was born 18 February 1987 and grew up on the island Senja in Northern Norway. He debuted 5 years old on the local radio station Draugen, singing a traditional sea shanty. During his early youth, the young Knutsen played classical piano, the cornet in the school's marching band, bass guitar in various rock bands and performed as a rapper.
At 18, he adopted the old family name Moddi and started writing his own songs under that name. After finishing school, the 20 years old Moddi decided try a year off and "travel, play concerts and have fun until I had spent all my money".
Moddi is part of the community around the culture centre Kråkeslottet in Senja, where he is booking the annual Kråkeslottfestivalen. He is currently writing a master's thesis at Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) at the University of Oslo.
Career beginnings
Moddi's debut release, Random Skywriting EP, was recorded in the bedroom studio of a friend and distributed in only 20 home-made copies. NRK Urørt, a Norwegian emerging artists radio show, picked up the EP and put it in heavy rotation on Norwegian radio channel P3. The following year, Moddi did some of his first concerts on festivals like by:Larm and Øyafestivalen, where he received good reviews from among others online magazine Pitchfork.
Floriography
Moddi recorded his debut album Floriography with producer Valgeir Sigurðsson in Iceland. Upon release, it immediately hit the Norwegian album top 10. Q magazine described the album as "irrevocably heart-warming and beautifully constructed piece of melancholic folk-pop". Later that year, Moddi received the A-ha Grant of €120000 and toured as support for Angus and Julia Stone.
Set the House on Fire
3 January 2013 Moddi presented the single House By The Sea. The album Set the House on Fire was released worldwide on 8 March, accompanied by a social media contest to win the release concert, which was eventually held in the mining village of Banská Štiavnica in Slovakia. Set the House on Fire was nominated for two Norwegian Spellemannprisen.
Kæm va du?
The same year, Moddi recorded another album, released only half a year after the previous one. Kæm va du? (meaning "Who were you?") differs from previous albums in being sung entirely in Norwegian, and with lyrics borrowed from the North Norwegian poets Arvid Hanssen, Helge Stangnes and Ola Bremnes. On the album was also the single Togsang, a reinterpretation of British folk singer Vashti Bunyans popular Train Song. Bunyan later commented that Moddi's was her favourite cover version of any of her songs. Kæm va du? won the Spellemannprisen award for "Folk Album of the Year".
Unsongs
In 2016, Moddi released his fourth studio album, Unsongs, consisting of 12 banned songs from 12 different countries. The lead single from the album, Eli Geva, is a song about the Israeli officer who refused to lead his forces into battle in 1982. The song, originally performed by Norwegian singer Birgitte Grimstad, had not been sung for more than three decades.
Political Activism
In 2010 Moddi refused nomination for the €100 000 Statoil grant on environmental grounds, commenting that "I don't want Statoil for a friend. Who on earth accepts a friendship just because you get a million for it?". Moddi has participated on several albums, protests and rallies against the entrance of oil companies into Northern Norway and the Arctic.
In 2014 Moddi announced that he would be cancelling his scheduled concert in Tel Aviv, Israel, on the grounds that he would not be taken to support the Israeli expansion of settlements in the West Bank. He did not officially endorse any organised appeal, stating that "the debate is already way too black and white". The thought of creating the album "Unsongs", came as result of cancelling his show in Tel Aviv and receiving a call from Birgitte Grimstad - a Norwegian singer- where she told him that one of her song "Eli Geva" was censored in Israel.
Later the same year, Moddi organised The Train Tour through Europe in collaboration with InterRail, a three-week tour entirely on rails. The tour went through France, Germany and the Czech Republic.
In 2015, Moddi contributed to the album "Fabler om en åpen kirke" in support of the liberal forces within the Norwegian Church. He participated with the song "Vær hilset, fru Bjerkås!", a tribute to Ingrid Bjerkås, the first female priest in service in Norway.
On his 17 November 2016 concert in Kirkenes, Moddi refrained from performing the song Punk Prayer by Russian feminist punk group Pussy Riot, after the Russian Consulate General to Norway, Sergej Sjatunovskij-Byurno, warned that performing the song could mean up to six years in prison for the musicians of Arkhangelsk Chamber Orchesta who were backing Moddi on the tour.[1] He eventually played the song on the door steps of the King Oscar II Chapel which is located 500 meters from the Norwegian-Russian border.