Stina Nordenstam

"there has always been an element of jazz blues to my music"

Can anyone recommend something that sounds like Dynamite? Obviously there is a lot of stark post-punk that has a similar texture but is there anything so introverted and so industrial-sounding yet fragile?

The clips are from 1989, by the looks of it. She's 20 there.

Memories of a Colour was still pretty jazz-pop in parts.

Dynamite has such a unique vibe to it, especially the longer tracks toward the end which set up that kind of lugubrious pummeling vibe ("CQD", "Down Desire Avenue").

Can anyone recommend something that sounds like Dynamite? Obviously there is a lot of stark post-punk that has a similar texture but is there anything so introverted and so industrial-sounding yet fragile?

― boxedjoy, Tuesday, July 22, 2014 5:38 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hi, me to thread, first the copout: parts of This Is seem likely to have been intended for Dynamite, specifically "Welcome to Happiness" and "So Lee"; B-sides "The Thing About Fire" and "Walking Too Fast" are worth finding too.

as far as specific suggestions, possibly lisa germano on her quieter stuff; or this is possibly too loud/poppy for these purposes, but parts of the last ladyhawke album sort of get there: "The Quick and the Dead," "Cellophane," etc. it's easy to imagine them scaled back 10x to sound like dynamite would

chunks of both Memories of a Colour AND And She Closed Her Eyes get pretty jazz-blues

why can i not load these clips on the page??

Can anyone recommend something that sounds like Dynamite? Obviously there is a lot of stark post-punk that has a similar texture but is there anything so introverted and so industrial-sounding yet fragile?

the most sparse songs on the album basically sound like hugo largo w/ assorted found objects adding extra ambience. the non percussive, bass driven tracks in particular seem heavily indebted to HL, that's the closest reference point i can think of.

http://www.wearebeaconsound.com/shop/stina-nordenstam-the-world-is-saved

that's nice but where's a new album?

:(

A little part of my dies each time this thread is revived.

I know it's bad form to revive this thread, but I was listening to And She Closed Her Eyes again today and I had almost forgotten how utterly charming this album is.

"And I can't go on like this is not a way of telling you to be mine... Be mine."

Her songs still pop up on my iPod and they hold up very well. I've forgiven the chorus "On Falling" for sounding so much like "Sharon & Hope" because it's the better song.

I stumbled upon a hip hop song called "stina nordenstam" recently, but I remember it being forgettable.

you do realize you just killed a little part of yourself (xpost)

also me, you killed a little part of me

You know it's getting very hard… to go on now. But I pretend I want to.

Stina's perfect for the colder days.

Next week is the twenty year anniversary of Dynamite and I am counting on someone in this thread to have pitched a piece relating to it

Stina always makes me pitch a piece.

(Sorry.)

Next week is the twenty year anniversary of Dynamite and I am counting on someone in this thread to have pitched a piece relating to it

― boxedjoy, Wednesday, September 7, 2016 8:55 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sadly I have given up on people loving what I love

katherine I actually assumed you would have something in the works for this

believe me, if I thought I could successfully pitch it I would, but generally no one gives a shit about reissues that aren't already part of the canon

(s/reissues/anniversaries, though The World Is Saved sure didn't get much fanfare when it was re-released earlier)

(feel free to insert "have you considered that the problem is you," also)

I was listening to ‘Dynamite’ again this morning after recommending it to Brad, and it occurred to me that - what with the songs’ persistent themes of acceptance of, and identification with, externally (and at times randomly) imposed violence, loss and fear - a good alternate title for the album would have been ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.

It would have made me lol (with dread) at any rate.

will she ever do anything again? has she done anything since Nine Horses?

A little part of my dies each time this thread is revived.

:(

http://desireavenue.free.fr/phpbb3/viewforum.php?f=3

^the saddest message board on the internet. every couple of months, one of about 4 active posters will start a new thread along the lines of, "UPDATE: she doesn't have a new album out, but I found this cool promo on eBay with an UNCROPPED version of the ASCHE cover photo!" and the other 3 posters will go, "that's nice, dear, but where on earth has our queen disappeared to!?"—and you get the impression that all of them have had Stina on Google alert for the past decade and that they die a little each time her name pops up without the promise of a new release

now i have 'stina / tell me have you seen her?' going round my head in loop

lol

(there are no Stinaupdates, sorry. but it's Stinaseason again)

The 00s poll has sent me scurrying back to, and has massively reignited my enthusiasm for, This is Stina Nordenstam (which wasn't nominated). I'd always gone along with the idea that The World is Saved was the apex of Stina - much more congruent than its predecessor and with more robust songwriting and arrangements, but This is now sounds like a much stranger/less earthbound record.

I'd forgotten the extent to which it was pitched as a big expensive pop move because it's so tiny a thing and seems to have left almost zero cultural footprint (unlike e.g. ASCHE). It was one of those albums by a slightly culty artist which was presumably designed to cross over but didn't any receive any tangible publicity push from (Sony?) so seemed to evaporate on contact with the world.

It got a full UK release but I never saw a copy of it until a load turned up in Fopp for £3 apiece circa 2009. All of the albums are on iTunes/Spotify now but for years and years they seemed to be just slightly out of reach.

The songs sound like she's extracted their internal supporting structures and left them out of the fridge to curdle but the whole thing bustles along really satisfyingly. There's barely time to get lost in the album because there is so little of it - it is glimpsed and then it's not there. On the cover she's spotlighted but shrouded in gloom; as always, you can barely make her out.

Brett sounds like a pitchshifted Stina = he sounds great/unobtrusive - def the best 00s record that he was involved with.

A little part of my dies each time this thread is revived.

― boxedjoy, Monday, April 30, 2018 9:37 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

otherwise, yeah, it wouldn't necessarily seem so, but IMO this album has the most devastating songs of hers -- "everyone else in the world," "sharon and hope," "so lee" -- she really doesn't get enough credit as a trad singer-songwriter.

and yes the obvious counterpoint is "ok but dynamite exists," but that's more devastated. not sure how the track on here that is clearly a dynamite offcut fits the theory, but she does

Yes! Love Dynamite to bits but it keeps you at a remove whereas this one skips along pretty accessibly for the most part. It seems really at odds with itself in a way that neither Dynamite or TWIS are which is maybe more discomfiting for the listener. "The Diver" is the Dynamite offcut I guess?

I'm almost as preoccupied with the presentation of it. Just dug out my CD copy and it has a hyper-glossy booklet and a really unloveable typeface and generally feels like a really crisply efficient piece of product. and calling it This is Stina Nordenstam implies definitive artistic statement, but, it just oozes reluctance.

...and, YouTube provides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G06-Y1Wc6oE

(30 mins of Stina, circa 2001, on This is..., while wandering around arctic Stockholm)

The current era has me returning to 'Dynamite' a lot. Still have no recollection how I heard 'This Is' circa 2001, but after that obsessively sought out all her albums (didn't seem easy to find in the US back then). 'Dynamite' has remained on of my very favorite albums of the 90s--in that mystical realm with late Talk Talk or Mark Hollis' solo LP, or Bjork's 'Homogenic'--just music outside of time. I wish it were much better known/appreciated--I feel like if it came out now it would probably be better received, and would still sound completely fresh.

In penance for bumping the thread and getting folks hopes up (or, these days, fears up), a couple tracks I somehow never heard, despite being so in love with her music all these years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTyf-2HU9Ig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgfT4pCV4kA

Also just since it's not posted in the thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtKqH0Fk1_8

Personally, I think she comes across when there's some grit and gristle to wrestle with her childlike voice. But I love her in nearly any context.

Until reading the Martin Aston 4AD book a few years back, I had no idea that she'd been a mooted 4AD-signee circa 1991 - Ivo apparently decided that she'd be too challenging to work with! Does seem like she'd have been a good fit for 90s 4AD (whatever that means - "bit gothy and elusive" possibly).

Dynamite def feels like the most auteurish album - so much space in it; completely agree that it would probably find a more receptive audience if released today.

I wish it would at least get a reissue (and 1st US release), to give it the opportunity for critical reappraisal and exposure...

(Speaking of, look up the Allmusic review of 'Dynamite'--one of the worst, most off-base reviews of anything I've ever seen)

dynamite is one of those albums I think is perfect in theory, but in practice I am not often really in a place to listen to (probably a good thing). this track is the exception, kind of a bridge to the world is saved in the strings throughout, also probably one of my favorite love-songs-of-sorts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bN2GNXy4Nc

I'd never heard this Stina x The Knife:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-JuGewOvQY

x-post. Was there any context to the idea that she'd be too challenging to work with?

Strangely, I'd started making myself a compilation "for these times" and hadn't really got any further than a David Sylvian track and a Stina Nordenstam one.

Oh, cheers for posting that Knife remix Soundslike. Not sure how I missed that.

oh yeah that remix was how I first got into the knife

also speaking of david sylvian tracks, stina nordenstam tracks, and tracks "for these times"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga4IcaRsHic

Was there any context to the idea that she'd be too challenging to work with?

They'd initially offered to release Memories of a Color but after meeting with her, Ivo decided that a working relationship would be overly complicated - apparently her personality "mirrored her beguiling, obsessive music" and he wasn't in the frame of mind to engage with this at the time.

Ha, yes, Katherine - that was one of the few tracks on there.

re: Stina and Sylvian, I'm somehow convinced (with no proof whatsoever) she wrote "Greetings from the Old World" by way of a salute to him when he moved from England to America. I remember reading her generic explanation of the song on her Myspace site and adding (my) 2+2.