Offpiste Gurus

About the album

Anyone who has heard Fredrik Lundin’s two Danish Music Award-winning albums with Fredrik Lundin Overdrive, will recognize the steaming, grooving foundation and powerful sax, but Trinelise Væring’s intense vocal and not exactly sac- charine lyrics have added a new fragile dimension.

OFFPISTE GURUS
Trinelise Væring and Fredrik Lundin rarely follow the beat- en path. Together and separately they examine new musical territory and, artistically speaking, they have often gone off piste. Lately they have also developed their own respective platforms: Most recently Trinelise released “Lystfisker”, an acclaimed rock album with Danish lyrics, while Fredrik has toured extensively in Europe and Scandinavia with - among other things - Fredrik Lundin Overdrive. Now, 10 years after their last mutual release, they join forces again in OFFPISTE GURUS. Drawing inspiration from a bluesy tradition a la Tom Waits and Ricky Lee Jones, they have defined their own origi- nal brand of Scandinavian blues-roots-rock-jazz.

Rune Borup (who recently won the Danish Broadcasting Company’s P3 Guld award with I Got You On Tape) has created a tight, characteristic production, in which each tune unfolds in its own unique and at times raw and breathless wor- ld. There is an atmosphere of lived life in Trinelise’s English lyrics and vocals and in Fredrik’s music and sax, a feeling of self-relinquishment and self-realization, of love and abandon- ment, of losses and victories. There are cracks in the varnish.

Back in 1993 Trinelise’s and Fredrik’s combined efforts resulted in the Grammy-nominated “People, Places, Times and Faces”, a large project involving eleven Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and American musicians in one connected work composed by Fredrik with lyrics by Trinelise. In 1997 they released yet another ambitious, but very different recording: On the CD DESDE EL NORTE (FROM THE NORTH) they collaborated with the tango orchestra Dos Mundos (Two Worlds).

The jazz saxophonist and composer Fredrik Lundin is one of the major profiles of his generation. With OFFPISTE GURUS he and the highly respected songwriter and vocalist Trinelise Væring have created a catchy, heavy grooving and uncompro-mising album full of vitality.

If you want to know why they are called OFFPISTE GURUS, how they write their songs, why Fredrik isn’t content playing only jazz, and much more, you will find the answers in the interview at www.myspace.com/offpistegurus. The site also includes a CV and videos.