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Kai Gundelach is a solo artist with a clear vision for the feelings he wants to convey and the sounds he wants to create. Growing up in the suburbs of Norway’s capital Oslo, his house was a musical one: brass instruments from his parents’ shared love of big bands proved an early (and loud) introduction to music. Formative years saw him joining siblings to play the household piano or at the local children’s theatre; spending almost all the free time he could performing in musical theatre, it became clear from early on that immersing himself in music and performance was where he felt most at home. When he wasn’t to be found on or around the stage, he found his musical tastes first land on a copy of Jay-Z’s The Blueprint and hip hop’s cut-and-paste creativity. Borrowing and hunting through friends' CD collections then fed an interest in the spectacle and big hooks of classic rock – the likes of Whitesnake and Guns ‘n’ Roses – before club music and minimal house became the focus of his attentions. It was as a teenage bedroom DJ, keenly listening to those slow-build atmospherics, that he began to see sound design and production as the key to realising the ideas swimming around his head. With this in mind, he spent a year studying music production at Stockholm’s Kulturama institute. Having guest lectures by Scandi-pop royalty like Robyn, it was a grounding in the tools that underpin the way he makes music now.
Moving to Oslo soon afterwards and into a studio at Filmparken (the media complex where a lot of Norway’ s classic early films were made) with bandmate Pål Ulvik Rokseth, it was the start of a creative relationship that’s had a lasting effect on Kai’s music. Having Pål introduce him to the world of analogue synthesisers, it was playing around with those dusty, idiosyncratic bits of vintage kit where he began to properly find his route into creating sounds that are his own. Writing and playing with Ulvik Rokseth, along with providing vocals for fast-rising house producers like Finnebassen, the past few years have been spent watching and learning from his collaborators. Some artists record to see where things take them, but for Gundelach it’s about getting to where he wants to go. “It can be frustrating to have something in your head and not be able to make it,” Kai explains. “It’s a case of investing many, many hours before you can really create what you want.”The kind of songs he wants to create are informed by electronic music and traditional songwriters alike. Kai has regular DJ gigs playing techno at Oslo clubs like The Villa, where on other weekends Norway’s space disco peddlers – the likes of Todd Terje and Prins Thomas – can often be found manning the decks. And there are definitely hints, in Gundelach compositions, of the stargazing material populating their record bags, but it’s to the bittersweet impulses of electronica which he’s paid more dues: absorbing the lush sonics of Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada has honed an audible richness in his music, while the lyrics and emotional resonance of singer-songwriters like Elliot Smith have done a lot to underpin the sort of songwriting structures he sketches out. Working with producer Joel Ford, former partner to Oneohtrix Point Never and Cyril Hahn, has been an important step toward achieving the finished product that he’s been after. Debut single ‘Alone in the Night’ was the first fruit of their labours, quickly topping 1 million plays online.
A trip to work with Ford in New York soon beckoned, where working face-to-face meant his first experience of a fully kitted out studio along with an increasingly free-flowing exchange of ideas between the pair. Those sessions resulted in single 'Spiders', which took the #1 spot on hypemachine and found supporters on BBC Radio One and Pharrell’s Beats1 show. Soon after, he was named as one of 2016's one to watch by TIDAL and NRK P3. It's the first track to emerge from a debut EP that cements all that made his debut single such an exciting prospect: delicate melodies drift in and out of view as Kai’s disarming falsetto appears rendered in gentle soft focus, underlaid all the while with club music’s rumbling undercurrents. He’s since began showcasing in Norway, while the summer of 2016 already has him booked in for exciting spots at across this Europe’s festival season (inc. Øya in Norway, Roskilde in Denmark and Ja Ja Ja in London and Germany). As Kai explains, the EP came out of the kind of working relationship in which he thrives: “It’s the idea of co-producing that I’m really open to. If I have a sketch and bring that to someone I respect, then they can help turn it into something new. If it’s the right person, they can add to what’s already there.”- Jake Hulyer 2016