* En anglais uniquement
Deep in the Norwegian countryside there’s an old mountain cottage. It’s been in the Holtan-Hartwig family for as long as anyone can remember, and if you didn’t know it was there you’d never find it: there’s no electricity, no phone signal, the only water source is a nearby dam, and you need to ski cross-country for at least two miles before you find the nearest road. When you’re there it could be 2021 or 1621, and to most of those in Oslo’s hyper-connected, 24/7 music industry it would sound like a nightmare. For Dag Holtan-Hartwig, it’s something else. “It’s an escape,” he says. “It’s a place where you can reflect on the life you’re living.”
In the last few years, moments for reflection have been in short supply for this singer-songwriter, musician, producer and true Norwegian outdoorsman. Dag’s contributions to hits for artists like Ava Max, Alan Walker, SEEB and Julie Bergan have brought international success, platinum sales and nearly a billion streams. But somewhere in the chaos he’s still made time to visit that mountain cottage. In doing so he’s found a way to capture his reflectiveness in song, and in those periods of calm he’s created Slopes.
In the spellbinding storytelling of debut Slopes single Prove Them Wrong and beyond, Dag has woven a dynamic but pensive collection of songs that explore the magical space between the city and the wilderness, the distant past and a brighter future, and state of the art pop and old-school authentic musicianship. Most of all, in Dag’s remarkably expressive voice and at the very heart of all Slopes’ music, is a uniquely articulated brand of melancholy. “I rest well in melancholy,” Dag smiles. “It’s easy to write a song that’s either one-dimensionally happy or drearily sad, but you can really tell a story when you hit the spot between happy and sad, and enter the melancholic realm.” Magic, once again, lies in the space in between. “Melancholy is the sentiment that speaks the most to me,” Dag adds. “It’s such a rich sentiment, and it’s a vibe I’ve been wanting to put into music for many years. It wasn’t until recently that I found the confidence.”
Building the world of Slopes is not a decision Dag has taken lightly, having seen first hand the demands of a life in the spotlight. “Working with so many different artists around the world I know how hard it is — gaining success, dealing with success, maintaining it,” he says. “But in Norway we have a phase: to go out on slippery ice. For some reason I’ve always liked doing that. Or, at least, I find myself doing it all the time. So I started to wonder if there was a way I could be an artist and do things exactly the way I always wanted to do them. And I thought that if I got it right, people might like it.”
The flashpoint came in the wake of heartbreak, when Dag left Oslo for Los Angeles looking for a change of scenery following the messy end of a relationship. He was hoping for new friendships and writing sessions, but found himself living alone with only his thoughts for company. The songs he started in that period were different to the music he’d been writing before. “I realised it would be hard for anyone else to say the things I was trying to say with those songs,” he remembers. “I realised: these songs are me. I’m not trying to hide anything. If someone’s going to release this music, it’s got to be me.”
In the spirit of openness, Slopes is no mysterious or opaque studio creation: this is a living, breathing pop entity and Dag already has big plans for taking his music out on the road with a full band. “I’m really excited about bringing it to life on stage in the traditional way with a guitarist, drummer, bassist and maybe a synth player,” he says. “A band playing together, bringing these songs to life, will take me back to my early years.”
Growing up in a polite Oslo suburb he remembers as “a sensible place full of sensible people”, Dag was raised in a passionately musical family and first started playing in bands when he was just twelve years old. Of course the band names were all terrible, he admits, and their poppy, Oasis-influenced tunes didn’t sit well alongside the local death metal scene. But for Dag, there was no looking back. By his late-teens his passion for music had taken him to England and the prestigious Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, where he performed for (and received a coveted double-thumbs-up) from Sir Paul McCartney, who offered some advice on one of Dag’s compositions. “He wanted it to end more conclusively,” Dag recalls, “so the audience knew when it was done. Then they could clap.” (This was years before the influence of streaming changed pop to the point where nearly all songs now end conclusively, so Macca was, as usual, ahead of his time.)
On his first day at LIPA Dag had met another Norwegian by the name of Halvor Folstad; they started working together and while still at college scored a record deal back home in Norway. After LIPA Dag and Hal went their separate ways, with Hal returning to Oslo and Dag trying his luck as a producer in London. Luck, it turned out, was in short supply: he accidentally moved to a music industry deadzone and, in a scene later echoed in LA, he found it hard to make an impression. “London’s a tough city and I was trying to hustle as a new producer,” he remembers. “It was a pretty bad four months.”
Returning to Oslo he was reunited with Hal; they formed the duo Skinny Days, releasing music in their own right and achieving multi-platinum success through work with other artists. But whatever the situation, Dag found a way to express true creativity. “You’d get a label saying ‘we’re looking for something like this’, and it’d just be a list of that day’s Top 3 songs on streaming services,” he says. “We decided that at the end of the day all anyone really wants is something that’s good, so we ignored the lists and concentrated on making good music.”
This instinctive quest for authenticity is front and centre in Slopes. “I went through some tough times in my teens and I think that means I’ll always look at life with a certain perspective,” Dag reflects. “Perhaps I look at the world from a slight distance — a lot of songs I write are related to relationships and complicated stuff but there’s always something about how dark feelings lift when you make a true connection with other people, trust them, and let go of yourself. There’s power in allowing yourself to give yourself entirely to people, but also let go of people when you need to. All of Slopes is about exploring those emotions.”
Dag mentions that when he was growing up, his father’s passion for birdwatching never made much sense. “But later I found that the minute you actually start to learn the names of birds, you start to distinguish them. You see how many different ones there are. You learn their behaviour, their personalities. You notice what’s really happening, and when you do that everything suddenly feels bigger and better.” For Dag, noticing and naming his own emotions has had a similar impact on his ability to express himself, and the results are all right there in Slopes.
Just don’t call it an ‘artist project’. “Fuck the word project,” he smiles. “This is me.”