Exclusive interview with HighasaKite

Hi, my name’s Deborah from Alternative Beast and what are your names and what instruments do you play and where do you hail from?

Hi!

Highasakite is: Ingrid Helene Håvik (vocal and zither), Marte Eberson (keyboard and vocal), Kristoffer Lo (guitar, vocal and flugabone), Øystein Skar (keyboard and perc) and Trond Bersu (drums). We all come from different parts of Norway. Ingrid comes from the fjords of Ålesund, Marte and Kristoffer from the urban capital Oslo, me and Trond comes from the high mountains in inner Norway, called Gudbrandsdalen.

How long have you been playing together?

Me, Trond and Ingrid have played in Highasakite for almost 2 years now. Marte and Kristoffer joined the band in July 2012 – to celebrate the nice festival summer with us! Besides that, we have played together in different settings earlier.

How did you get started?

Trond and Ingrid started out as a duo with drums and vocal. After recording some songs, they asked me to come out to the studio (called Ocean Sound) on the Island Giske in Norway. I grabbed all the keyboards I could find, and took the first plane out there, and we tried to figure out how to play the songs in new ways. It was great fun in beautiful surroundings!

So how is the local scene in Norway?

It`s a huge scene with a lot of great musicians, venues and bands. The government puts art and music very high, and the country has many places you can apply for art-founding. Because of this, a lot of international musicians and composers comes to the country – specially Oslo! Making it a vibrant art scene.

You’re going to be playing the US for the first time soon, are you excited for the SXSW Fest in Austin, Texas?

YES! We all are really looking forward to it, and we hope the people of Texas will like us. We will do our very best!!

Do you have any favorite bands from the US, if so who are they?

Some of my personal favorites is Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter, Bon Iver, Steve Reich, LOW and many many many others.

What bands do you consider to be your biggest influences?

That is a impossible question since we have listened, and made music since we were very young, and are influenced in some way of all the music we have listened to – in addition to music teachers, band mates,life and surroundings.

Besides playing SXSW, you’ll be playing New York for two nights as well, will you be coming back for more dates in the US sometime this year?

Hopefully! Everybody who works for us are doing a great job – and there is a lot happening now so its pretty likely to happened!

Your new EP “In and Out Of Weeks” is coming out soon, I’ve had the pleasure of listening to it, and I’m looking forward to a full length album from you guys, do you have anything in the works as of yet for a full length later this year or so?

There will be a new EP to be released in the autumn, then the international debut album at the end of 2013/beginning 2014

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HighasaKite can be found on the following;
https://www.facebook.com/highasakitemusic
http://www.highasakite.no