"Quietly intense acoustic guitar, smoldering strings, and a haunting Norwegian-accented voice caught my ear like a tractor beam. This was Moddi, who hail from some tiny island in the north, and who nobody I spoke with knew much about but everyone seemed impressed with. While I enjoyed the National’s dark, rootsy take on U2 (...), I enjoyed Moddi’s modest quietude even more.” (Brian Howe, Pitchfork)
"Pål Moddi Knutsen captivated the audience with his soft voice and magnificient presence. This guy is great, a gentle shake-up of any singer-songwriter that drew inspiration from Jeff Buckley and a fan of sonic landscape creation (along the lines of Beth Orton) to accompany his distinctive voice. Even with an accordion in his hand, (…) Moddi works magic." (RadioExile.com etter by:Larm 2008)
My name is Pål Moddi Knutsen, twenty-three years old as I write this. I come from an island called Senja in the far north of Norway. I have borrowed my mother's accordion, stolen a Russian display mandolin and own a worn-down ocean blue guitar with two broken frets, with which I make music that's always a step ahead of me, and always sounds larger in my head than what ends up on tape. That's probably a good thing, but the music has also grown a little with time, like any child would.
I was also a child once. I grew up on Medby, a small fishing village on the tip of Senja with just over a hundred inhabitants. My first encounter with music, I've been told, was singing a children's sea shanty on the local radio station as a five-year-old. I played the piano, trumpet in the school's marching band, bass guitar in a rock band and was a rapper. When I left home, fifteen years old, I started writing my own songs.
I have always been writing in the middle of the night, often without even seeing my own hands. The first songs came to life in the school dormitory's showers, the only place I could hide away after everyone else had gone to sleep. When I was 18, I found my mother's accordion standing unused and forgotten in the cellar at home. I brought it with me, and fourteen days later, I held my first real concert.
Since then, things have grown little by little. In 2006, a friend of mine invited me to record a demo in his bedroom studio. The demo, although printed in only 20 copies, found its way to radio stations and festivals, and after it had brought me to by:Larm in 2008, things started moving for real. A white split 12" vinyl was made together with Einar Stray later that year, and I moved to Oslo to start working on an album. A real one this time.
I spent all 2009 writing songs, meeting people, rehearsing and thinking. In September, I brought my band to Reykjavik, where we started recording what would become my debut album, together with producer Valgeir Sigurdsson. After having gathered ideas for more than five years, fourteen days in his Greenhouse was too little, and we kept on working on the album at home in Oslo for many months. February the 8th 2010, my debut album, 'Floriography', was released in Norway on Impeller Recordings.
Musical bordercrossing isn't the easiest thing to do, but I feel an urge to also share things with people without the same passport colour as me. 'Rubbles EP' was released October 2010. Throughout 2011, 'Floriography' will be for everyone to hear. It will be the first thing I'm releasing abroad ever, so make sure to treat it with a sense of gentleness. It's my children, after all.
The music I make lives a life of its own. Sometimes, you can find it as a huge band session, with noise and loudness, and sometimes you'll find it so fragile and discreet that you might want to sing along in order to help it continue. And as I said, the songs grow a little with every winter that passes by. Just like children. My children. Whoever you are, and whatever reason you have for reading this: thank you for lending me your time!
An interview with NRK Lydverket just before the Norwegian release of 'Floriography'.