Limelight
DIM GRAY
Norwegian post-progressive trio ring the changes on their debut album.
Dim Gray, L-R: Håkon Høiberg, Oskar Holldorff,
Tom Ian Klungland.
ANNE MARIE FORKER
EVERY BAND HOPES for the overwhelmingly positive reception that Norwegian post-progressives Dim Gray received for their debut album, Flown. Despite the accolades, the path to making it wasn’t easy. After what keyboard player Oskar Holldorff calls a “botched attempt” at the album in 2015, they scrapped many of the arrangements and they had a rethink. Eventually, they elected to record key elements – strings, drums and lead vocals – with Leif Johansen at Stable Studios and then set to work recording the rest of the instruments themselves, tracking and tweaking between 2017 and 2019 in “rehearsal spaces, living rooms and stairways”. Not attempting to record as a live band in the room gave them time to “experiment with the sound” of Flown to a much greater extent, according to Holldorff.