Release Notes
Label: Moderna
Release: Hem
Date: May 9th, 2025
Mixed By: Gijs van Klooster
Mastered By: Jeffrey de Gans
Artwork By: Vesna Vrdoljak
Sometimes I wake up in a different bed, in a different city, at a different time. Everything around me is new and there is excitement about all the possibilities. But there’s also a bit of anxiety and maybe even dread. My anchor is gone, and I am drifting with the current, afloat among the unfamiliar waters. This is when I turn back towards music. Music that makes me feel like I am safe, serene and cosy. Music that I often call my home. This is precisely what I hear in the soft piano keys of the Norwegian pianist and composer Øystein Skar, who has announced his upcoming debut album, titled Hem. I may not know him as a person, and yet his playing makes me calm. I may not truly know his story, and yet his story’s somehow mine. And while I navigate the stormy weather, this ray of sunshine points the way. In these turbulent and truly anxious times, I turn back towards home. I turn back towards music.
Composed during winter’s embrace in his woodland home outside Oslo (I imagine a hushed sanctuary of a snow-draped retreat), the piece embodies the album’s central theme of homecoming – not merely to a physical place, but to essential truths long carried within. In its patient build and emotional resolution, “Levva” invites listeners into the intimate geography of Skar’s personal mindspace. The piece stands as testimony to what becomes possible when an artist, after years of outward exploration, turns the compass needle inward, toward the territories of the heart.
Levva, meaning “to live well,” is a longer, more experimental track blending classical, improvisational, and electronic music. Anchored by a synth arpeggiation and a piano melody, the piece has two parts with the second evolving into an expansive, percussive, and dreamy landscape created with an array of synths. For me, it’s about embracing strength through authenticity.
— Øystein Skar
Once again, the full album is out on May 9th, via Moderna Records. You can pre-order a digital release via the label’s Bandcamp.
