Radiant Green Bel Canto

• 1Grass Mint Crisp04:55
• 2Erlkönig05:22
• 3Lifeworld04:44
• 4Prince Of Insecuria03:40
• 5Train Window Girl08:29
• 6Virginia04:08
• 7Lake Ice04:37
• 8Can Of Worms05:16
• 9The Winds Of The Milky Way04:55
• 10Wave Without A Shore05:15
• Total Runtime51:21

Info for Radiant Green

In 2024, a new chapter unfolds in the history of one of the true pioneers in the electronic music genre - the Tromsø duo, Bel Canto.

The upcoming album, 'Radiant Green", due for release on April 26th 2024, brims with creative and musical abundance. It sounds fresh and new while drawing from the unmistakable sonic landscape of the band's remarkable musical treasury, which includes mega-hits like 'Shimmering, Warm & Bright' and the Spellemannpris-winning 'Magic Box,' to name a few.

It's been 22 years since Bel Canto last released an album, but now it's finally due.

Following a successful mini-tour, culminating in a memorable concert at the Øya festival in 2017, Drecker and Johansen embarked on the creative process for what they eventually understood would become their next album.

The journey has been long, with many notable names contributing to the process, including Gilles Martin, who co-produced the band's first two albums, Erik Ljunggren, and Matias Tellez, who has mixed the new album. One of several musical highlights on the album is the track 'Virginia,' a rare duet featuring Sondre Lerche, a long-time friend of Anneli's, who has also closely collaborated with Tellez on several of his recent albums.

The group was formed in Tromsø in 1985 by vocalist Anneli Drecker, multi-instrumentalist Nils Johansen, and Geir Jenssen on synth and programming. Together, they created a sound where atmospheric and melancholic tones met elements of folk music from various corners of the world, in what was often referred to as the beginning of the Arctic electronica wave. Bel Canto's music and Drecker, the band's charismatic front figure, quickly gained attention internationally.

After two albums, Jenssen went solo under the name Biosphere. Bel Canto, now a duo with Drecker and Johansen, subsequently saw its major breakthrough with the album Shimmering Warm and Bright in 1992, for which they also won the group's first of three Spellemann awards. The group released six albums before 2002, when Drecker and Johansen wanted to pursue solo projects and collaborated with partners such as Röyksopp, a-ha, Ketil Bjørnstad, and the group Vajas.

On their new album, Bel Canto is reunited with Geir Jenssen on two tracks, and collaborates again with Gilles Martin, who co-produced the group's first two albums. Matias Tellez has mixed several of the songs.

Anneli Drecker, vocals
Nils Petter Johansen, guitar
Jonas Lie Theis, keyboards
Andreas Eriksen, percussion
Ole Vegard Skauge, bass
Jane Kelly, background vocals

Please Note: We offer this album in its native sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, 24-bit. The provided 88.2 kHz version was up-sampled and offers no audible value!

Bel Canto
One can easily say that Bel Canto were the start of Norwegian electronica. Being the influence of bands such as Røyksopp, Bel Canto mixed catchy pop tunes with an arctic electronic sound.

It was in Tromsø. Once capital of northern Norway, that Nils Johansen and Geir Jenssen found Bel Canto in 1985. Today Tomsø, on the north-east of the country, is well known for its fishing harbour, its university, its breweries and of course, depending of the seasons' its never-ending days or never-ending nights. Nils, barely twenty years old, had a strong musical background acquired by learning classical violin during ten years. The two musicians looked for a girl singing and a few months later discovered the very young - sixteen year old - Anneli Drecker and they tempted her away from the band she was singing in. Anneli had an important background of choral singing at the time. Fate was on their side.

Bel Canto seeked refuge with Crammed Discs, the Belgian indie record company. White Out Conditions, their first album was out on this label in 1987. Their following album, Birds of passage, was released in 1989. The albums became popular due to the bands special arctic sound dominated by Anneli's marvelous voice. Birds of Passage is to day considered as one of the founding records of what is called the Tromsø sound. Geir Janssen left Bel Canto in 1990 to work on his own project, Biosphere.

Shimmering, Warm and Bright was released in 1992 and propelled Bel Canto into an international band status. Taking advantage of the album success, Bel Canto played more than 150 live dates all over the world, especially in Europe, in the States and in Japan. During this world tour, Anneli and Nils discover the sounds from India and the percussion from Africa and Middle East which was used as a rhythmic framework for Magic Box, the 1996 album (Atlantic Records). Recorded in London and Oslo, Magic Box is released with two very special guests: The Can former drummer, Jaki Liebezeit and Jah Wooble. Anneli had already worked with Jah on Take me to God, his 1994 solo album. Magic Box was energy time for Bel Canto's. Images, their next Bel Canto production was a back-to-the-roots album. Recorded in their Tromsø home-studio, Images is a mix of cosmopolitan influences as much as a perfect illustration of the arctic sound from Tromsø in the last part of the 1990’s. The album was released on EMI in Norway and on Saint George label in France and continental Europe.

Anneli released a solo album in 2000 called "Tundra" on EMI, and the band was on hold for a while as she also toured as a special guest with A-ha. In 2001 they started working on a new album and released a compilation of songs called “Retrospect” from all their previous releases as the band had been existing for 15 years.

The new album took Bel Canto firmly into the new century. Most programming on the album was done by Nils and Torbjørn Bruntland from Röyksopp. This album called "Dorothy's Victory" from 2002 is as of today the last of Bel Canto's releases.

Now in 2009 both Anneli and Nils now resides in Tromsø, so we can probably hope for another album within a year or so.

This album contains no booklet.