So it's our official 5th birthday today, and it's therefore pretty appropriate that we start with one of our favourite bands, a huge welcome back to the amazing 'CeaseTone', a project we first wrote back in our first few months of existence when we came across some 2014 experimentation by the bands founder Hafsteinn Þráinsson. Since then the band has received widespread praise for the exceptional 'Two Strangers' album, still an absolute favourite of ours, had nice words writ

We'll be heading to Sweden, Iceland and Denmark later (hopefully), but first we'll start in Norway with an artist who has an amazing background in contemporary music working with other artists, and is now releasing music in her own right. 'Elimarit' is Norwegian, and after performing with the London Contemporary Voices caught the attention of some of our favourite artists, including the likes of Tom Chaplin, Lucy Rose and Guy Garvey, subsequently working with them on a variet

It doesn't really seem like 5 years since we saw 'Kalandra' supporting Moddi at the 'Castle Hotel' in Manchester, or indeed first wrote about them, but this band have developed such a good reputation from those that have heard them, and it's such a privilege to have been able to follow their progress. The band, consisting of Katrine Ødegård Stenbekk, Florian Bernhard Döderlein Winter and Jogeir Daae Mæland. released their debut EP 'Beneath the Breaking Waves' back in 2017 and

We first came across Bristol band 'Ålesund' just over a year ago, and featured them this time last year when they released their single 'Shift and Flux'. We caught up with singer 'Alba' during a noisy soundcheck gig in Manchester, where we chatted about the bands roots, their connections to 'Extinction Rebellion' and forthcoming single: NMR: So firstly I have to ask, where did the name come from and can you give us the correct pronunciation? Alba: ''So it's pronounced 'Aw-le-

We never expect that those songwriters and bands we write about are truly 100% Nordic in their origin. We've even considered a complete rebrand and going global, but we can barely keep up with Nordic music releases as it is and the musical world is too vast for us to consider every nation. But we feature plenty of cross-continent collaborations, and one in particular which has been brought to our attention is 'Hidden Land', a project founded between Myles O'Mainnian from Cali

It's probably true to say that we've featured a couple more 'commercial' style releases than normal in previous days, so we'll make no apologies for heading slightly leftfield towards music that you won't find on your national Radio playlists. 'Electric Crayon Set' are from Finland, and if we think we've done well to last into our 5th year, well these guys have reached 20 years of music making, and early in 2019 will release a new album (their 3rd) to celebrate two decades of

We have an interesting mix of releases this this week, hopefully one a day, and a couple of live previews too for events in London and Manchester, and we'll start off with an artist who originates from Manchester but is now based in Copenhagen. Liam Mullany is the founder of Logans Runners, but critically he's collected a lovely assortment of musicians around him, and the result is an unusual, but always musical release in their 'Sandbox' EP. There are 4 tracks on the EP whic