As you probably know by now we spend a fair bit of time scouring Soundcloud, gig listings, other music websites blogs and Social Media for up and coming Nordic artists and bands. But we still miss lots obviously, so its great to get a tip off from a reader (thank you…!) who's noticed someone that we should really take a listen to, and as soon as we heard ‘Of The Valley’ we knew that we’d been pointed in the direction of something pretty special.
‘Of The Valley’ is the alter ego of Canadian native but long-time Copenhagen resident Brian DellaValle, a European resident now for over 10 years, his music combines country and folk influences to produce something that’s really distinctive and to me instantly appealing.
DellaValle is firstly a storyteller, quietly charismatic and who uses the bare minimum of musical instrumentation to make his point. This allows his guitar and voice to ‘do the talking’, and with outstanding and very individual sounding vocals, that’s a real strength. I remember writing about Danish singer songwriter Kristian Harting some months ago, that his music felt as if it was written based on some bleak worldly experiences, but that it always still felt positive and never desperate. I have a similar feeling about ‘Of The Valley’, yes its melancholy but it doesn’t seem to register on our ‘Mirel Wagner Scale of Bleakness’ at all - it is beautiful to listen to whilst maintaining an edge of mystery too.
The best thing to do obviously is to listen to ‘Of The Valley’ and see what you think yourself. There's just 2 tracks out there right now, the first is this video to ‘Tall Tall Tales’, recorded at Viktoria Recording Studios, which is outstanding:
The 2nd track is available on Soundcloud, and its the first one that I heard, its called ‘Ride Alone’, and you can also find it on Spotify and on Itunes as part of a Sound of Copenhagen compilation.
‘Of the Valley’ has been performing at the ‘Reeperbahn Festival this weekend, and then an album is definitely on its way, which I think is going to get a lot of really positive attention from blogs such as ourselves, as well as hopefully some wider media attention. Follow 'Of The Valley’ for yourselves on Facebook below, and we hope you enjoy the music as much as we have.
Photo Credits: All rights reserved Photographer: Emil Thomasen Schmidt. Art Director: Sine Jensen