We featured Swedish band Oxen earlier, whom we first wrote about back in 2016, but you’d have to go back a lot earlier still for when we first featured Norwegian / British band Circumnavigate, and a band whom I’ve tried to follow the progress since their early days – they now have a new single out called ‘Layer You Up’.
Since our original feature they’ve released an album (‘When World Collide’), gone through some inevitable line-up changes, and evolved their style slightly – their original music was a fusion of different genres, but they’ve settled on a form of gentle atmospheric Nordic pop.
‘Layer You Up’ didn’t quite bowl me over first time I heard it, so if it doesn’t for you please give it a 2nd chance and maybe turn the volume up louder so that you fully appreciate the subtleties of the sound. Vocalist Sigrid Zeiner-Gundersen always offers persuasive vocals, delicate but with a clarity and precision in her delivery, whilst the faint strains of a cello adds an extra dimension to the sound.
The single, incidentally, is described by the band as ‘’seeing someone having a hard time and offering to shield and protect them.’’
There are undeniably a lot Scandinavian artists releasing songs of a similar nature, so it’s a pretty hard market to get yourself heard in – I hope Circumnavigate continue to make the headway that they have for the last few years.
This is ‘Layer You Up’: