Drivan

Pan-Scandinavian electronic/folk outfit Drivan is largely the brainchild of graphic designer, interdisciplinary art-meddler and Smalltown Supersound mainstay Kim Hiorthøy. The Norwegian producer met Swedes Lisa Östberg and Louise Peterhoff and the Finnish Kristiina Viiala in 2007 during the creation of The Potato Country, a dance-theater piece by choreographer and performance artist Gunilla Heilborn, for which Hiorthøy provided the music. Impressed by their singing in the show, Hiorthøy invited the three women — all established performing artists with extensive and varied backgrounds in theater, dance and film, though none is primarily a musician — to collaborate with him on a musical project. Working together to develop song structures and lyrics based on loops produced by Hiorthøy, the group arrived at an aesthetic that retains his loose, idiosyncratic and exploratory approach to sound-arranging while also incorporating more conventional vocal song-forms, citing influences from the folk and prog of 1970s Sweden to the reinterpretatve work of singer Stina Nordenstam. Drivan's first album, the misleadingly-titled Disko, was released by Smalltown Supersound in August 2010. ~ K. Ross Hoffman, Rovi