Our Song of the Day is from Christian Strøm who hails from Ålesund, Norway. Very little is known about C. Strøm although our good friend Marcus from Dying for Bad Music has shared some words below which shed a little light on his magic.
We have the great pleasure of premièring the latest video for the title track of his new album I Have Heard of a Land which Marcus has painstakingly pieced together using hours of vintage video footage from archive.org. More on this below.
Imagine The Carter Family and Daniel Johnston are emigrating to Europe, taking with them only their instruments, their songs, and an old tape recorder. They end up in Northern Norway. That’s how you have to imagine C. Strøm’s music: American Folk in low-fidelity!
I first heard C. Strøm on Jeffrey Davison’s WFMU show Shrunken Planet, and I was fascinated by the rawness and the enthusiasm with which he played his songs. I wanted more, and to my annoyance, there was almost nothing on the worldwide interweb. Only a “Phoning It In Session”, and that was almost no-fi. Davison was so kind as to connect Christian and me, and here we are with a release of his music on Dying For Bad Music. The release is on cassette tape – the only medium, beside wax cylinders and 78’s – where his music belongs.
I Have Heard of a Land will be released on September 11th. The title track, written by James Moore in 1914 and recorded by Smith’s Sacred Singers from northern Georgia in the 1920s, is said to be the first ever “country gospel” record.
To accompany the Strøm’s recording of the song, I culled through hours of vintage video footage on archive.org. There I found the digital reels of Ivan Besse’s home movies of his hometown Britton, South Dakota from around 1938. The film material is as raw and honest as Strøm when he strums and sings those songs. The resulting juxtaposition of images and music is a homage to simplicity and honesty of folk music and every day life.
I Have Heard of a Land is released via Dying for Bad Music around September, 11th 2014
A C-40 cassette release with recycled tour guide maps of North America, limited to 50
http://dyingforbadmusic.com