Featured Tours

Harrys Gym, Manchester

• 10th Feb 2011

Glasswerk.co.uk Presents…

Harrys Gym
Tuesday 15th February
The Roadhouse, Manchester

Critically acclaimed Norwegian four-piece Harrys Gym release their second album What Was Ours Can’t Be Yours in the UK and mainland Europe this February on new Oslo based label Splendour (started by the management company representing Lindstrøm, Jaga Jazzist, Serena Maneesh and others). Blending beguiling pop with ethereal sounds, Harry’s Gym create epic, glacial and distinctly Nordic soundscapes guided by vocalist/songwriter Anne Lise Frøkedal’s hauntingly beautiful vocals.

On the back of their self-titled debut album (which was released in May 2010 on Norwegian label Hype City) the band earned a “New Band Of The Day” feature in Guardian and heaped praise from the likes of Drowned in Sound, Uncut and Music Week amongst others. It also saw Harrys Gym subsequently sign to major label Universal in Norway for their follow up – quite an achievement for a “difficult” pop band.

Harrys Gym toured the album in the UK, including a performance at the tastemaker festival Standon Calling, where Clash wrote this review: “Harrys Gym… possess an elegance that betrays their… name and conjures the kind of hypnotic, billowing, electro-rock, it seems only Scandinavians can”. In addition Harrys Gym managed to captivate audiences at festivals such as Øya, Roskilde, Eurosonic, Great Escape, Iceland Airwaves and Culture Collide in Los Angeles.

For their follow-up, they chose to work with up-and-coming British producer James Rutledge. Rutledge and Anne Lise Frøkedal bonded at once over the phone from Oslo to London, where they discussed Vashti Bunyan, folk music and the crossover between programming and running naked in the forest. Not to mention a shared fondness for salty licorice.

Rutledge sent a Spotify playlist to the band to give an idea of where he thought the music was heading. This included names such as Brian Eno, Atlas Sound and MGMT, which was enough to convince Frøkedal and the other members that they definitely should book him a ticket to snowy Oslo to begin recording.

Together they spent hours sending ideas back and forth from Oslo to London. Then James headed over to Harrys Gym´s own studio where they laid down the majority of the tracks before going to London to mix the material in the psychedelic atmosphere of Strongroom Studios, where the mixes were put down by Jimmy Robertson (Big Pink, Florence & The Machine, Klaxons).

Frøkedal said this about the recording process: “It was nice and refreshing to have so many ideas in the room all of the time and to have James somewhat become a fifth member of the band”.