Anthony Hamilton
Fredrik Saroea’s music is evolving. He’s taken the syncopated rhythms and melodies of his disco-punk days (you might recognize him as the singer of DATAROCK), and brought them into the world of contemporary classical music. For his two most recent recordings, “Bergheim” and “Understatement Lovesong,” Saroea teamed up with arranger Bjørn Morten Christophersen and four members of the BIT20 Ensemble to record live orchestral songs onstage at Norway’s Bergen International Festival.
The entirely instrumental “Bergheim” in particular stands out as a departure from Saroea’s other, more conventionally pop-influenced music: Liene Klava and Martin Shultz exchange beautifully somber melodies on viola and violin respectively; Johannes Wik accents Saroea’s guitar chords with a variety of delicate harmonics and ethereal glissandos from his harp; and Agnese Rugevica dutifully outlines the entire ensemble with a careful balance of tension and release on her cello.
While Soroea’s songwriting provides the structural basis of the song, it is the strings and their arrangement that carry it.
Last year, we saw the release of Saroea’s rock-oriented debut solo album, Rona Diaries (May, 2021), but already we are seeing him push into new terrain to join the likes of David Byrne and Danny Elfman, who have both transitioned over the last couple of decades from their pop/rock backgrounds to more mature-sounding orchestral work. Soroea continues to work with DATAROCK, we’re happy to see, but we also look forward to seeing what other areas he ventures into as a solo artist.
Music Fiends took a moment to ask Fredrik Soroea, “Who’s Your Little Friend?”
“My dear British Shorthair, Lucie, is as sweet as she is elegant, but you know what they say about beauty… and I’m not sure there’s too much of that on the inside. I love her like you love a child, but I expect her to kill me and my entire family at any given point of time – that devilish little lion.”
Watch: Fredrik Soroea’s video for “Understatement Lovesong”
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