Statement Free

Time for some classic outsider madness!

Norwegian legend Arvid Sletta has issued nine albums to date. The latest, Fast And Slow, is credited to Arvid Sletta and his regular collaborators Anders Sinnes and Oddbjørn Tvervåg, and was released earlier this year. Sinnes and Tvervåg are accomplished musicians, and their sheen adds an interesting polish to his work, but I prefer the oddball earlier works, all solo and all utterly mad.

Born in January 1960, Sletta began his music career in the mid 1980s in the band Easy Riders with his brothers Reidar and Øyvind. The band – according to Wikipedia, anyway - issued one 45 (Call Me Tonight/You Drink Too Much) and two cassette-only collections Brilliant Kind Of Works (1988) and In Love (1990), although they all appear to have been incredibly limited. However you can find much of their output on YouTube, if you search for 'Easy Riders (Frøya)'. 

The band split in the early 1990s, by which time Arvid had already issued his debut solo album. His music has been featured in the short films Size 5, No Coke, Statement Too (a documentary about Arvid which was dong the international Film Festival circuit a couple of years back) and Little Red Hoodie.

Here are a couple of tracks from his rather wonderful early work, his debut LP Statement and second album Name. Issued in 2005, a full 15 years after Statement, Name features 31 tracks, many of them under a minute in length and only two over two minutes long. Statement is the only one of Arvid’s albums to appear on vinyl, all of the others have been self-published on CD. If you want more there’s plenty on YouTube, Spotify and iTunes for you to discover.

Enjoy!

Download I Love You HERE

Download Sexism HERE