melatonin_the_very

M e l a t o n i n - at its very beginning:

I could go back all the way to my upbringing. To the time when I was two years old and medicated with a remedy that at bedtime kept me wide awake, sitting there creating lively songs and stories about the more and less interesting adventures of a two year olds’ everyday life. Some came out in Norwegian, and some in various secret fantasy languages that only I and my teddies could understand. Of course, to my parents’ joy I was turning out to become a creative, independent and self entertained child (however (harmlessly) drugged).

But also, naturally, to their frustration I did at times cause some insomnia on the family. And, to their very bittersweet amusement it turned out that the treatment, that lasted approximately two years, in fact was entirely redundant. Now, bless them, all that sleep out the window. (But, mind you, my dad (at least) did gain back his sleep through my early and late childhood – being pretty much constantly asleep when ever being at home). And bless the mistaken doctor with retrospect gratefulness for his error! Without giving him any undeserved honour; because I guess it’s not really possible to ever know if I might or might not have chosen to become a musician regardless of that superfluous treatment, but I’m quite positive about the fact that the faulty diagnosis and consecutive treatment gave me a pretty decent start that helped me to develop the magical desire and taste for creating – and that; foremost with the voice as my expression.

Then, a big jump in time: Now, I was of course involved with playing in bands and so on in my adolescence. One of them, which I called Canopystroke, lasted quite a while – with the classic change of members now and again. We played a couple of good gigs and recorded a fairly ok demo intended to persuade some loaded record company to sign us – but that didn’t happen. And because I largely started to feel that I had to make artistic compromises in my work and fight the intentions of my more commercially interested band colleagues I decided to stick all my music material in my own pockets and leave them to try carving their own dearly pear shaped #1 hit. Which sadly neither ever happened.

But, getting there; during the mid-nineties I started to set up and work in my own little home studio in Oslo. And I suppose this is really where the initial artistic vision and proof of Melatonin as a concept was conceived. At this stage I worked with very simple means and started exploring the environment of electro acoustic compositions and sound scapes – both using acoustic sound sources as my voice, my washing machine and toilet (which both created extremely interesting sounds in the location of my basement, and basement sounding, flat), empty paint buckets miked up in different ways and all sorts of bits and bops I could create some cool sound with.

Additionally I made use of electronic sound sources such as samples from various CDs, an old Casio Keyboard and a synthesizer. Then, I sat day and night fiddling and playing around with all of it on my computer. Learning by failing and then knowing how to. The best (and unavoidable, I guess) way. Now, some of these explorations were, logically, more successful than others and actually BECAME something: a piece, and at that time I had the idea to maintain, or rather re-launch, the concept Canopystroke as my platform for my new solo work. This graphic above on the side here was intended as a page for my “once to become” website – and I still like it really much actually. Heres is another graphic that also was meant to be the web page for entering ”Canopystroke” .

So, what all of this leads to is that I’d like to give you the chance to hear some of the very old-skool Melatonin pieces, and I have put together a little selection consisting of four of the ones I feel work the best and which also, at least to me, really draw some resemblance to what Melatonin is and sounds like today, roughly ten years later.

# 01. La Vida Es Silbar
Music and Spanish words: Maria Jardardottir.

# 02. Rescue Yourself
Music and words: Maria Jardardottir.

# 03. Everyday Revelations
Music and fantasy words: Maria Jardardottir.

# 04. The Cats In The Backyard Making Noise
Music: Maria Jardardottir.
(With some assisting sound explorations from Tony Lydersen Måsvær).