When the night is at its deepest and the chimes of the witching hour bells have long since faded away, you get ideas.
About those wanting to revive a band that you had left many years ago because the nights had gotten too long.
"The suggestion came from Jon," Sivert Høyem recalls meeting Jon Lauvland Pettersen a good five years ago, when the drummer asked him if she wasn't taking the upcoming 2019 anniversary of her then twenty-year-old debut album "Industrial Silence" as the occasion wanted to play a few concerts - more precisely, to perform as Madrugada, the name under which they had become one of Norway's most famous and important rock bands before tragedy struck on July 12, 2007.
On that summer day Robert Burås,
Guitarist and songwriter of Madrugada found dead in his apartment.
Singer Sivert Høyem, whose beguiling baritone was a hallmark of the band, and bassist Frode Jacobsen completed an album they had already begun recording with Burås, but 2008's Madrugada was widely regarded as the swan song of the band band, which then also announced that they wanted to retire indefinitely.
Pettersen hadn't been there for six years, having left in 2002 after the release of The Nightly Disease, the second album by the band, which formed in 1995 in the far north of Norway.
and bassist Frode Jacobsen completed one more album they had already begun recording with Burås, but the 2008 record Madrugada, which was eventually released, was widely regarded as a swan song from the band, who then announced their indefinite retirement want.
Pettersen hadn't been there for six years, having left in 2002 after the release of The Nightly Disease, the second album by the band, which formed in 1995 in the far north of Norway.
and bassist Frode Jacobsen completed one more album they had already begun recording with Burås, but the 2008 record Madrugada, which was eventually released, was widely regarded as a swan song from the band, who then announced their indefinite retirement want.
Pettersen hadn't been there for six years, having left in 2002 after the release of The Nightly Disease, the second album by the band, which formed in 1995 in the far north of Norway.
Christian Riethmuller
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
Follow I follow
Maybe the others had gotten to be too much for him, they had all sat together too often during the sheer endless tinkering with the songs of the first album and the extensive tours that followed, but the special moments of this original line-up, these "punks who played the blues", as Frode Jacobsen says in retrospect, were never forgotten.
"I see the first line-up of Madrugada as something very special because it was the first time for all four of us to play music seriously and record this music," says Sivert Høyem, who has released some excellent solo albums over the past few years, at his concerts he always sings songs from the Madrugada repertoire.
So it wasn't difficult for Pettersen to convince him of his idea - and neither for Jacobsen,
who has been working primarily as a producer since the end of Madrugada, was also part of the party, which was initially limited to just two concerts in Oslo.
"But it shouldn't just be the performance of an old album, according to the motto: Take the money and run.
The reunion should also make sense musically, that was important to me," says Sivert Høyem in an interview with the FAZ: "And when we met in the rehearsal room, it very quickly sounded natural despite all the years."
The California light
Because the public interest was immense after the announcement of the two performances, the band decided to add on a European tour, which should prove to be a small triumph.
Not only in their native Norway, where they were stars from the beginning, or in Greece, where they have long been revered, they sold out halls and arenas.
Even in Germany, where they used to only play in clubs, they suddenly filled larger halls.
"Of course, the fans who liked us back then also came, but in Germany we were amazed at the many young listeners who actually didn't know us at all," Høyem and Jacobsen are happy about the popularity of their music, who did has aged well because it has always been timeless.
Because even if this is Jeffrey Lee Pierce and his Gun Club,