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My name is Pål Moddi Knutsen, 26 years old as I write this.
I come from an island in Northern Norway called Senja, where I grew up making my musical debut at the local radio station when I was five. My first album, Floriography, recorded with producer Valgeir Sigurdsson (Björk, Cocorosie etc.) in Iceland, was released in February 2010 and nominated for two Norwegian Grammies (Spellemannsprisen) the year after. I received a large grant from a-ha, toured as support for Angus and Julia Stone and played places I had only dreamt about when I was younger.We played more than 250 concerts, among those the Reeperbahn Festival (GE), Iceland Airwaves, The Great Escape (UK), Green Man Festival (UK), Haldernpop (GE), Spot Festival (DK) and The End of The Road (UK), as well as by:larm, Øya, Hove and the Træna Festival at home.

Set the House on Fire is my second album, which was released with Propeller Recordings in 2013. I never intended to make a second album, and after Floriography I felt completely empty. More that two hundred and fifty concerts had worn the melodies out. Every day was a routine. I was tired.

So I took a break. A long one. In the forests of Telemark, as far away from both the continental waves and the salt sea as I could get, I found peace of mind. And with that the music came back again. In the basement of the dormitory I found a concrete shower with galactic sound. There, I made my first song in over two years. I had to learn how to write again. Slowly, almost unnoticeably, the melodies came floating, one by one. I scribbled the pages of my diary black. Every place, every day, every thought got its own song.

When we made Floriography everything was calculated and arranged in detail several months in advance. This time we had no idea about where we were going. New ideas were born every day. Many times we had to start from scratch again, set fire to what we had built. Some songs needed care and silence, others needed play and laughter into the early hours.

And I was by no means alone. From London came Kari Kamrud Jahnsen of Farao to sing Run to the Water with me. The other voice (that which is not mine) on Silhouette belongs to Einar Stray. All over the album producer Hasse Rosbach has scattered the sounds from his magical boxes and unpredictable mechanical pets. Together with them and many more, Set the House on Fire grew to be what it is: an album that first and foremost is about having the courage to find new ways. A second album, born from the ashes of the first.

Thank you for listening, and for lending me your time!
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