Oslo, Norway · electronic · art pop · avant-pop

Smerz

1 upcoming festival

Norwegian duo's icy avant-pop — classical strings meet club unease, beauty kept deliberately off-balance, fashion-week cool with conservatory bones.

Smerz is a Norwegian duo, Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg, who formed the project after relocating to Copenhagen. Both came up with backgrounds in music study, and their records have been released through XL Recordings.

Their music sets whispered, close-miked vocals against sparse club rhythms, sudden silences and passages of strings and other acoustic instruments. Songs are frequently short and structurally unsettled, moving between something like pop and something closer to sound collage, with the Norwegian and English lyrics kept low and conversational in the mix.

electronicart popavant-pop