Billy Meier
I WANT TO BELIEVE
Billy meier’s SECOND album on øra Fonogram.
release: November 4th 2022.
Billy Meier is finally ready with the sequel to their critically acclaimed album "Sounds from Erra'' from 2019. Intergalactic love, wormholes, eternity, hyperspace and parallel universes. Billy Meiers new album is an escape from the gradually more dystopian world we live in, and a homage to the childish belief in the unexplainable.
"In today's society we experience a need to hold on to our right to dream and fantasize about the mysteries of the universe. As well as a tool of mirroring society, music also has a unique ability to pull us away from reality when it becomes too demanding of us. ‘I Want To Believe’ consists of music inspired by and named after phenomenons and ideas we want to believe in. We wish to give our listeners the opportunity to get carried away and drift off together with us, through the music." - Billy Meier
'I Want To Believe' is Billy Meier's third album release and marks a difference in their musical and visual expression. The album consists of a number of compositions that each member of the band has contributed to, as well as improvisational ideas that have come about through the creative process. It's a great variety that illuminates the personalities in the band in a wonderful way. The production is the result of a close collaboration with Norwegian producer and studio technician Dag Erik Johansen, working with an approach that draws more similarities to pop production than jazz production. In comparison with Billy Meiers earlier releases the sound on this album includes a greater deal of synthesizers, processed instruments, drum machines and roto toms, as well as the fact that they’ve been working with a dogma of not using any artificial reverb in the mix, but rather actively use of compression and delay. They touch upon the outskirts of their sound - from the soft and naive to the hard and progressive.
"We like referring to our music as ‘retro futuristic space jazz’, which stems from the combination of acoustic and electronic instruments, the rural and urban, free jazz and improv music combined with grooves and compositions with pop aesthetics qualities, and our constant seek towards the extraterrestrial.’ - Billy Meier
For almost 10 years, this band has left its mark on the Norwegian scene with its clear space concept and its colorful performances. The band's members are also heavily involved in other projects doing improvised music, folk music and pop music on the Norwegian music scene, such as Miman, Masaava, Kjorstad Brothers, Reolo and OJKOS.
Musicians:
Hans Kjorstad - violin & synthesizer
Martin Morland - bass & synthesizer
Sander Eriksen Nordahl - guitar &, synthesizer
Henriette Eilertsen - flute & synthesizer
Ivar Myrset Asheim - drums & drum machine
“The music of Billy Meier fits well under the part of the jazz community that explores the boundaries of what jazz is, and Billy Meier is the star example of that”
“A listening experience that almost feels interactive”
“Every time an enormous drone from the biggest rototomes shines out of the facility in the middle of a cloud of ambient synth, an explosion of glitter ignites in my brain”
“Tough and unique”
“On I Want To Believe, the quintet sounded bigger in every way”
“Sounds more resilient than ever”
PRODUCTION // OF 193
Recorded in Athletic Sound by Dag Erik Johansen, 3rd to 6th of Feb 2021
Mixed in Athletic Sound by Dag Erik Johansen
Mastered by Karl Klaseie in Øra Mastering
Produced by Billy Meier & Dag Erik Johansen
Cover Art and design by Synne Amanda Salvesen