Fredrik Svabø announces debut album Kingo's Treat

Fredrik Svabø announces debut album Kingo's Treat - out 14th March

New single "Sophie" out now

 Norwegian musician, composer and producer Fredrik Svabø is a key member of art-pop sensation AURORA’s live band, and has contributed to work from Paris Paloma, Sigrid, Askjell and Delara

L-R: Thea Wang, Fredrik Svabø – Photo credit: Carianne Older 
(Download HI-RES photos + assets)

STREAM, "Sophie"
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(6th January) Today, Norwegian musician, composer and producer Fredrik Svabø announces his debut album Kingo's Treat - out 14th March. With the announcement comes the album's second single "Sophie" - featuring lead vocals from fellow Norwegian Thea Wang.

Fredrik Svabø is a key member of art-pop sensation AURORA’s live band, and has contributed to work from Paris Paloma, Sigrid, Askjell, and Delara among many others. New single "Sophie" is the second taste (following last year's debut single "Running") of Svabø's debut solo album Kingo's Treat - a project that has been in development for over half a decade,

New single “Sophie,” was written about a woman being cared for by her community after a loss. Vocalist Thea Wang captures the melancholy feeling at the centre of the song as well as the need to escape the attention (“Every day she’s on the run. Day by day she runs faster.”)

Woven between Svabø and Wang's excoriations of the soul are immersive instrumentals, with Svabø drawing from his love of jazz to underline the themes of heartbreak, indecision, and new beginnings through a combination of chiming guitar, mournful trumpet, and softly undulating drums.

Musically, “Sophie” is representative of Svabø’s eagerness to discover new things. He had been listening to Greg Leisz's pedal steel playing on Susanne Sundfør's album Music For People In Trouble and wanted to learn how to play the instrument. “I get a big kick when I first start to learn a new instrument and we ended up using it [pedal steel] throughout the album.”

On the song's lyrical inspiration, Fredrik Svabø commented:

"It’s a reflection on the emptiness that lingers after loss and how it can transform you. Meeting a world that keeps moving around you while you just try to keep up and get through the day. It tells a story about a person who has all these unspoken struggles, trapped in a cycle trying to outrun her pain."

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Svabø's position as one of Norway’s most sought-after musicians and an integral part in the country’s position in the Scandi-pop pantheon, has put him on stage and in studio spaces that have rapidly increased his skills and abilities as an artist and producer.

Inspired by jazz musicians such as Bill Frisell and Brian Blade, plus Kendrick Lamar, D'Angelo and Blake Mills, Kingo’s Treat is expansive and freewheeling, an album that unspools itself into loose moments of improvisation before snapping into shape with pop melodies and enduring hooks. It speaks of an artist who is both adept at shaping billion-streaming festival anthems as well as appreciating the annals of musical history. In short, it is a music lover's album.

Following his creative intuition has led Svabø to a body of work that is both personal and collaborative, something that speaks to a life of musical obsession created with the people he has met along the way. Despite working on hundreds of songs with other artists over the past half decade, he still had a creative itch to scratch. “There was so much music in me that I didn't get out through the other projects,” he says. “I love being in the background and helping people get their vision out but I knew I had to do it under my own name, too.”

Complemented by a cast of Norwegian jazz musicians including Ola Øverby (drums) Andreas Rukan (bass) and Lyder Øvreås Røed (trumpet) - all of the cult Oslo neo-soul outfit Fieh - Kingo's Treat was tracked live at Propeller Studios in Oslo, utilising all of the studio's rooms simultaneously.

With a broad palette of influence, ranging from Blake Mills, D’Angelo, Alabama Shakes, John Scofield, Brian Blade Fellowship and Bon Iver, to Julian Lage, Kendrick Lamar, Geir Sundstøl, Big Red Machine, Daniel Lanois and Bill Frisell ("just to mention a few" Svabø, makes clear) - as introductions go, Kingo's Treat is an enticing one. No longer the man in the background, Svabø is ready to step into the spotlight.

Fredrik Svabø's debut album Kingo's Treat is out 14th March. New single "Sophie" is out now.

Kingo's Treat - album artwork & track list
1. Running
2. T#1
3. Sophie
4. T#2
5. Like Old Friends
6. Dog
7. Interlude Saul
8. Talk About It
9. Third
10. Transition from Bunk Beds
 

Follow, Fredrik Svabø
Instagram: @fredriksvabo