Sunturns - Christmas III [12"]

Artist: Sunturns
Title: Christmas III
Format: 12” transparent & purple splatter vinyl
Cat#: Fika105LP
Release date: 6th December 2024
Bandcamp | Spotify

The Norwegian super-group with members from Making Marks, The Little Hands of Asphalt, Mildfire, Flight Mode and Elva return with a third album of original Christmas songs. 

Get into that alternative, Nordic Christmas spirit!

Christmas III at its heart is an alt-Christmas album: the songs are firmly rooted in December’s festivities, albeit not usually relying on the season’s traditional reference points. The songs hone in on the more ambivalent sides of Christmas - family, customs and the passing of time - with a keen eye towards the holidays’ most obvious function in countries close to the Artic circle: getting through the cold and dark times to celebrate the winter solstice and the turning of the sun. 

Drawing from Sufjan Stevens’ epic indie Christmas compendium and Phil Spector’s wall of sound classic A Christmas Gift From You, Christmas III is built on shimmering guitars, snow filled piano lines, gentle strings, springy vocals and dynamic drums - all steadily conducted by Sunturns’ own Sjur Lyseid (Flight Mode, The Little Hands of Asphalt) in the producer’s seat at his Globus studio in Oslo.

Songs like "I Do", "New Snow", "Colibri Heart" and "The Day Before the Day", have indeed been released as singles in the years after 2015, but the record is also packed with new Christmas songs about sunstroke, winter depression and everything other belonging. Beautiful First Winter was the first taste of the album already in October, and the Christmas singles Crash Course Christmas and Back in Town will make the Christmas bells ring in the right way.

With three songwriters (Ola Innset, Einar Stray and Sjur Lyseid) contributing to Christmas III, there’s an ever shifting sense of reflections. Parenthood and the struggles of the dark Norwegian winter is behind Ola’s track First Winter. “Some times I feel bad about bringing children into such a difficult world. Not so much with respect to daylight and the seasons, they’re just going to have to learn how to live with it, but with many other things – like war, poverty, climate change and even just death.” 

Back In Town might have been inspired by a discussion over whether Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town” is a Christmas song or not, but it’s written about his youngest daughter Klara, to his elder daughter, about taking holidays with your family in a town you once lived.

Einar pulls in Phoenix and Mew by the way of Jesus and Mary Chain on Crash Course Christmas, resulting in a seasick wave of a pop tune. “It’s a song about the guilt of not prioritizing your relationships. It’s been year of rainchecks and Christmas finally gives you some time to reflect. You’ve experienced so much and changed so much as a person that you almost forget your origins. Coming home for Christmas can then be a ritiual of finding your way back to what you left behind."

Drawing on the knitwear from the film Love, Actually, Turtle Neck, taps into the Backstreet Boys by way of Mac Demarco, with a sneaky reference to the legendary Norwegian Christmas hit En Stjerne Skinner I Natt.

Album closer This Christmas / Next Christmas leans in on the hook for the Norwegian Christmas TV show Jul i Blåfjell, a multi-generational seasonal staple (essentially a daily children’s advent calendar kids show). “The song is about your parents ageing and needing your help – possibly really far away - while at the same time having your own children to take care of”.

If previous albums Christmas I (2011) and II (2015) are somewhat different from each other, then Christmas III represents a fusion of the two. Sunturns’ debut is full of youthful exuberance and was recorded with plentiful overdubs in Oslo, while 2015’s follow up is more pensive and somewhat darker, and was recorded live during one week in the Swedish forests. Einar elaborates: “I love making records like this: short, effective sessions with limited time and therefore no bland ‘perfection’. There’s a nerve to knowing you can collectively bring it all together without the luxury of time”. Christmas III represents a return to the lighter tone, on at least some of the songs, but with the wisdom of age that emerged on the second. You can’t just return to your twenties, however much you might want to!

The cover artwork is a homage to Christmas dress codes for Norwegian men. Suits and shirts are a rarity in day to day life, but there are a handful of occasions that require some form of formal attempt at a suit: New Year’s Eve, National Day, weddings & funerals, and Christmas Eve: resulting in various degrees of sartorial elegance on the day (and on this instance, a hot summer’s day stifling the Christmas vibes, with ambiguous apparel instructions ahead of the photoshoot!).

Sunturns will reconvene again in December for their annual Oslo show, complete with string section and choir at Parkteatret on the 13th of December.

Merry Christmas!

Sunturns are
Ola Innset – vocals, guitars, banjo
Sjur Lyseid – vocals, guitars
Einar Stray – vocals, keyboards, guitars
Eivind Almhjell – guitars, bass
Simen Herning – guitar
Jørgen Nordby – drums

View fullsize

Dec 1: Sunturns + New Starts at The Shacklewell Arms

We’ve got a very special joint headline show on the 1st of December at The Shacklewell Arms.

Sunturns, the Norwegian Christmas indiepop supergroup play their first ever show outside of Oslo. They’ve played an annual show in Norway since the beginning of the 2010s, and we’re delighted to bring them to London ahead of the release of their third album of original Christmas material.

Tickets from wegottickets.com/fikarecordings and from Dice.

SUNTURNS

Sunturns was formed as a Christmas super group by members of Oslo indiepop bands Monzano, My Little Pony and Einar Stray Orchestra. Those bands aren’t around anymore, but the band members have other projects, such as Flight Mode, The Little Hands of Asphalt, Elva, Making Marks and Mildfire. Sunturns still exists, however, with the same name and the same line-up – strangely making it one of the most long-lived of the bands to come out of the Oslo indiepop-scene of the early 2000s. Since it is a Christmas band, they only play shows at a particular time of year. You guessed it: Christmas.

The name Sunturns refers to the original meaning of Christmas in the North, namely the winter solstice and the “turning” of the sun. Instead of getting shorter and shorter, the days start to get longer. Big hurray, but spring is still a long time away. The band is named after the song “The Sun Turns”, which opened the debut album Christmas I, and was originally recorded by My Little Pony. Christmas II also has a song with the phrase “sunturns” (The Axial Tilt), and on Christmas III it pops up again in the track First Winter.

Sunturns are:
Ola Innset – vocals, guitars, banjo etc. [Making Marks, Elva]
Sjur Lyseid – vocals, guitars etc. [Flight Mode, The Little Hands of Asphalt, Monzano]
Einar Stray – vocals, keyboards, guitars etc. [Einar Stray Orchestra, Mildlife]
Eivind Almhjell – guitars, bass, etc.
Simen Herning – guitar
Jørgen Nordby – drums

NEW STARTS

New Starts are a spikey, fresh sounding band recalling the poppier ends of new wave and angular guitar rock. Their influences include The Cars, Breeders, Bay City Rollers, The Velvet Underground and ZZ Top.

Lead singer Darren Hayman has his own long career running from the late 90s with John Peel faves Hefner to his more recent thematic and historical albums dealing with the English Civil War, William Morris and forgotten rural idylls.

“I wanted a band again,” says Hayman, “and not a band that just backed me up and played my old songs. When we form our first bands in our teens we just find some friends and work through the musical differences. I usually look for players who play in a way I’m used to. This time I looked for variance and was led by people’s personality.”

Guitarist Joely Smith [of South London’s noise-pop adults and recently DIY-punks Fresh] was recommended by a mutual friend who said, ‘She makes everything better’. Hayman and Smith shared a coffee and agreed on the correct number of guitar pedals and decided to proceed without an audition.

“There is a tendency for me to make my chords too pretty. Joely cuts against that and plays in the opposite direction.” Hayman is a fan of rules and constraints and employed a new, oblique strategy on this record. “Even though I wrote all the songs, I wanted the songs to belong to everyone during arrangement. I decided that I would say ‘yes’ to every suggestion from the band, regardless of my instinct.”

This made the songs warp and bend into new shapes and ensured that the record was the product of four individuals. Bassist Giles Barrett and drummer Will Connor come from funky afro beat influenced band Tigercats. “Pretty much the only rhythm I use, left to my own devices, is the ‘road runner’ rhythm. Will takes to care to find where the drum beat can be and we always end up somewhere I didn’t expect.”

Sunturns - Crash Course Christmas [Digital]

Artist: Sunturns
Title: Crash Course Christmas
Format: digital
Cat#: Fika105SG3
Release date: 13th November 2024
Bandcamp | Spotify

Crash Course Christmas is the third track to be taken from the new Sunturns album “Christmas III”, out on December 6th on transparent & purple splatter vinyl and digitally.

The Norwegian indiepop super-group with members from Making Marks, The Little Hands of Asphalt, Mildfire, Flight Mode and Elva return with a third album of original Christmas songs. 

They play The Shacklewell Arms, London on December 1st, and Parkteatret, Oslo, December 13th.

Get into that alternative, Nordic Christmas spirit!

Crash Course Christmas is a seasick wave of a pop tune, constantly on the brink of breaking down - think Mew by Phoenix meets The Jesus and Mary Chain.

This one is penned by Einar Stray, one of the three songwriters in the band. He expands: “I love making records like this: short, effective sessions with limited time and therefore no relentless drive for “perfection”. There’s a nerve to it. 

It’s a song about the guilt of not prioritizing your relationships. It’s been year of rainchecks

and Christmas finally gives you some time to reflect. You’ve experienced so much, and

changed so much as a person, that you almost forget your origins. Coming home for

Christmas can then be a ritual of finding your way back to what you’d left behind.”

Christmas III at its heart is an alt-Christmas album: the songs are firmly rooted in December’s festivities, albeit not usually relying on the season’s traditional reference points. The songs hone in on the more ambivalent sides of Christmas - family, customs and the passing of time - with a keen eye towards the holidays’ most obvious function in countries close to the Artic circle: getting through the cold and dark times to celebrate the winter solstice and the turning of the sun.

Drawing from Sufjan Stevens’ epic indie Christmas compendium and Phil Spector’s wall of sound classic A Christmas Gift From You, Christmas III is built on shimmering guitars, snow filled piano lines, gentle strings, springy vocals and dynamic drums - all steadily conducted by Sunturns’ own Sjur Lyseid (Flight Mode, The Little Hands of Asphalt) in the producer’s seat at his Globus studio in Oslo.

Songs like "I Do", "New Snow", "Colibri Heart" and "The Day Before the Day", have indeed been released as singles in the years after 2015, but the record is also packed with new Christmas songs about sunstroke, winter depression and everything other belonging. Beautiful "First Winter" was the first taste of the album already in October, and the Christmas singles "Crash Course Christmas" and "Back in Town" will make the Christmas bells ring in the right way.

With three songwriters (Ola Innset, Einar Stray and Sjur Lyseid) contributing to Christmas III, there’s an ever shifting sense of reflections. Parenthood and the struggles of the dark Norwegian winter is behind Ola’s track First Winter. “Some times I feel bad about bringing children into such a difficult world. Not so much with respect to daylight and the seasons, they’re just going to have to learn how to live with it, but with many other things – like war, poverty, climate change and even just death.” 

If previous albums Christmas I (2011) and II (2015) are somewhat different from each other, then Christmas III represents a fusion of the two. Sunturns’ debut is full of youthful exuberance and was recorded with plentiful overdubs in Oslo, while 2015’s follow up is more pensive and somewhat darker, and was recorded live during one week in the Swedish forests. Einar elaborates: “I love making records like this: short, effective sessions with limited time and therefore no bland ‘perfection’. There’s a nerve to knowing you can collectively bring it all together without the luxury of time”. Christmas III represents a return to the lighter tone, on at least some of the songs, but with the wisdom of age that emerged on the second. You can’t just return to your twenties, however much you might want to!

Merry Christmas!

View fullsize

Sunturns - Back In Town [Digital]

Artist: Sunturns
Title: Back In Town
Format: digital
Cat#: Fika105SG2
Release date: 23rd October 2024
Bandcamp | Spotify

Back In Town is the second track to be taken from the new Sunturns album “Christmas III”, out on December 6th on transparent & purple splatter vinyl and digitally.

The Norwegian indiepop super-group with members from Making Marks, The Little Hands of Asphalt, Mildfire, Flight Mode and Elva return with a third album of original Christmas songs. 

Get into that alternative, Nordic Christmas spirit!

The second track from Christmas III is another written by Ola Innset [of Making Marks, and half of Elva alongside Allo Darlin’s Elizabeth Morris].

New single Back In Town might have been inspired by a discussion over whether Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town” is a Christmas song or not, but it’s written about his youngest daughter Klara, to his elder daughter, about taking holidays with your family in a town you once lived and attempting to make the most of it.

Christmas III at its heart is an alt-Christmas album: the songs are firmly rooted in December’s festivities, albeit not usually relying on the season’s traditional reference points. The songs hone in on the more ambivalent sides of Christmas - family, customs and the passing of time - with a keen eye towards the holidays’ most obvious function in countries close to the Artic circle: getting through the cold and dark times to celebrate the winter solstice and the turning of the sun.

Drawing from Sufjan Stevens’ epic indie Christmas compendium and Phil Spector’s wall of sound classic A Christmas Gift From You, Christmas III is built on shimmering guitars, snow filled piano lines, gentle strings, springy vocals and dynamic drums - all steadily conducted by Sunturns’ own Sjur Lyseid (Flight Mode, The Little Hands of Asphalt) in the producer’s seat at his Globus studio in Oslo.

Songs like "I Do", "New Snow", "Colibri Heart" and "The Day Before the Day", have indeed been released as singles in the years after 2015, but the record is also packed with new Christmas songs about sunstroke, winter depression and everything other belonging. Beautiful "First Winter" was the first taste of the album already in October, and the Christmas singles "Crash Course Christmas" and "Back in Town" will make the Christmas bells ring in the right way.

With three songwriters (Ola Innset, Einar Stray and Sjur Lyseid) contributing to Christmas III, there’s an ever shifting sense of reflections. Parenthood and the struggles of the dark Norwegian winter is behind Ola’s track First Winter. “Some times I feel bad about bringing children into such a difficult world. Not so much with respect to daylight and the seasons, they’re just going to have to learn how to live with it, but with many other things – like war, poverty, climate change and even just death.” 

If previous albums Christmas I (2011) and II (2015) are somewhat different from each other, then Christmas III represents a fusion of the two. Sunturns’ debut is full of youthful exuberance and was recorded with plentiful overdubs in Oslo, while 2015’s follow up is more pensive and somewhat darker, and was recorded live during one week in the Swedish forests. Einar elaborates: “I love making records like this: short, effective sessions with limited time and therefore no bland ‘perfection’. There’s a nerve to knowing you can collectively bring it all together without the luxury of time”. Christmas III represents a return to the lighter tone, on at least some of the songs, but with the wisdom of age that emerged on the second. You can’t just return to your twenties, however much you might want to!

Merry Christmas!

View fullsize

Sunturns - First Winter [Digital]

Artist: Sunturns
Title: First Winter
Format: digital
Cat#: Fika105SG1
Release date: 2nd October 2024
Bandcamp | Spotify

The Norwegian super-group with members from Making Marks, The Little Hands of Asphalt, Mildfire, Flight Mode and Elva return with a third album of original Christmas songs. 

Get into that alternative, Nordic Christmas spirit!

Christmas III at its heart is an alt-Christmas album: the songs are firmly rooted in December’s festivities, albeit not usually relying on the season’s traditional reference points. The songs hone in on the more ambivalent sides of Christmas - family, customs and the passing of time - with a keen eye towards the holidays’ most obvious function in countries close to the Artic circle: getting through the cold and dark times to celebrate the winter solstice and the turning of the sun. 

Drawing from Sufjan Stevens’ epic indie Christmas compendium and Phil Spector’s wall of sound classic A Christmas Gift From You, Christmas III is built on shimmering guitars, snow filled piano lines, gentle strings, springy vocals and dynamic drums - all steadily conducted by Sunturns’ own Sjur Lyseid (Flight Mode, The Little Hands of Asphalt) in the producer’s seat at his Globus studio in Oslo.

With three songwriters (Ola Innset, Einar Stray and Sjur Lyseid) contributing to Christmas III, there’s an ever shifting sense of reflections. Parenthood and the struggles of the dark Norwegian winter is behind Ola’s track First Winter. “Some times I feel bad about bringing children into such a difficult world. Not so much with respect to daylight and the seasons, they’re just going to have to learn how to live with it, but with many other things – like war, poverty, climate change and even just death.” 

If previous albums Christmas I (2011) and II (2015) are somewhat different from each other, then Christmas III represents a fusion of the two. Sunturns’ debut is full of youthful exuberance and was recorded with plentiful overdubs in Oslo, while 2015’s follow up is more pensive and somewhat darker, and was recorded live during one week in the Swedish forests. Einar elaborates: “I love making records like this: short, effective sessions with limited time and therefore no bland ‘perfection’. There’s a nerve to knowing you can collectively bring it all together without the luxury of time”. Christmas III represents a return to the lighter tone, on at least some of the songs, but with the wisdom of age that emerged on the second. You can’t just return to your twenties, however much you might want to!

Merry Christmas!

View fullsize

Sunturns - new video and advent calendar

With Christmas fast approaching, here's the second video from Sunturns' new record Christmas II, "Sunni".

Buy Christmas I & II on double vinyl or download.

We've also launched an advent calendar, curated by Sunturns, who'll be guiding you through their favourite Norwegian acts every day in the run up to Christmas. So if you're on the look out for some more Scandinavian sounds, head over to the Sunturns Christmas advent calendar here.

Sunturns - Christmas I & II [12"]

Artist: Sunturns
Title: Christmas I & II
Format: 12" red vinyl and 12” white vinyl in gatefold sleeve
Cat#: Fika049
Release date: 4th Dec 2015
Bandcamp | Spotify

 SUNTURNS are a Norwegian super-group devoted to Christmas, featuring members of Making Marks, Moddi, The Little Hands Of Asphalt, Monzano and Einar Stray Orchestra.

The new Sunturns album Christmas II is not a normal Christmas album. Consisting of 10 original Christmas songs and one Ramones cover, five of Oslo’s finest singers, musicians and songwriters join forces once again to portray their take on Christmas. The songs, inspired by everything from My Bloody Valentine to A-ha, sung both English and Norwegian, delves in to Christmas, combined with family fights, death, emptiness, an amateur tennis champion, expensive beer, the axial tilt, shopping malls, nostalgia and forgiveness. Shimmering guitars, snow filled piano lines, gentle strings, springy vocals and dynamic drums - all steady conducted by Sunturns’ very own Sjur Lyseid in the producer’s seat.

While 2011’s debut was full of humorous, festive charm Christmas, Christmas II is a much darker and more adult affair. The bands’ all along gravitas is clear throughout: the sound is more mature, more electric and tighter. Having written none of the songs on the first album, youngest band member Einar Stray can claim credit for half the Christmas II songs, while Ola Innset has successfully written his first Christmas songs in Norwegian.

The album was recorded in the summer of 2015 deep in the woods of Sweden in the legendary Silence Studio, with guest appearances from Ofelia and Hanna of the Einar Stray Orchestra providing string accompaniment. 

The Axial Tilt is the first track taken from the album, reflecting on the eventual parting of December’s despair as the sun finally turns and the days start to get longer.

Would You is released as a single on October 31st, just as the lonely and desperate winter nights draw in as you reflect on your teenage emo self.

Sunni is a piano ballad that evolves in to a post-rock tune about meeting a girl called Sunniva, and is the final single taken from Christmas II, released on the 21st of November.

And all good Christmas albums need a murder ballad about an amateur tennis champion in Bergen, right? [Mount Kenya]

Sunturns consist of Eivind Almhjell (Psyence Fiction/Monzano), Jørgen Nordby (Moddi/Making Marks), Sjur Lyseid (The Little Hands Of Asphalt), Ola Innset (Making Marks) and Einar Stray (Einar Stray Orchestra/Moddi). 

The band christened themselves Sunturns, harking back to the pre-Christian celebrations marking the winter solstice; the point the dark Norwegian days start to fall back and give way to the light.

The seasonal band formed back in 2011, under the direction of Oslo based label Spoon Train. They immediately recorded and released their debut album Christmas to rave critics among Norwegian press, and went on tour in Norway and England to spread their somewhat different Christmas gospel. With both serious and humorous songs about many of the holiday’s backsides, the album became a hit record amongst indie fans both in Norway and abroad. The single The Sun Turns was listed on Norwegian radio station NRK P3’s official Christmas list and has been played heavily every December since. Sunturns’ come together once a year for an annual Christmas show in Oslo, and is for many a dear festive tradition.

New album Christmas II is released on vinyl, alongside 2011’s album Christmas on vinyl for the very first time, in a double LP package in a gatefold sleeve, including a download code of both albums. 18 original Sunturns tracks and covers of Low’s Just Like Christmas, Swearing At Motorists’ Losing Mine and The Ramones’ Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight) make up this double album package.

Watch and listen to new tracks from Sunturns' Christmas II album

We've got two new things out now to whet your appetite ahead of the release of Sunturn's second Christmas album in December. Kicking things off, feast your eyes on the video for Would You, recorded towards the end of summer at Silence Studios in central Sweden as Sunturns convened to channel all that summer excitement into a sparkling festive album!

If that's not enough to get you geared up for the approaching holiday season, we've released another track from the album for you to listen to. Sunni is the opening track of Christmas II - starting off as a piano ballad before evolving into a post-rock tune about meeting a girl called Sunniva...

Pre-order your copy of the gatefold double vinyl package or download here.

Sunturns - Would You [Digital]

SILENCE2015-48

Would You is the first single proper taken from Sunturns' new album Christmas II. Written by Einar Stray [Moddi, Einar Stray Orchestra], it's a reflective look back at those teenage emotions swelling and brooding as the clocks go back, the nights draw in and the isolation of winter descends.

Would You appears on the second album from Sunturns - an album I was desperate to make happen, having absolutely adored their debut record "Christmas" from a few years back. They're a band that don't get together very often (one of the hardships that occurs as a result of forming a band devoted to Christmas, those summer festival tours are bloody hard to come by!), and having worked with Ola and Jorgen as part of Making Marks previously, we're slowly plugged away, planting the seeds of suggestion of making a second album until that that email arrived at Fika HQ: "Hey Tom, we're thinking of recording a second Sunturns record, are you in?". It was just like Christmas.

So yeah, we're chuffed this album is happening - and it'll be a real beauty. Two 12" records, one on red vinyl and one on white vinyl, in a gatefold sleeve, encompassing 2011's album Christmas on vinyl for the very first time and 2015's Christmas II. If you prefer your Christmas music a little bit melancholic, a little bit jaded, and really rather gorgeous, then I'm sure you'll love these records as much as I do.

Pre-order your copy of Christmas I & II from the Fika Recordings shop.

Sunturns are a Norwegian super-group devoted to Christmas, featuring members of Making Marks, Moddi, The Little Hands Of Asphalt, Monzano and Einar Stray Orchestra.

Sunturns - Christmas double album

Sunturns

Christmas may still be a couple of months away, but we just can't wait any longer to announce our Christmas release from Norwegian indie supergroup Sunturns! Come December we'll be putting out a double vinyl album featuring their 2011 album Christmas and a brand new album Christmas II.

A follow up Sunturns Christmas album has been on our wish list for a long time; the original album has been a festive favourite alongside those classics from Low, Sufjan Stevens and The Just Joans. If you find yourself putting those on the stereo every year to get yourself through another mince pie and another anecdote from a misinformed and slightly racist distant relative, you'll be in for a treat with this pair of albums.

For those of you who've not come across Sunturns before, you should be familiar with Making Marks from their album A Thousand Half-Truths on Fika back in 2013. Ola Innset and Jørgen Nordby from Making Marks appear as part of Sunturns, alongside Jørgen's Moddi band mate Einar Stray (also of Einar Stray Orchestra), Sjur Lyseid (of The Little Hands Of Asphalt, which also featured Ola, and Eivind Almhjell of Monzano - a true Norwegian indie supergroup. Sunturns are a band devoted to Christmas - they come together annually for some much loved festive shows in December, before disappearing with the hazy memories of glogg fuelled nights for another year...

sunturns3

So here's a track for you to hear, taken from the new album. It's called The Axial Tilt, and like the band's name, reflects on the the lifting of December's dark despair as the nights get shorter and daylight starts to make a reappearance.

You can pre-order the double vinyl from us here now, as well digital pre-orders for both album or the new album Christmas II. But you'll be wanting the physical really, it comes on red and on white vinyl, in a gatefold sleeve with download code, in a beautiful sleeve designed by Allo Darlin's Paul Rains.