{"id":35024,"date":"2020-08-27T10:00:45","date_gmt":"2020-08-27T14:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=35024"},"modified":"2020-08-27T10:35:28","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T14:35:28","slug":"lasse-passage-captures-rich-tender-details-of-nomadic-life-on-sunwards-lp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/lasse-passage-captures-rich-tender-details-of-nomadic-life-on-sunwards-lp\/","title":{"rendered":"Lasse Passage Captures Rich, Tender Details of Nomadic Life on Sunwards LP"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_35057\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-35057\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-35057 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/LP_1-photo-Kim-Jakobsen-To_small.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"719\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/LP_1-photo-Kim-Jakobsen-To_small.jpeg 1000w, https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/LP_1-photo-Kim-Jakobsen-To_small-324x233.jpeg 324w, https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/LP_1-photo-Kim-Jakobsen-To_small-416x299.jpeg 416w, https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/LP_1-photo-Kim-Jakobsen-To_small-300x216.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/LP_1-photo-Kim-Jakobsen-To_small-768x552.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/LP_1-photo-Kim-Jakobsen-To_small-500x360.jpeg 500w, https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/LP_1-photo-Kim-Jakobsen-To_small-700x503.jpeg 700w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-35057\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo Credit: Kim Jakobsen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lasse Passage is currently spending his summer vacation with his 90 year old father in a fisherman&#8217;s village in Norway. On a daily basis, they climb aboard a boat and head out to sea, fishing for crabs and mackerel amide the fresh salt air. It&#8217;s a routine that runs in sharp contrast to the majority of Passage&#8217;s adult life, a life of travel and adventure, of music making in foreign lands. Passage&#8217;s latest album <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sunwards<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was built in time with the swing of his usual existence: a trip to Mexico, complete with missed rendezvous with friends, a broken guitar, and a deepening love.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Continuing in the vein of 2015&#8217;s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stop Making Sense and Start Making Success Vol 1, 2, 3<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> &amp; 4,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">S<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">unwards<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> continues Passage&#8217;s explorer narrative, bringing the listener into the sweet, sensual heat of a tourist&#8217;s gaze. In Passage&#8217;s world, one can picture soft linen sheets, the smell of tamales wafting up from the street, a lover showering in the next room. &#8220;I lead a complex life,&#8221; Passage tells AudioFemme. &#8220;It&#8217;s good years and it&#8217;s bad years. It&#8217;s been good years the last years now.&#8221; He&#8217;s referring to the upbeat nature of this album, with songs like his recent single &#8220;Heartbeat&#8221; talking directly to his current relationship with choreographer Ingrid Berger Myhre: &#8220;I didn&#8217;t play with open cards before\/but the things you trigger is letting me know\/it&#8217;s something\/something that could be good and true\/you increase my heartbeat\/you increase my heartbeat.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/playlists\/1066710868%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-p8dL8yw0w38&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true&amp;visual=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc; line-break: anywhere; word-break: normal; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif; font-weight: 100;\"><a style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" title=\"SOFA\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/sofalabel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SOFA<\/a> \u00b7 <a style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" title=\"Lasse Passage: Sunwards\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/sofalabel\/sets\/lasse-passage-sunwards\/s-p8dL8yw0w38\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Lasse Passage: Sunwards<\/a><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Passage grew up in Bergen, a coastal city in west Norway. His childhood was full of music, his father a passionate music hobbyist. &#8220;He would always sing me to sleep,&#8221; Passage remembers. &#8220;He would pull up the guitar and sing a song. The same song every night.&#8221; The song each night was always in the 18th century Swedish Troubadour style, following the same characters as they travel, fight, and love; the ballads often link stories and include complex references to other songs, weaving a tapestry, a world all their own. At age 12, Passage took up the acoustic guitar, joining his father in a song while the coffee was served at dinner parties.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After one year at a conservatory studying composition, Passage felt the call of a journeyman, as well as the musical inkling to explore beyond the classical. &#8220;For me, this was finding back the joy,&#8221; he recalls, thinking back on the two year trip he took after he left school. The music he made on that trip felt fresh, more truthful to his soul. &#8220;Music can also be this simple. It doesn&#8217;t have to be new, complex Stockhausen. For me, the most important thing is to communicate feelings on a plain level. And that gives me great joy.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Not a slightest chance that this could work\/that slowly I recall your type\/I came down here to have some fun with you\/but we are miles away\/from having a good day,&#8221; Passage gently croons on the opening single &#8220;Miles.&#8221; With his first lines, Passage reveals his musical cards: he is funny, he is thoughtful, he plans to take you on a little ride. He describes his writing process as being initially quite easy. &#8220;The music comes really fast for me. It&#8217;s easy. It sounds cocky to say,&#8221; he admits. &#8220;Usually the music comes really fast, but then I struggle a lot with finishing the song because to finish it, it really has to make sense to me why I should finish it and why it should be a song. And that takes a lot of time for me. But coming up with a new idea for a song, that comes fast to me.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The initial &#8220;emotional seed,&#8221; as Passage puts it, is the thing he has to search for. Music comes first, then he hums the tune repeatedly until the seed forms, blossoming from a meditation into a fully formed thought. The songs on <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sunwards<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> were all written on his Landola J-85, a Finnish guitar he bought when he first began songwriting. The guitar took a tumble off a truck during his Mexico trip and was totally crushed. He went to a guitar luthier in Mexico to fix it; the man was good, but Passage didn&#8217;t have the time to let him fix the whole thing, resulting in high action between the fretboard and the strings. As a result, most of the songs he wrote for the album were written in open tunings, which he admits influenced a few things.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Genres are explored openly and honestly throughout the album. &#8220;I Need A Holiday&#8221; has the cheerful sarcasm of a Ben Folds ditty, followed closely by another &#8217;90s-influenced jam, &#8220;Homecoming,&#8221; with its gentle guitar strum and casual talk-sing cadence: &#8220;Soon I&#8217;m gonna see all my friends\/I&#8217;ll tell them stuff they can not understand\/so I&#8217;ve gotta keep on the ball\/to not lose track of my calling\/when I&#8217;m coming home.&#8221; This soft rock vibe is broken when &#8220;God Is In The Nature&#8221; hits the needle. Suddenly Passage&#8217;s stroll through cobblestone streets takes a turn into the wilderness, a canopy of trees shedding soft beams of light onto the forest floor. Its repetitive chant reveals a new, more spiritual aspect to Passage&#8217;s travels and hints at older themes, the kind of wink toward death that marks a maturing musician. A video for the song is currently being created by filmmaker <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ingridbergermyhre.com\/\">Jenny Berger Myhre<\/a> (sister to Passage&#8217;s girlfriend) at the couple\u2019s summer home.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;The world is opening to me\/I no longer have the need\/for anything that&#8217;s not right here,&#8221; Passage sings on &#8220;Sunwards,&#8221; which has a decidedly beach-infused sound, complete with a horn section. After leaving Mexico, Passage spent many months working with friends in Oslo&#8217;s jazz community (Andreas Werliin, Jo Berger Myhre, Kim Myhr, and Eivind L\u00f8nning to name a few) to add the full, lush sound infused throughout the album. Songs like &#8220;Something Easy&#8221; shift focus to a tropical drumbeat, while &#8220;300.000 francs&#8221; seems to pull us back to a more melancholy winter mood. Recorded during the winter of 2018, Passage sought the help of\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Grammy-winning producer Noah Georgeson, known for his work with Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, The Strokes and Norah Jones. There is a gentleness to his work, a sweet reflective echo in Passage&#8217;s voice and the strum of his guitar that gives the album the immediate feeling of Polaroid pictures: tactile, transient, a quick shot of time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Unfortunately, it&#8217;s only me,&#8221; Passage said when asked if he builds his songs around a character or personal experience. &#8220;I need to have a problem or it needs to be a situation that I need to process.&#8221; For the moment, life is pretty regulated, with little to no drama to draw from. He is planning a live stream concert for the album, set for September 4th, complete with a full band setup. He is also spending quality time with his father. His days start with the smell of salt air and end with nutty coffee, brewed in preparation for a long night of stories, song, and star gazing. Travel is halted, but with <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sunwards<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> at his fingertips, Lasse Passage is able to move backward in time, exploring once again a strange city&#8217;s streets, with surf, heat, and sand just a few steps away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Follow Lasse Passage on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/passe_lassasje\/\">Instagram<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LassePassage\">Facebook<\/a> for ongoing updates.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lasse Passage is currently spending his summer vacation with his 90 year old father in a fisherman&#8217;s village in Norway. On a daily basis, they climb aboard a boat and head out to sea, fishing for crabs and mackerel amide the fresh salt air. It&#8217;s a routine that runs in sharp contrast to the majority [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":35057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[573,305,567],"tags":[10816],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/LP_1-photo-Kim-Jakobsen-To_small.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35024"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35024"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35122,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35024\/revisions\/35122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}