Mortenson releases
WebSite:: http://www.mp3.com/mortenson
Gestalt::
Heidi Mortenson was born in Denmark and grew up at the rough West Sea, listening to the metallic sounds of her dad fixing cars in the garage and her mum playing the organ. She started to play the accordion, signing up for the family tradition and in high school she switched history classes for some innovating self study on the drums.
After graduation, Mortenson left her hometown for the capital: Copenhagen where she studied contemporary dance & choreography, practiced piano and acoustic guitar and also discovered electronic music, which made her decide to move to Barcelona. Here, she started playing records & writing poetry. She got hold of electronic music equipment and started an intensive self study on these machines. It was a challenge of creativity and self modulated sounds and soon after she moved on experimenting with her voice through effects and sampling snippets that she recorded from traveling.
Electronic music revealed both a new sonic universe and a creative, different scene. Then due to other inspirations she started listening Jazz, Motown, and Dub; something about roots and origin. Time had come to experiment some more: mortenson recorded herself singing inside a washing machine, transforming the receiver of her parents old 70s phone into a microphone, hooking up with a walkie-talkie system and more...
Mortenson is currently a one-woman band playing live concerts (or abstract dj-sets); experimenting widely from beat boxing to dusty organs and lush noises from loose cables. The music is melancholically brave with twisted beats, breaks and soundscapes of real life recordings. Crisp samples and layers of melodies are webbed into each other, varied with (reversed) vocals on top. Live on stage she takes use of machines, effect units, instruments and special-built microphones for the playing with words & voices.
Mortenson was sellected as the titled Resident Artist of 2003 at the annual experimental festival LEM, based in Gracia, Barcelona. The past year has been very progressive playing concerts, making new tracks & songs, and touring Europe last April with visual constructor Mia Makela a.k.a. SOLU from Finland. Also an acoustic band was formed with Stéphane Olive and Juanca Aranda. Joined together in kicking ass on the acoustic field of a melt-together of folk/post rock/jazz. Straight forward and struggling the microphone with peculiar poetry.
Web-zine:::
http://www.bcnsound.com
mortenson featured in 1st issue: January/February 2003. 3 tracks online. under "Xtras".
On-line:::
http://www.mp3.com/mortenson
http://www.gracia-territori.com/
http://www.femalepressure.net