(Original on bt.no)
Janove Ottesen, best known as singer of Kaizers Orchestra, is in the Duper Studio. Not as member of the noise making Balkan-rockers with the oil barrel this time, but on his own in order to record his first solo album.- Acoustic guitar, vocals and strings, answers Janove when asked to define the album that will come out in fall.
- This will be very different from what I have done with Kaizers. More in the classical singer-songwriter tradition. All lyrics are in English and that will mostly be a record you can listen to. When folks hear it on the radio, it's probably not the singer of Kaizers Orchestra that they think of first. Janove tells that the project is something he has been hatching out for several years.
- I wrote the first melody around the same time as we worked on "Ompa til du dør". This was the very first song in English I put together, and it took a year until I was satisfied with it. Lateron it got easier and easier, and most came about during the last year.
Doesn't know notes
When BT comes to visit in the Duper Studio, much of the recording is already done. Saxophone-player Jan Kåre Hystad is recording a saxophone solo for one of the songs. He needs only a few minutes until Janove and producer Yngve Leidulv Sæthre are satisfied.- I don't really know notes, but I know exactly how I want it to be, explains Janove while humming the saxophone-part for Hystad.
- As instrumentalist I'm rather mediocre, and therefore I leave the playing to those who can really do it.
And even if Janove has been living in Oslo for some years and is about to go back to his home Stavanger, it is the Duper Studio and musicians from Bergen that count now that the record is about to be put together. That he is releasing a record on his own doesn't mean that the Kaizers-singer has planned to sacrifice himself for his solo career.
- There will be a few solo appearances and a little promo work until fall, but then I'm done with it.
For Janove Ottesen has so much more music in him than he can bring out with Kaizers. Currently he is working on the film music for the premiere of "Alt om Egil". He has done a Bryne-song, and recently he was also the first in line when the pub Internasjonalen in Oslo needed an own theme. He even got the offer to write a classical concert, even though he is no learnt composer.
- I can't confine myself to the role of the hysterical Kaizers singer for the rest of the life, he laughs.
Kaizers tour
There won't be summer vacations for neither Janove nor the other members of Kaizers.- We will play around 70 concert in the summer. Ten will be here in Norway, but the major part will be around Europe.
After five tours and over a hundred concerts, Europe starts to loosen up. For the present, this venture is a losing deal. But "Evig Pint" was released in Germany some time ago and was sold as often during a little more than a month as the first release during a year.
- We have already twenty songs ready for the next Kaizers record. But the recording won't start before February 05, with release next fall at the earliest. It comes out when it is the time for a norwegian album (?).
- You aren't very modest?
- If you don't have trust in yourself you can go find something else to do, grins Janove.