Biography
Carmen Villain (real name: Carmen Hillestad) is a Norwegian musician signed to the Smalltown Supersound label (Lindstrøm, Todd Terje, Neneh Cherry, Annie). Her 2013 debut album "Sleeper" contains raunchy guitar and vocal oriented indie pop, with a defiantly DIY underground free-rock sound. Mostly recorded in a former nuclear bunker in Oslo, half of the album was produced by Carmen herself, the other half by Emil Nikolaisen (Serena Maneesh), with one track a collab/co-production with fellow Norwegian cosmic hero Prins Thomas (who also sequenced the album).
Her second album, the 2017 "Infinite Avenue" has a more open sound, closer to dream pop and singer-songwriter than her debut. After her first two albums Carmen started drifting away from guitar and vocal oriented pop, towards more experimental and instrumental genres such as leftfield electronica, ambient, and fourth world. This new direction was fully noticeable on her third album "Both Lines Will Be Blue" from 2019 and its 2020 remix album "Both Lines Will Be Blue Remixed", in which guitars are completely absent and sparse vocals are only in the form of field recordings. Instead we get flutes, deep electronic beats and ambient atmospheres. "Both Lines Will Be Blue Remixed" contains remixes by the likes of Parris, Yu Su, Dj Python and Jay Glass Dubs.
Her 2020 long form EP "Affection in a Time of Crisis" and 2021 mini album "Sketch for Winter IX: Perlita" are deep listening ambient affairs, appearing to reflect on the lock down period in which they were created. The 2022 album "Only Love from Now On" continues the path Carmen set out on "Both Lines Will Be Blue".
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