Biography
Pan-Scandinavian electronic/folk outfit Drivan took shape chiefly through the efforts of graphic designer, interdisciplinary art-meddler, and Smalltown Supersound mainstay Kim Hiorthøy. During 2007 the Norwegian producer first encountered Swedes Lisa Östberg and Louise Peterhoff along with Finnish performer Kristiina Viiala while scoring The Potato Country, choreographer and performance artist Gunilla Heilborn’s dance-theater work. Struck by the trio’s vocal contributions onstage, Hiorthøy proposed a musical collaboration; each of the three women already possessed wide-ranging experience across theater, dance, and film yet none regarded music as her principal vocation. Together they shaped song structures and lyrics around loops Hiorthøy supplied, yielding an overall sound that preserved his characteristically loose, idiosyncratic, and exploratory arranging methods while folding in more conventional vocal forms and drawing on everything from the folk and prog traditions of 1970s Sweden to the reinterpretative style of singer Stina Nordenstam. Smalltown Supersound issued the group’s debut album, the misleadingly titled Disko, in August 2010.
Albums