KAADA

Norway's Kaada has pursued music across multiple formats, functioning within a group setting, as an independent creator, and through original scoring work. John Erik Kaada, his given name, started experimenting with sound early, acquiring his first synthesizer at age ten before joining the band Cloroform during his late teens. Cloroform gathered its initial recordings on the 1998 release Deconstruction, then quickly followed with All-Scars in 1999, Do the Crawl in 2000, and the 2001 remix collection Scrawl, which marked the band's final statement while also including a solo remix contribution from Kaada. Beginning in 2000 he took on film scoring assignments while simultaneously preparing his first solo album. The resulting Thank You for Giving Me Your Valuable Time blended electronica with rock elements drawn from the 1950s and 1960s to produce whimsical, off-kilter pop songs; issued in Norway in 2001, it earned recognition from that country's Billboard edition as one of the year's strongest releases, although American audiences did not encounter it until Ipecac Records brought it out in 2003. His screen-music activities expanded rapidly in the same period, earning him the distinction of becoming the youngest recipient of Norway's Golden Clapboard honor while contributing scores to Mongoland, Tyven Tyven, Journey, and the 2004 feature Hawaii, Oslo. Also in 2004 he delivered his second solo album, MECD, and launched a collaboration with Mike Patton titled Romances. Ipecac later released Music for Moviebikers in 2006; three years afterward Junkyard Nostalgias appeared, an album on which Kaada played every instrument himself. His debut live recording, Kaada & The Late Bloomers In Concert, surfaced in 2012, and a reunion with Mike Patton yielded the 2016 album Bacteria Cult.