For more than ten years Now We’ve got Members have been churning out their particular no-brand of progressive, off-beat weirdness. Having drawn upon such disparate influences as balkan folk, 70s prog, indie pop and improvisation, the band never quite found their place in the ruler-straight music scene of Oslo. So they made their own scene. Now We’ve got Members laid down fundament for the label and music collective Metronomicon Audio, which has been releasing innovative pop music for almost ten years.

Delwing into the music of Now We’ve got Members is a varied and rewarding experience. Every tune usually contains enough elements for other bands to make an entire album. Allthough the traditional verse/chorus/verse/chorus progressions are usually put to work, space is also left for numerous excursions into time and space, and the tunes may just as well end in five minute instrumental improvisations containing wah-wah saxophone freak-outs, uneven time signatures and minimal riffs and patterns endlessly repeating going slightly in and out of phase. Their take on music is a non-discriminating one. The music of eastern Europe or Ethiopia is just as relevant as western indie rock, and Terry Riley sits nicely alongside James Brown.

Spiritual advisor and frontman of Now We’ve got Members, Jørgen Skjulstad, once vowed that Now We’ve got Members will spend a long time getting slightly renowned, for then to remain slightly renowned for a long time. It seems fitting for such an idiosyncratic group: Too weird to be championed, too good to be forgotten.

Metronomicon Audio www.metronomiconaudio.net Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.