The Disciplines

Ken Stringfellow - Vocals
Bjørn Bergene - Guitars
"Ralla" - Drums
Bård Helgeland - Bass


The Disciplines came from a fortuitous meeting: the singer of Briskeby, Lise Karlsnes, met the singer of The Posies, Ken Stringfellow, while the latter was entertaining an entire MTV music awards afterparty, taking requests at the piano (Ken was there playing with R.E.M., he is their keyboard player). This was in 2001, just after Stringfellow's second solo album, Touched, has been released, and he was pleasantly surprised to find someone requesting one his songs, a request he gladly granted. The two became friends and thru Lise Ken met the rest of Briskeby (Bjørn Bergene, guitarist; Bård Helgeland, bassist; and Claus Heiberg-Larsen; drummer) inviting them to the R.E.M. show in Oslo in early 2005. Bonds were solidified in a late night session at Teddys jukebox bar; promises were made and the one that was kept was that they would all do something musical together in the future. Luckily, the other, less noble, promises were forgotten by morning! R.E.M. returned to Oslo in the summer of 2005 and in the scant free hours between early morning arrival and the show, Ken went to a studio and fashioned a duet with Lise on what would become Briskebys most successful song, Joe Dallesandro. A hit song has a way of tying the participants together forever and this prospect was nothing but a great opportunity for making something entirely new out of this crossbred, thoroughbred, hybrid creature: part Norwegian, part American; part Briskeby, part Stringfellow et voila, the Disciplines were formed. They're still trying to decide what the music can be called. At turns rock, at turns torch song, at turns simple, at turns twisted around different styles. Based around the live band Stringfellow sings and plays electric piano; Bjørn plays guitar and sings; Bård plays bass, Claus Heiberg-Larsen plays drums. They don't do overdubs, and they also use the motto famously tucked into the sleeve of all the early Queen albums: no synths! The fact that the band hasn't played a show yet is moot. The recordings are a show, done live, in their rehearsal space, with all the tension and ferocity that a band usually thrusts forward towards the audience being jammed into a scant few microphones (god rest their souls). The name implies the band is itself the creation of four disciplined musicians. It certainly has a well-defined, adhered-to aesthetic. However, disciplines are also branches of knowledge and occasionally, a new discipline is formed when something too advanced, too specialized, and too unique to inhabit a previously known category, is created by drawing upon previously known fields of science. And thus, we present you, previously unknown to science, philosophy or history: the Disciplines.

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