DRENG is out

DRENG is out.

Two and a half years after Stubb, our second album, Dreng, is officially in the world. Twelve tracks, out now on Heilo / Sounds Like Gold.

With Stubb, we set out to capture what we love most about being a band: the raw live energy of five people in a room, playing together. We're proud of that record. But somewhere between the last Stubb-tour gig and the first day in the studio for Dreng, we landed on a thought. Stubb had given us the effect of filming a theater play. You're recording the thing, but you're using none of the language of the medium you're in. A film isn't a play with cameras pointed at it. A studio recording isn't a live show with microphones pointed at it.

Maybe the truth is that recorded music — no matter how careful you are — will never quite capture what it feels like to stand in front of a hardingfele in full battle mode. So with Dreng, instead of chasing that ghost, we leaned into what each medium does best. Studio for studio. Live for live. (Speaking of which — come see us play. The recordings are great, but they're not the show.)

We blocked off three weeks at our own Kapsel Studio in Nydalen — November 4 to 24, 2024 — and tracked every part individually. Drums first, then bass, then guitar, fiddle, sax, vocals, guests. We used studio magic. We used sound effects. We layered things we'd never play live because we only have ten fingers between us at a fiddle. We let the studio be a studio, not a stenographer.

Producing alongside us were Håkon Iversen and Simon Jackman, with Simon also handling engineering duties. Håkon, in particular, played the Norwegian Rick Rubin on this one — not there to play the parts, but to find the heart of a song, strip away the rest, and call clear shots when the rest of us were caught in indecision. Martin Selen mixed. Morgan Nicolaysen mastered, finishing in November 2025 — almost a year to the day after we'd started tracking.

The result is twelve tracks that feel less like a reinvention and more like an augmentation — a careful step into the unknown without losing the folk roots we started from. Same five-piece. Same archival digging. Same hardingfele up front. But with a wider toolkit and the room to layer in things we couldn't before. Bigger arrangements. More guests. More wallop where it counts.

And speaking of guests — Dreng is, in many ways, an album about who we made it with as much as how. Tuva Syvertsen sings on Murukleiven II, the sequel to Stubb's Murukleiven we always wanted to make. Bare Egil joins us on Eg er liten, an irreverent rockabilly party romp that we hope will become a setlist staple. Karl Seglem plays his rams horn on two tracks — including Hvem Karl Seglem foruten vind?, which is, yes, exactly the song the title implies. Erlend Viken brings second fiddle on Skomakerhallingen and Vossavalsen; Ingrid Lingaas Fossum brings langeleik on the latter. And on the more vocal-driven tracks, Synnøve Brøndbo Plassen and Martin Steinum Brun take the lead.

One quiet first: Fire in the Hole! is a Gangar original — a song we wrote ourselves rather than pulled from the folk archives. Ævtro closes the album by weaving the Bom Bom melody back through one last time, as a kind of farewell.

Dreng is out everywhere now. Stream or buy via ffm.to/dreng, or grab the 12" vinyl or CD from our shop. Physical orders ship from Oslo. And if you want the full picture — come find us at a show.

— Richard Max