About Carmen Villain

"dulcet drone-pop meditations as supple as raw silk . . . Her singing seems to come from a place on the edge of sleep, where the Sandman takes the shape of a '60s girl group muttering trance-inducing mantras. . . a molten sound, part electric folk and part industrial primitive, that shifts imperceptibly between soft-focus haze and cutting relief." (SPIN Magazine) Carmen Villain is the latest signing on Smalltown Supersound (Lindstrøm, Todd Terje, Neneh Cherry, Annie). She has spent the last year working on her debut album Sleeper, resulting in a tempestuous, psychedelic and dreamlike set of songs with a defiantly DIY underground free-rock sound. Mostly recorded in a former nuclear bunker in Oslo, half of the album has been produced by Carmen herself, the other half by Emil Nikolaisen (Serena Maneesh), with one track a collab/co-production with fellow Norwegian cosmic hero Prins Thomas (who also sequenced the album). Carmen - who freely admits to an obsession with American avant weirdos Sun City Girls - draws on a lineage of sprawling, taboo-busting lo-fi rock: Sonic Youth, Royal Trux, Broadcast, Bikini Kill. But equally she admires the cut 'n' paste productions of J Dilla, Wu-Tang Clan and English avant garde post-punkers This Heat. more at: https://www.facebook.com/carmenvillain