Wiki
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Release Date
1 January 2008
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Length
12 tracks
Maskineri is the fourth studio album by Kaizers Orchestra, released on 18 February 2008. The album received a largely positive critical response upon release, but views were somewhat divided compared to their earlier efforts. Regardless, it became an instant sales success, and on aggregate, spent more weeks on the Norwegian Top 40 album charts than the two earlier studio albums had done.
Not long after the release of the highly successful Maestro and the conclusion of its supporting tour in 2005, Janove Ottesen and Geir Zahl begun composing songs for Kaizers Orchestra's next studio album. In an interview, they discussed the general theme of the album; in their own words, "people who die in a Kaizer fashion". Additionally, they mentioned a then-unnamed song whose lyrics dealt with a dying sailor's last wish.
As part of the Maestro Tour of 2006, Kaizers Orchestra held a concert on the venue Rockefeller in Oslo on March 27, 2006. The setlist for this performance was radically different from other shows that were part of the tour - in Kontroll på kontinentet, they cited their growing fatigue and sense of repetitiveness as the cause for this - in addition to many songs that had been dropped from the setlists years prior, they played a new song, "Du og dine er even". The very next day, the band held an exclusive concert at the small venue Pigalle in Oslo, for a hundred or so fans. In addition to a performance of "Bøn fra helvete" during which the band members performed on different instruments than usual, "Du og dine er even" was performed again. Lastly, Ottesen, playing the pump organ by himself, premiered a newly written song known as "Under månen".
In fall of 2006, the band embarked on the Grand Finale Tour; its name signifying the end of the Maestro era, as well as it being the last tour for about a year, as it was announced before the tour that the band would be taking a sabbatical from touring for all of 2007, then begin the recording of their next studio album during the second half of the year. During this tour, along with "Du og dine er even", the band played two new songs: "Den sjette sansen" and "9 mm", the latter of which would be changed drastically upon being recorded.
The band recorded a demo featuring thirty songs in early January of 2007. Despite their announcement of a sabbatical from live shows in 2007, the band played three shows in all throughout 2007; one at the Documenta12 art expo in Germany, one at the Sziget Festival in Hungary and one at the venue Cementen in Stavanger, Norway for a limited number of fans. In November 2007, the band entered Planet Roc Studios in Berlin, Germany, to record what would become their next album. Mark Howard, who had, among other famous artists, been the audio mixer for Tom Waits, a huge inspiration for the band, produced the album together with Ottesen. The inclusion of the marimba, played by band member Helge Risa, was referred to as a cornerstone of the album by the band.
The first single for the album, "Enden av november", was released on 17 December 2007. On the same day, the first part in a series of videos documenting the recording sessions for Maskineri was uploaded onto YouTube. A low-budget video for "Enden av november", depicting the members of the band in various locations around Berlin, was released on 18 January 2008. The band's official website was taken down for a short while prior to the album release due to being redesigned. When the site was re-launched, the first news post contained the confirmed track listing for the album. In the final release of the album, "Du og dine er even" was renamed to "Moment" and the title of the song about the dying man mentioned early in the album's creation was revealed to be "Med en gong eg når bånn".
Maskineri was released in Norway on 18 February 2008, and received mostly positive reviews; however, critics were far more divided in their appraisal than they had been with their earlier efforts. One Swedish critic gave the album the lowest score given by a Swedish publication in some time. The album went to the top of the Norwegian Top 40 album charts in the first week of its release, and would remain on the chart for 26 consecutive weeks. During the ensuing tour, a video for the second single, "9 mm", was filmed by fans of the band. The album received certified Platinum status in June of that year, and the band received a commemorative Platinum record on 20 June.
In 2009, the band released their fifth studio album, Våre demoner; a collection of re-recorded songs that were not included on the four previous albums for various reasons. The album featured a studio recording of "Den sjette sansen" as well as a demo recording of "Under månen", which was released as a bonus track for digital releases of the album. Despite not having been officially released as a single, "Under månen" claimed the #20 spot of the Norwegian Top 20 single charts for one week.
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