Anamé (Norway/Sweden) & Moyka (Norway) – Colder (single)

It seems as if Norwegian/Swedish duo anamé (Marcus Schössow and Thomas Sagstad) has moved to Oslo, where they have joined forces with Norwegian songstress Moyka (Monika Engeseth) to make the third in a series of singles that precede their new album, which will see the light of day on February 21^st, prior to them starting a tour.

The two previous singles were collaborations with the Swedish artist Welt, about whom I know nothing, and a Danish one, Lydmor, about whom I know a lot and I’m disappointed I never got around to covering that one in particular.

But here we are now with a Moyka collaboration, an artist we’ve only featured a couple of times but who evidently knows a thing or two about synth melodies.

Add that to the fact that since 2022 anamé has been releasing its creations through the British label Anjunabeats (racking up over 100 million streams) and you pretty well know what to expect. At least your feet do.

‘Colder’ is a reissue of an earlier song, released six years ago by Moyka and one that I recognised; I might have seen her perform it at Øya Festival.

It could be the title of the theme to a Disney sequel to ‘Frozen’; it definitely carries sufficient gravitas in the melody.

The original was a sad song in which she was distinctly feeling the chill, “our hearts” no longer being “on fire” and I assume she was chastising herself for letting the relationship end with a lyric like “I love when it hurts”.

So what has Anamé brought to the party?

Well they’ve lopped almost a minute off it for starters, and shortened the gloomy opening bars so Moyka is more rapidly into her vocal bit.

There’s a flittering synthesiser addition which sounds like someone shredding a harp.

There’s a pounding bass synth rhythm to replace the percussive one on the original, which has ‘House’ stamped through it, and which grows in intensity so that it almost drowns the poor girl out at the end.

It’s faster than the original, there is no slacking of pace or force as it progresses and by the end you can’t get an image of Kylie and Stock Aitken Waterman out of your mind.

It’s made for dancing to and I’m sure there will be a lot of that in Oslo, Stockholm, Bergen and further afield these next few months and quite possibly across the Med through the summer as well.

If such treatment is justified in the case of what was a rather melancholic song is up to you to decide.

Whichever way you look at it, it’s still a bloody good song.

Find them on:

Anamé:

Website: https://www.anamemusic.com/