Asiago

About the band

Asiago consists of six young men in their twenties who are currently working on an EP trilogy. Asiago was started in 2008, and used the initial first half year to find a common musical denominator that fit all members. During 2008 and 2009, Asiago played almost 30 concerts with good reviews, and released their debut album 'A Daring Smoothie' in 2010.

The band members have different professional backgrounds, a photographer, a graphic designer, a music teacher, a music technologist, a hi-fi salesman and an IT administrator. These are all careers perfectly suited for a do-it-yourself band like Asiago, and make it almost possible to run all parts of a band operation.

A Daring Smoothie (2010)

The members of Asiago did the pre-production of the songs themselves before taking the step towards an album release. Nevertheless, the band chose to use an external producer to get an objective view of the songs during recording. Almost all members of Asiago are big fans of the Norwegian rock legends, Motorpsycho, and when Håkon Gebhardt (ex-drummer of Motorpsycho) agreed to be their producer/engineer, one could say that the spirits within the band rose a bit.

The band chose to call their album "A Daring Smoothie" of two reasons.

Firstly, they thought the title described the songs pretty well on this album. Producer Gebhardt chose the songs to record, and this is why we ended up with mostly short, catchy songs. You could call these songs "smoothies". Even though the songs are pretty accessible, there are some out-there parts that make them "daring".

Secondly, if you rearrange the letters in "A Daring Smoothie", you magically get "Asiago Trondheim".The album was released in March 2010 and the band promoted it by playing a few local gigs before a mini tour of the southern part of Norway, and also the two biggest festivals in the middle part of Norway at the time, Storåsfestivalen and Steinkjerfestivalen.

First music video

A month from the album release, the band chose to put out their first single for free, "Black and White". Accompanying the single, a video has also been produced by some local film students. This video can be found on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-FZ2tnhgyU

Hjerteknuser competition (2010)

The band came in third place in a nationwide cover song contest held by one of the most popular Norwegian bands the last 10 years, Kaizers Orchestra (2011). They handed out a note sheet with lyrics and melody and then asked participating bands (over 100 bands across Norway) to make their version of the song before the original was even released or heard by anyone. Asiago's Arcade Fire'ish version gave a them a solid third place, which led to them being invited to play for 1300 Kaizers' fans in Oslo, Norway in 2011, which is a big deal for all up and coming bands in the nation.

A digital version of the cover song "Hjerteknuser", sung in Norwegian, was released with most digital partners (iTunes, Spotify and so on). Because of the enormous success the Kaizers Orchestra original had, it is to date the most streamed and sold Asiago song.

The EP trilogy (2012 and on)

Currently, Asiago is working on a set of three EPs to be released in order, which will ultimately become a full-length album. The thought is releasing four songs at a time, five in total as the first track is always an intro, creating a pool of 12 songs to select from. Reviews and fan favorites will determine which songs of these three EPs are good enough to be on the full-length, which will also feature some new songs not on the EPs. Everything will then be remastered and sequenced to work in an album setting.

The first of these EPs, 'Going Somewhere?' has been released (May 25th 2012). During the production of 'Going Somewhere?', Asiago started the recording of the second EP, yet untitled, which hopefully will be finished in the first quarter of 2013.

Going Somewhere? (2012)

This EP is a part of a trilogy of EPs, see above. It consists of a mix of short poppy tunes, and longer, more epic songs. From the initial beginning to release, this has been a production all done by Asiago members, which the band is very proud of. Being recorded, mixed and mastered at Audun Røstad's (guitarist) own studio, Ambolt Audio, the band was determined to take advantage of a non-stressful studio environment and really take their time to get the result they wanted. The end result was an EP the band is very satisfied with, which cost a lot less to produce than it would with external help, but which also took a lot longer time than it should ideally. This will probably be addressed and adjusted for the next EP production.

A new music video

A single, 'Wake Up in a Fire', was released a few months before the EP. The band decided to shoot a music video for this song, and had an idea how they could make it look good without putting too much planning, resources and time into it.

The result was a shoot of