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"Featuring material from the band’s… album Edendale, the band proved itself in sonic touch with classic acts like Cream and Neil Young & Crazy Horse while also tapping into the same modern-day current that flows through new heroes like Band of Horses and My Morning Jacket. The band’s songs are as compelling as its stage presence..."

– Robert Kinsler, OC Register (report from NAMM live set)

Rolling Stones Review

About

Bigbang has been dubbed “Norway’s Greatest Live Band” and is major force in the Norwegian music scene. During the past two years, the band has spent time focusing on the American market. Based in Southern California, they criss-crossed the country playing intimate gigs and promoting their North American debut, 2008’s From Acid to Zen.

The band's new CD Edendale (Oglio Records/Grand Sport Records), released January 19, has strong ties to Bigbang’s adopted home. Front man and founder Řystein Greni explains: “The area of Los Angeles today known as Echo Park/Silverlake used to be called Edendale around the time when the silent movie industry took off. Charlie Chaplin’s studio -now a storage place - is on my block, and Walt Disney’s first film studio was across the street from the local Trader Joes. In Europe we tend to romanticize things and people from the past; here it’s all about moving on to the next project."

Released internationally last year to stellar sales, the Stateside version of Edendale includes three new exclusive tracks and was co-produced at Los Angeles’ legendary Sound City Studios by Bigbang’s founder Řystein Greni and Greg Richling (Wallflowers and Black Flag).

It’s a shotgun buffet, like those early U.S. LPs by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones that combined album tracks and singles from unrelated sessions, and it succeeds the same way: like an instant greatest-hits record. Singer-guitarist-songwriter Řystein Greni has the right history in his genes — his dad sang in a Norwegian band that opened for Led Zeppelin in 1968 — and he grounds songs like “Early December,” “Hurricane Boy” and the brilliantly titled “From Acid to Zen” in the eternal power-chord charge and fish-hook riffs of the Stones and the Who. But Greni also has a knack for wringing fresh excitement from the familiar: the country-angel harmonies and ice-Byrds guitar in the new version of “Wild Bird,” the improbable dream of Badfinger and Hüsker Dü in “The One.” – ..David Fricke, Rolling Stone Magazine

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