Lights, camera, action 🎥
Growing up in the forests of Norway’s Hallingdal Valley, 21 year-old Monika Engeseth nursed the dream – or rather, the conviction – that she’d one day be creating music. But she couldn’t have predicted the intense, electronic landscapes she’d create for her debut EP: after just a few months working in the engine room of music production, the young artist has emerged as a one-woman pop factory. She wrote her first song at just ten, inspired by the loss of a friend who was moving away, and the theme of saying goodbye – with its heady mix of pain, confusion and eventual resolution – remains a rich subject for this suite of robust, endlessly melodic pop songs.
Two and a half years ago, enrolling on a music production degree in Bergen, Moyka “dived into the synth world”. She was in school from the moment it opened, to the moment it closed, covering herself in the complex electronic landscapes of Röyksopp, Highasakite and AURORA; Robyn, alt-J and Son Lux. Working with Cubase and soft synths and samples, she learned how to create, blow by blow, “my own, mystical, synth-driven universe”.
Moyka is a contradiction: a private person who writes confessional music. For anyone who wants to know who she is, it’s all there in the songs – mysterious, magical, but accessible too. “I want to create a mystical universe,” she reaffirms, “where people can feel at home.”
