Bergen Erlend Øye was born on 21 November 1975 in
Bergen, his parents met in 1974 in a demonstration in support of the victims of the
1973 Chilean coup d'état against
Salvador Allende that took place in Bergen, at which time his father read a poem, which allowed him to meet Øye's mother. Having grown up listening to
Leonard Cohen,
Nick Drake,
Suzanne Vega and
The Smiths, during high school in the early-mid 1990s, he and some of his friends formed the band
Skog ("
forest" in Norwegian), taking inspiration from the famous song "
A Forest" by
The Cure. In 1996 he joined the band Peachfuzz as electric guitarist, playing several times in London between 1996 and 1998. In 2008 he started to collaborate on a project with Mikal Telle of
Tellé Records and they created the independent label
Opplett with the aim of producing young talent from Bergen and the surrounding area. The label
Opplett published three projects: the album
Opplett 2008 that contains seven songs by seven artists (such as
Lars Vaular,
John Olav Nilsen & Gjengen and
Razika, 2008); the first single of Indie rock band
Razika called
Love is All About the Timing; and the first album of the band Fjorden Baby!.
London In 1998 he moved to London and then in 1999 to
Manchester. When he was back home in
Bergen for vacations he jammed with
Eirik Glambek Bøe, his former high school and
Skog mate. The duo formed
Kings of Convenience in 1998 and released the debut record,
Quiet is the New Loud, in 2001.
Berlin In the same period, he collaborated with the electronic Norwegian duo
Röyksopp, lending his voice for the song "
Poor Leno" and "
Remind Me" on the record
Melody A.M.. As a result, he became interested in
electronic music and spent the next years in Berlin from 2002 to 2006 or travelling around the world, recording his solo album
Unrest in ten cities with ten electronic music artists. He toured as a DJ, singing along with the records that he played and released a remix record for the
DJ Kicks series in 2004. In the same year,
Kings of Convenience released the second record
Riot on an Empty Street. Meanwhile, he founded another project in Berlin,
The Whitest Boy Alive. The band originally started as an electronic band, but slowly developed into a band with no electronic elements, releasing the debut record
Dreams in 2006, while the latest record entitled
Rules was released in 2009. Both the records were released by Bubbles Records, the independent label founded by Erlend Øye and Marcin Öz in 2006. In 2006, he appeared in the Italian movie
Shooting Silvio acting as DJ during a house party. In 2009, Kings of Convenience released the third record
Declaration of Dependence. In 2011 and 2013, he produced the records
Hest and
Six months is a long time by fellow
Bergen band
Kakkmaddafakka.
Sicily In 2012, during a small concert organized in a vernissage in
Ortigia in Sicily, he publicly stated that he had bought a house in the city of
Syracuse to move there with his mother. In 2013, he released a new single, entitled
La Prima Estate, sung in Italian and inspired by his time living in Italy, which is accompanied by a videoclip shot in Syracuse. He is currently working on more songs in Italian, which will be made into an album. In 2014,
The Whitest Boy Alive announced the end of the project. On 3 October 2014, he released his second solo album
Legao, recorded in
Reykjavík with
Hjálmar, a reggae group from Iceland, which was anticipated by the single
Garota with a videoclip shot in
Seoul. Despite currently living in
Sicily, he is still involved in the
Bergen music scene, promoting local bands and assisting the organization of the annual
Traena Music Festival.
Chile On numerous occasions Øye has visited Chile. His first presentation was in 2006, during his tour in South America. In 2017 he traveled to Chile to spend a season at the home of a close friend who lived in
Santiago, where he mainly dedicated himself to composing songs on the ukulele. After playing at the "En Orbita" Festival, he met Tiare Galaz (a member of the Chilean band Niña Tormenta), who also played the ukulele. After talking with Tiare backstage, they agreed to meet another day to share their experiences on the instrument. After being invited to dinner the next day by Tiare, he met Diego Lorenzini, who brought him a chord notebook. Some time later, he was invited to a series of concerts of the Matiné Uva Robot, where he met musicians Rosario Alfonso and Javier Bobbert. In an interview with
CNN Chile, he said "from that moment on we started to play regularly while I was in Chile. It was very surprising to see how the musical search of these four Chileans was very similar to what I was doing with the support band that I had formed with three Sicilian friends - called La Comitiva -, so I finally decided to invite them to open my tour of Germany together". In 2019 Øye collaborated with Diego Lorenzini in his song
Me voy a Valparaíso from his album
De algo hay que morir (UVA Robot, 2019). In late 2019, The Whitest Boy Alive announced a new series of performances in Chile and Argentina and in 2020 released the non-album single
Serious, the project's first new material since 2009's
Rules.
Mexico In the beginning of 2020, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, Øye found himself stranded in
San Jose del Cabo, Mexico. In a hotel that came equipped with a recording studio, Øye and
Sebastian Maschat, the drummer of
Whitest Boy Alive, recorded the album
Quarantine At El Ganzo. == Discography ==