On
Fever, Norway's
Thomas Dybdahl returns home to Starvanger from his late-night L.A. studio sojourn with producer
Larry Klein on
All These Things. Working at his 1micadventure studio with longtime collaborator and hip-hop producer
Håvard Rosenberg, the nine tracks here are emphatically D.I.Y.:
Dybdahl played virtually all the instruments and tracked almost all vocals. The most jarring thing in the mix is the absence of his trademark acoustic guitar in favor of an electric. The motivating factor was to make a soulful guitar record that didn't sound like one, and that balanced the vintage and the fresh simultaneously. They listened to classic artists ranging from
Nina Simone and
Aretha Franklin to
Sam Cooke and
Bill Withers, from
Ray Charles and
Sly Stone to
D'Angelo,
Raphael Saadiq, and
Michael Kiwanuka in order to kindle the creative spark.