- Friday 3 July
“A sensual total experience," Danish magazine Soundvenue wrote about the show that Norwegian duo Smerz delivered at Roskilde Festival back in 2018. And with their genre-open expression, drawing on pop, classical music and electronic minimalism, Smerz has created a reputation as a duo that manages to draw the listener into a unique universe.
The duo consists of Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg, who have a knack for creating atmospheric collages where dreams and everyday life merge. This ability makes their latest album, Big City Life, a captivating and shimmering experience where pop and sonic experiments come together with fascinating results.
“The Norwegian duo’s dreamy, off-kilter soundscapes are sparse and simple, hypnotising and skeletal — it’ll let you do the imagining,” wrote The Line of Best Fit about the album, which they named one of the best of 2025. They were not alone in their enthusiasm, as Pitchfork also praised the duo's postmodern pop sensibility and gave the album the Best New Music label.
Smerz has close ties to the Copenhagen music scene, and Big City Life is also being released on the Danish label Escho. Smerz has also assembled a live band with Danish musicians Villads Tyrrestrup (Liss) and Rune Kielsgaard. We look forward to bringing them back to Roskilde Festival, where another unique pop experience awaits.
