Norman Palm

"Norman Palm is a pretty cool dude" says US Indie Blog Bibadibi writing about his first single of slowed down melancholic cover versions of Cindy Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and The Cure's Boys Don't Cry which quickly found their way into indie radio stations and countless music blogs worldwide in 2007. Surprised by the effect of this limited edition record published on Norman's own label and distributed through his own website Norman Palm accepted many of the invitations that now rained on him and played shows in cities all over Europe, including his latest appaerance on Germany's finest Haldern Pop Festival. Catching up with his second single Falling in early 2008 we're now facing Norman's debut album. Well... album?
/ IT'S A BOOK!
Finishing his art school degree swinger-songwriter Norman Palm found himself torn between music and images. Somewhere between Berlin, Paris and Mexico City he had written a number of songs, which he recorded in transit with his laptop. Charming and catchy tunes, lovesongs, witty and sad at the same time. Norman wanted to put these songs into pictures to make their stories visible; to explain, complete or contrast them with images. Using various means of visual art such as drawing, photography and typography now each of the songs became a chapter in a 200-pages full colour book of Norman's art.
Back in Berlin Norman hooked up with finnish music producer Jonas Verwijnen and company who have recently worked with artists such as Annie and The Whitest Boy Alive to re-record his songs. In the studio the goal was to keep the straightlined almost sketchy character of his own early recordings. Norman played most of the instruments himself inviting a couple of guest players from his scandinavian entourage in Berlin.
In his live shows Norman uses the book as a visual side kick to his intimate performance composed of acoustic guitar and voice: Projected onto the stage, the pages flip along with the songs making it a never-seen-before singer-songwriter-audiovisual-art-thing!
/ SMALL IS THE NEW BIG
Norman Palm, the singer, is an almost one-man-enterprise. Norman splits his time between Berlin and Mexico City, works as a musician, graphic designer and visual artist, became his own manager and is himself a part of the small record label Ratio Records which is publishing the book.
The album simply named "Songs" will be available for 15 Euros in a first edition of 1000 handnumbered copies through Norman's mailorder (www.normanpalm.com), at Norman's shows and from selected book, music and fashion shops worldwide.
Its digital twin will be be available from online music shops around the globe. Cutting the deal with iTunes, Apple's music store will deliver a PDF file of the book along with the MP3s of the album.