Following the re-release of the 2008 Ragz EP Little Stings on 26th March this year Liverpool Acoustic’s Luke Moore sat down for a virtual chat to get the low down on the release.
Luke: You’re back in Liverpool after being away for a while – welcome back! How is it to be in the city again and what did you miss most when you were away?
Ragz: Thank you! – Returning to Liverpool in 2018 was like coming home. I feel both mentally and physically in tune with myself walking the streets of this city and it truly was like reuniting with a long-lost love.
Being away I missed the energy and the presence of the culture of Liverpool. Liverpool has courage and guts and do not mind standing up for what’s right – I missed that, and I missed the accent! Being away, my ears would perk up whenever I heard a hint of the scouse melody.
Luke: Little Stings was released back in 2008, something of a landmark year for Liverpool and presumably you, too. What was the reception at the time and what are your fondest memories of making this record?
Ragz: The release of the EP coincided with the explosion of Capital of Culture, which enabled us to showcase the EP on a bigger platform than we could have ever really anticipated. We travelled the country touring the release for 3 months and found that people really connected with the songs in a live setting.
My favourite part about making the record was the people we worked with and met through that process. Our engineer Jon Withnall pored his love and time into it with us and we actually used his bathroom to record the vocals for the track like More to get the right room reverb. Such sound geeks!
Luke: Are there any songs on the record that you feel differently about since writing them?
Ragz: As a writer I believe your relationship with your songs rarely remains static. They represent a moment in time in themselves but also shift and move as you get to know and hear them from different perspectives. For me, a song rarely remains the same as the one you wrote after it’s left the space of creation. The songs on Little Stings all feel like people I used to know. They all mean more to me now with passing time, and interestingly, due to the intensity they hold for me, some of them have become easier to like from this distance.
Luke: What made you feel like re-releasing these?
Ragz: Little Stings was released in a time where physical formats still ruled, and the EP sold out. The release of our single Don’t You Forget in 2020 brought the more acoustic side of my work to our online listeners. I felt ready to revisit this release by bringing it into the digital realm, giving it a sort of eternal afterlife.
Luke: What’s next for you after all of this is over?
Ragz: I am already in my “next” thing as I’ve started my PhD last year and will be burying myself in research for the foreseeable future. Music is always with me and whatever needs to be created next is probably already brewing somewhere in the system.
Ragz Nordset
Ragz Nordset is a singer-songwriter hailing from Norway, possessing a sweet, soaring voice known to captivate and move her audiences.
Weaving intricate melodies with her emotive vocal – at times unconventional, yet rooted in the traditions of classic song-writing – she has been favourably compared to Joni Mitchell, Adele and even Jeff Buckley.
Her career has seen a string of sold out limited edition EP releases, extensive touring, and notable support slots for artists including Wild Beasts, Ian McCullough, Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons. The EP ‘Sleepdancing’ was released on NuNorthern Soul in 2013, channeling a new electronic direction. The remix of ‘YouStarted It All’ is now clocking over 2 million spotify plays.
Little Stings is released on Mellowtone Records and available to stream at ditto.fm/little-stings
