From left: Æ, P, B (in red), K 

Schtimm has its base in Trondheim, but all the members originates from Saltdal- a little Twin Peakish village situated in the northern part of Norway. The band was formed one of the last days of December 1998, and entered Hønsehuset Lydstudio about a week later to record what was to become 4/10 of the debut-album ”The Alcoholovefi Collection” - an album produced by schtimm in cooperation with HAM. This was a man we knew pretty well, since we earlier had worked together with him on other projects: An obvious choice.

HAM in Hønsehuset Studio

The first session of “T A C” took place in the beginning of January, and lasted for three days. This was a period of hard work, long hours and heavy drinking; an emotional and physical blow for all the involved. The rest of the album was recorded and mixed during a few days in the end of August 1999.

The first time the band appeared live was on, the now long gone, Veita Scene in Trondheim, Thursday 23.11.99 - this gig the band unfortunally had to play without B, who got her debut on Sinus, Bodø at the end of 1999. The album “T A C” was released in May 2000 and received good reviews; by some it was even considered one of the most important albums ever to be released in Norway (http://gamle.musikkavisen.no/010405schtimm.shtml). In the same period a remaster of the track “ ” appeared on “We are Hello vol 3”- a wellreputaded compilation- series from Machine-Machine records.

Late summer of 2000 F, the drummer, left the band. He was replaced by P, who was playing guitar in dubel darr, drums in Basaflak, and a good friend of the band. P is actually the man who sings the line: “The feeling: Ugly sick and strange” on “V.I.V.A”, the 8th track on “Collection”. P`s first gig with was on foreign ground: Copenhagen, Denmark. On the same tour the band also did “Partytime” and “ ” live on Meteropol TV, some live-on-radio apperances and a few gigs around in Norway.

The beginning of 2001 was seemingly a silent period for the band - but not quite. This time was spent prepearing the “plays Mrakoslav Vragosh”-album. Before doing this album we had to find someone who was both speaking fluid Russian and had en empathic appproach to litterature; luckily we found Knut A Grimstad. It was also an extremely great and solemn moment for us when Fred Johnny Berg said yes to arrange a string/vocal-version of the track “Flowers”. We spent one weekend in June, one weekend in July and some days in the beginning of 2002 to record the album. During these sessions, we also recorded six additional tracks. Three of these will appear on the summer-EP “Sun/Sun”, which is to be released during the summer of 2002. The three ohers? Who knows…

In February 2002 we took part in the TUR on ToUR: 3 days and nights, 3 gigs, 120000000 kilometres in a bus, too little sleep, too much drinking - but very nice. In the same period the radiopromo “Into” got rotation on the largest Norwegian student-radios, and also some airplay on national radio.