Mount Washington are from Tromsø in Northern Norway, where founding
members Rune Simonsen, Andreas Høyer and Esko Pedersen grew up
together. They had already been making music for several years when they
formed Washington and travelled some hundred miles south of Tromsø
to record their debut-EP in 2004 in Trondheim. Since then the band have
released three LPs and toured all over Europe. In 2011, coinciding with the
recording of their self-titled latest record, Washington have become Mount
Washington, in order to mark a new beginning.

Just before the recording of Mount Washington in the winter of 2010 and
spring 2011, the band left their native Tromsø and moved to Berlin. Despite
the notoriously grim winter of the German capital, the result is a more upbeat
record than its predecessors, inevitably influenced by the rich Berlin music
scene. Still, the melancholy of previous records is preserved – its distressing
and heart-wrenching themes setting the tone of the album’s ten tracks.

Mount Washington sets itself apart from the previous records, just as much
as the others differ from each other. The debut, A New Order Rising, was
inspired by Americana and folk. The sophomore Astral Sky was a more pop-
oriented younger brother, the band opting for a more straightforward approach
than with the predecessor, and with Rouge/Noir the group sought to explore
new territory again, with an album labelled as “widescreen” and a “tour de
force of massive rock landscapes” by the music press.

During their stay in Berlin, the band has developed a new, more open
approach to music, while keeping their distinctive sense of melodies, which
are both melancholic and catchy at the same time.