Making Music In Oslo Via Melbourne

"It's funny," reckons Anna Lotterud. "When I left Melbourne, I wanted to be a musician. Now that I'm coming back, I am a musician."

Lotterud, these days, makes music as Anna Of The North. The 28-year-old splits the duo with New Zealand-born Brady Daniell-Smith, their debut LP, Lovers - which matches melancholy sentiments to sparkling synth-pop - is set for September release.

Lotterud and Daniell-Smith met in Melbourne, but they're based, now, in Oslo. Lotterud grew up in the tiny town of Gjovik, Norway, the daughter of a musician. Surrounded by instruments, songs were always a part of her life. "Music has always been natural to me," Lotterud says. "There's always just been melodies coming out of my head — when I walk around, when I'm in the shower."

Yet she never threw herself into making music. By her early-20s, Lotterud was living in Oslo, working in a clothing store, unsure of what to do with her life. When, suddenly, a seed was planted. "This lady came into the store. She was really insistent and really wanted to talk to me. We'd have these long conversations, she was always talking about how she travelled, and her daughter was living in France now, and she was married to a French man. She told me that travelling was really important. Every time she came back - like three or four times - she'd yell at me, 'Why are you still here?'"

Lotterud decided she was going to move, but figured if she just went to London she and her boyfriend could just visit each other every weekend. "So, I wanted to go somewhere where I knew I couldn't just go back home. That's how I ended up in Melbourne. It was as far away from home as I could get."

After adjusting to the difficulties of life in a new city - finding somewhere to live and study, making friends - Lotterud felt at home. "It was the time I changed the most, learnt the most about myself. I met a lot of beautiful people." One of them was Daniell-Smith, whom she met when they shared a bill at Grumpy's Green on Smith Street  ("my friend tricked me into playing first," Lotterud says, of her performance). The two became friends, but rarely hung out. Instead, they swapped song ideas online. Having that encouragement proved creative spur: Lotterud wrote a lot in Melbourne, and even more when she returned to Oslo and was missing Melbourne.

The songs on Lovers are the product of all that musical idea-swapping, the finished result after years of growth. With the LP set to come out, Lotterud gets to make a long-awaited return back to Melbourne. "It's going to be a fairly emotional trip," she says. "It'll be like going back in time, meeting people I haven't seen in ages, seeing friends. I'm also dreaming of this restaurant, I don't remember the name. I had Thai food there and it was so good. I've been craving that meal ever since I left. So, I'm gonna go there and if it's closed down, I'm gonna cry."