Racoons is the fifth solo album from drummer extraordinaire Erland Dahlen. He has played on more than 300 albums with a various range of artists in different genres and he plays regularly with bands and artists like Nils Petter Molvær group, Stian Westerhus , Geir Sundstøl, Madrugada and Eivind Aarset to name a few. The new album Racoons was recorded in Oslo in March 2023, and will be his first on Is It Jazz? Records.

The album was recorded in Rainbow Studio with Bjarte Stensli, with additional recording and mix with Jens Petter Nilsen and Hallvard W. Hagen from Xploding Plastix. Dahlen plays a lot of custom-made instruments here -Lars Hurlen has built different logdrums for this album, and Harald Hougaard has built a custom-made zither bass. Dahlen also uses custom-made chromatic blossom bells and different metal stuff like huge serving plates.

Erland Dahlen’s solo project came from the fact that he’s played hundreds of records with other musicians over the years, and wanted to have a project where he could record and play live just by himself. Too many musical ideas that didn’t fit any other projects had accumulated over time, so he decided to use some of those in a solo project. The plan was to record just one album in 2012 (Rolling Bomber), but over time the solo project has become more and more significant.