White-Out Conditions

For the New Pornographers album, see Whiteout Conditions.

White-Out Conditions
Studio album by Bel Canto
Released	1987 (Norway, EU) May 5, 1993 (US/CAN)
Genre	Dream pop, synth-pop, new age
Length	38:19
Label	Crammed Discs Nettwerk/EMI Records 0670 0 30030 2 5 W2-30030
Producer	Gilles Martin
Bel Canto chronology
White-Out Conditions (1987) Birds of Passage (1989)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic

White-Out Conditions is the first album by the Norwegian band Bel Canto.

Critical reception

The album was critically acclaimed and noted for the band's exotic arctic sound, a reviewer in Melody Maker writing:

"They are very much the product of their environment. Their music is produced by synthesizers and computers. It's a celebration of the archaic, natural order through the use and abuse of modern technology. Notes fall in flurries and sudden, sharp showers, a flute whistles in furious competition with the wind, there's the tinkling of iron bells, the tapping of woodblocks and distant rumblings. Kloeberdanz and Upland are enticingly pure, the former an instrumental, the latter with Anneli's voice wrapped in the rise and rise of quasi-classical motions. It's given a similar treatment elsewhere, but in the title track it's less fragile, calling for the relief of darkness, for moonlight and the accompanying roses and love, yet only finding footprints in the snow. With Baltic Ice-Breaker she scratches, screams and whines as nature again triumphs over man. With Capio it sounds like a celestial choir, as though a host of Ibsen's ghosts are in the machine. "W-O. C." is not the stuff of movies and dreams. It's a direct translation of a daily reality. A frozen exotica."

Track listing

1. "Blank Sheets" – 4:15
2. "Dreaming Girl" – 3:05
3. "Without You" – 4:04
4. "Capio" – 2:23
5. "Agassiz" – 3:53
6. "Kloeberdanz" – 3:02
7. "White-Out Conditions" – 4:10
8. "Baltic Ice-Breaker" – 4:45
9. "Upland" – 7:02
10. "Chaideinoi" – 3:29

Single

1. "Blank Sheets" – 3:40
2. "Chaideino" - 3:25

Musicians

• Anneli Drecker - vocals, synthesizer
• Nils Johansen - mandolin, flute, bass, synthesizer, programming
• Geir Jenssen - synthesizer, programming

Also credited:

• Marc Hollander - woodwinds