He set fire to an electric guitar alone onstage in front of a stunned crowd at the opening of Clarion Hotel Union Brygge in Drammen. (The newest addition to his empire opens Wednesday in Oslo, a luxurious art hotel named The Thief.) In Britain in 2002 he chained himself to the gate of a waste treatment plant to protest nuclear power.

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Grefe uses dreampop ambience and simple acoustic guitar lines to create magnetic pop hooks that sometimes feel like the crackling of an open-air fire on a cool evening.

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