Until recently, the Lumen Drones were a well-kept secret which the Norwegian independent music scene kept to itself. The group took shape when Nils Okland, a folk musician and virtuoso on the hardanger, the traditional Norwegian fiddle, attended a festival in Norway and met two members of Low Frequency in Stereo, a band with five albums to its credit and a much-admired lo-fi post-rock sound which had won the band an international audience: the guitarist Per Steinar Lie and the drummer Orjan Haaland. Encouraged by their future manager, they played together for the first time at a charity concert for the victims of the Haiti earthquake at a local festival in Norway.