In Norway, 14 October was traditionally seen as the first day of winter. To mark the occasion, here's an unreleased, but truly transcendent live record by one of Norway's foremost composers—a man seemingly steeped in winter, by the sounds of these monumental, monochromatic and meditative orchestral pieces.
You may curse it in a couple of months, but winter has its own beauty.
Toilet Guppies has made it a point of order to make available to the obscure Norwegian noise loving internet masses—all four of them—any and every out-of-print rarity ever committed to a recording device by producer Helge Sten, a/k/a ambient noise composer Deathprod. (Except recordings never printed in the first place.) Not that there are many; there's the majestic live percussion piece «Komet» and one spoken word collab with American expat poet Matt Burt.
And now «Microwave 1-5», five short pieces of ambient noise made, according to the liner notes, «using the same source material» as two additional tracks by John Hegre and four by relentless noise pioneer Lasse Marhaug (all on the CD, but not included here), both of Jazzkammer fame. What that source material was isn't mentioned.
Whatever the original sounds mangled far beyond recognition, you could do worse on a foetal Sunday than listen to these snippets of typically meditative (but never New Age-y) Deathprod. atmospherics. Curl yourself up, bub. You don't stand a chance.
In 1998 (possibly '97), an acquaintance slipped me a tape of Deathprod. opening for Motorpsycho at Oslo venue Rockefeller, as recorded by the NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) and aired during their radio show Roxrevyen. Apparently, my acquaintance had recorded the broadcast on DAT, before transferring it to good old microcassette for me. I copied this onto minidisc, which was later transferred onto the computer.
Believe me, I've tried to obtain a higher quality recording of this performance, both through the NRK directly and through my acquaintance (who has since forgotten all about the piece, and about ever hearing it, let alone taping it and giving it to me). Unfortunately, this piece of Deathprod.'s remains unreleased to this day, and no other recorded version of «Komet» is currently in circulation. Perversely, as the state-owned, non-profit, TV licence-sponsored NRK owns the rights to the actual recording, it has proved too expensive for the artist himself to buy the licence to have it released. And so the recording rots in the archives somewhere, where even the self-appointed caretakers of Norwegian cultural heritage over at the Kafkaesque NRK can't seem to find it—this rare pearl among the mediocre excrement shat out of the pampered botty of Norwegian culture virtually non-existent, and no good to anyone.
So this deteriorated version of the recording will have to do. This (to my knowledge) one-off performance of «Komet» came after Deathprod. a.k.a. Helge Sten's initial experiments with noise, but prior to his further, somewhat insular studio refinements of sound—dense minimalism that is characterised by an almost underwater sensibility. This mid-period Deathprod.—typically recorded in the relatively uncontrolled environment of a live setting, and veering towards composition (rather than audiophile ambient music reduced to texture)—is Helge Sten at his very best, the music not yet restricted in any way by the studio perfectionism that would come later.
From about 1996 to '98, Sten composed what in many ways are more ambitious pieces, trying his hand at added instrumentation of various kinds, and to great effect. Where Imaginary Songs from Tristan da Cunha's «The Contraceptive Briefcase II» incorporated a choir, and the Jörg Mager Ensemble project a string orchestra, «Komet» is the only piece of Deathprod.'s to feature percussion. More accomplished than his early recordings, and more visceral than his later ones, «Komet» truly is a lost masterpiece.
As for the personnel listing, I'm assuming that—the percussionist(s) notwithstanding—the name «Deathprod.» here refers to the period's usual core trio of Helge Sten (theremin, various electronics, «audiovirus»), Ole Henrik Moe (violin) and Hans Magnus Ryan (electric violin).
Back in 'Tache Town for a couple of weeks, I thought I'd post something Trondheim once had to offer the world (but which the world ignored).
In 1997, dBut Records released the now out-of-print various artists comp Det norske hus. (The Oslo Agreement upon international release.) Besides various branches of the Origami Republika anarcho-collective (Galaktika and Teknika), the album featured Jaga Jazzist and once-hyped Norwegian electro acts such as Palace Of Pleasure, Perculator and Sternklang. Naturally, the sleeve was designed by Kim Hiorthøy.
But the real gem was the last track, credited to «Deathprod. vs. the Death Dwarf». This is obviously a collaboration between Helge Sten and Trondheim's resident expat American dictaphone poet, the self-deprecating shorty Matt Burt, reciting something that sounds unmistakably like passages penned by William S. Burroughs (probably from Naked Lunch, possibly The Soft Machine).
It's only after your mind has drifted off to Burt's monotonous Burroughs impression and the minimalist drones of Deathprod. that you notice a sudden change of tone. The contrived deadpan drops from Burt's voice, and you awaken to realise that the words now come from a different place altogether. No longer the cold satire of the sci-fi junkie straight out of Surrealist Hell, after about nine minutes Burt starts reciting his own material, tacking it onto the end of Burroughs' hypnotic gibberish, as if bashfully wishing no one would notice his awkward confession, or else hiding it behind another's stoic work, secretly ashamed at the self-pitying soft core at the heart of his own, thus sabotaging his own attempt at communication.
But the communique's truthful, it's honest, and the words nail the meaning they seek to convey right on the head. And although Burroughs' words are hilarious («What in God's green earth do these telecommunications transvestites think they're doing?!»), it's not until Burt's turn that «Albino Monkey Organgrinder in the City of Lights» is injected with sincerity and an emotional nerve that's hooked into the mainline of everdyay reality, rather than into the abstract, comic nightmare of a hallucinating, cock hungry junkie on the run.
Tragedy teaches us that the objects of our contemplation—ourselves, each other, our world—are more diverse than we had imagined, and that what we have in common is a dangerous propensity for overrating our power to comprehend that diversity.
When the assumption that we have very much in common with each other is rejected by Burt as an illusion, his statement—being an attempt at communication, at meeting another mind—is a contradiction in terms. Because if it were true, would it make sense to utter it? Would anyone even understand it? To whom is he speaking? Then again, if you do understand it—do identify with it—perhaps that's simply because what little we have in common is precisely how little we have in common…
Whatever the case, the bottomless solitude Burt touches upon—hemmed in as it is by our limited empathy—remains, both for Burt and for the listener… But at least there's some sort of consolation: You're not alone in being alone.
Ah, Norwegian culture! From the '90s onward it's been a battle of naïvety vs. irony—both sides of the escapist coin, united by their equally cowardly strategies to avert one's eyes from ugly truth, and to avoid the potential embarrassments bound up with things actually relevant to human experience. And while pop culture hipster nerds with too much cool (read: self-consciousness) to ever feel comfortable in their own trendily covered skin used distant sarcasm to flee from any kind of expression that could ever touch a nerve, another answer to the problem of reality was proposed…
In 1996, Norwegian author and film industry big wig, Erlend Loe, came out with what would amount to the Naïvist manifesto—had only Naïvists not been too childlike to ever formulate anything as grownup as a manifesto—viz. Naïve. Super, a novel in which the protagonist responds to a personal crisis by retreating into a jejune perspective on the world, from where he can passively, distantly (and so safely) behold his immediate surroundings. Loe doesn't seem to be advancing a critical view of his main character, hence the Naïvism (as opposed to satirical irony) of the book. Instead, Loe celebrates along with his protagonist the return to the simple mode of experience and thought that adults, in their bouts of nostalgia, seem to think that children enjoy. The Naïvists revel in the comfort of childlike wonderment, choosing to see in it a kind of magic, rather than the questionable escapism one could choose to see in it…
Anyway, the sleeve of this (admittedly amusing) novel was designed by one Kim Hiorthøy, who'd previously illustrated some of Loe's books, as well as local rock album covers. Hiorthøy's style celebrated style over substance, and had certain doodling, childlike qualities to it. If Loe provided the naïve substance (words), Hiorthøy provided the naïve style (colours!).
Since then, Hiorthøy—a Jack-of-all-media if ever there was one, dabbled as he has in painting and drawing, computer graphics, video, film—has gone on to become an acclaimed DJ, warming many a Scandinavian art girl's fragile heart with his unassuming, non-threatening and perfectly cute electronica—instrumentals with titles like «Forskjellige gode ting» («Various Good Things»), «Den fula skogen bakom köket» («The Ugly Forest Behind the Kitchen»), «Det skulle vara fint att se dig, tänkte jag» («I Thought It'd Be Nice to See You»), «Nu kommer Cathrine inn, hon lutar sig mot dörrposten» («Now Cathrine Comes In, She Leans Up Against the Door Frame») and, of course, «Han brydde sig inte om att stiga upp, hela dagen lät han nya bilder och funderingar komma och gå som de ville, sov lite ibland och vaknade igen och visste inte alls vem han var. Det var en fridfull och mycket spännande dag» («He Didn't Care to Get Up, All Day He Let New Images and Ruminations Come and Go as They Pleased, Occasionally Slept a Little and Awoke Again and Had No Idea Who He Was. It Was a Peaceful and Very Exciting Day»)—mostly in Swedish (to give it that extra air of whimsy, no doubt) and often embellished with some young totty's gentle, almost virginal recital of a quaint list of inconsequential wonderments. Example:
Things that work: - To run as it rains… - To get on the first train to arrive and go where you will. - To go to a high place and look out. - To taste candy you've never seen before. - To read comic books in the park. - To lay the table before breakfast and then eat for a long time. - To go to the library to do some smelling. - To call Nana. - To visit someone you haven't seen for a long time. - To have a coffee in the middle of the day while reading the paper. - To go into record stores to listen to an album with a pretty sleeve, or maybe one by someone you may have heard of, or something you're wondering what's like.
Rock'n'roll it ain't.
But who am I to pooh-pooh someone else's expression of innocent joy? So what, if Hiorthøy's art is an amalgamation of minimalism and irrelevance—sometimes you need background music, too.
And so, dug up from the bottom of a closet in my old room over at my parents' house, comes this rarity—22 highlights out of the 38 tracks on a CD released with the book (limited to 300 copies) that Hiorthøy submitted for his graduation from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, back in 1996. As far as I know, it's Hiorthøy's first foray into music, and bears the stamp of the collagist tendencies of his early visual work.
I didn't much care for the CD when my brother first gave it to me back when I was a teenager fawning over Pop Art, but now I think it has a lot more edge than Hiorthøy's subsequent, more accomplished recordings. There are even some nasty soundbites that aren't naïve at all (even if the context Hiorthøy puts them in still is, the childlike gaze robbing it slightly of its edge). And I salute the randomness of the recordings! It's like listening to a restlessly seeking radio possessed of its own mind…
In 1996 and '97, producer and ambient noise composer Helge Sten's Deathprod. outfit (by now a trio, completed by Ole-Henrik Moe and Motorpsycho guitarist Hans Magnus Ryan) teamed up with the contemporary classical Cikada Ensemble to play some of Sten's compositions at various festivals, under the joint moniker of Jörg Mager Ensemble.
On 18 October 1996 one of these concerts was recorded at Oslo's Rockefeller venue as part of the Ultima Festival, but unfortunately nothing came of the recordings. (Although in 1997 it was rumoured that parts of this recording would be released as a split CD with Origami Arktika, on a Young God Records release that label boss Michael Gira announced in press announcements, but which never materialised.) The tracklist consists of songs from Deathprod.'s 1994 classic Treetop Drive («Treetop Drive 1», «Towboat») and two as-yet unreleased pieces, one of which («Dead People's Things») would later be released—in a different version—on Deathprod.'s final album before Sten's retirement from solo recording, 2004's Morals and Dogma. Only the above piece, «Siemens», remains unreleased.
And criminally so, which is why I'm taking the liberty of putting it out there. Oscillator, saw, electric violin and strings never before came together to sound so mesmerising. (They probably never came together at all!) This is a prime example of Sten's hypnotic, gradually ascending (and simultaneously ecstatic and horrific) brand of minimalism. It's a shame both that Sten hasn't received more recognition (as a composer; he is routinely praised for his work in jazz improv quartet Supersilent) and that he stopped performing and recording solo material. His noise ambient music avoids the pitfalls of both the noise and ambient genres, and combines an emotional intensity with a patience and will that amount to some of the most courageous and pure music I've ever heard—because he dares to keep it simple, dares to make no compromises, and dares to explore the headspace that he does. This is spiritual music for atheists, touching a space virtually untouched but for Arvo Pärt.
This recording is also one of the last wherein Sten indulges in the raw soundscapes of his early recordings. After expanding on his electronics-reliant compositions with forays into choirs and percussion (watch this space for another exclusive later on), Sten's next official releases offered up a sedate sonic universe that seemed fuzzily insular by comparison, as if heard underwater—contained within the embrace of valium (or the womb)…
Oh, and if you're wondering about the name under which this piece was performed, Jörg Mager was a German pioneer in sound who, from the 1920s up until WWII, invented exotic instruments such as the Electrophon, the Kurbelsphäraphon, the Klaviatursphäraphon, the Partiturophon and the Kaleidophon—none of which survived the devastations of the Second World War (except in Helge Sten's imagination). These instruments were oscillators, supposedly similar in sound to the theremin. You know, that 1950s sci-fi sound as if a violin got confused with a voice in your slipping consciousness:
Now that's what I call a David Lynch moment!
But I digress. I recall coming out of the Jörg Mager Ensemble gig in Trondheim sometime in 1997, accompanied by a friend who, as we left, confided in me that his mother and he had come to this planet to «help the humans»—she'd always told him so. Naturally, I wasn't convinced, and in hindsight it's not surprising that only months later he would be incarcerated in a mental institution from which he's never been able to free himself, his mind lost now deep inside a body bloated by pharmaceuticals that shroud his brain in a fog full of half-mumbled fragments of sentences, spoken to no one in particular, not even himself. But when you're a teenager, eccentricity, unlike consensus reality, is cool, and I never set any limits.
Neither did Deathprod. that night, as the engulfingly deafening noise and resonance, rich with the scratch and scrape of strings, the hall ringing with razor sharp frequencies, «washed our souls away, where they never could be found.»
(Credits:
Deathprod. Helge Sten: theremin, various electronics Ole Henrik Moe, jr.: violin, saw Snah: electric violin, various electronics
Cikada Kjersti Walldén: flute Terje B. Lerstad: clarinet Bjørn Rabben: percussion Kenneth Karlsson: ondes Martenot Henrik Hannisdal: violin Odd Hannisdal: violin Marek Konstantynowiez: viola Hjalmar Kvam: cello Conducted by Christian Eggen)
THIS BLOG IS DEFUNCT. Absolutely all uploads have been summarily deleted by MediaFire. Re-ups may be done on request, but no promises. For music of similar kinds as championed by Toilet Guppies, we endorse Bathwater Radiowaves.
And now «Microwave 1-5», five short pieces of ambient noise made, according to the liner notes, «using the same source material» as two additional tracks by John Hegre and four by relentless noise pioneer Lasse Marhaug (all on the CD, but not included here), both of Jazzkammer fame. What that source material was isn't mentioned.
Believe me, I've tried to obtain a higher quality recording of this performance, both through the NRK directly and through my acquaintance (who has since forgotten all about the piece, and about ever hearing it, let alone taping it and giving it to me). Unfortunately, this piece of Deathprod.'s remains unreleased to this day, and no other recorded version of «Komet» is currently in circulation. Perversely, as the state-owned, non-profit, TV licence-sponsored NRK owns the rights to the actual recording, it has proved too expensive for the artist himself to buy the licence to have it released. And so the recording rots in the archives somewhere, where even the self-appointed caretakers of Norwegian cultural heritage over at the Kafkaesque NRK can't seem to find it—this rare pearl among the mediocre excrement shat out of the pampered botty of Norwegian culture virtually non-existent, and no good to anyone.
As for the personnel listing, I'm assuming that—the percussionist(s) notwithstanding—the name «Deathprod.» here refers to the period's usual core trio of Helge Sten (theremin, various electronics, «audiovirus»), Ole Henrik Moe (violin) and Hans Magnus Ryan (electric violin).
In 1997, dBut Records released the now out-of-print various artists comp Det norske hus. (The Oslo Agreement upon international release.) Besides various branches of the Origami Republika anarcho-collective (Galaktika and Teknika), the album featured Jaga Jazzist and once-hyped Norwegian electro acts such as Palace Of Pleasure, Perculator and Sternklang. Naturally, the sleeve was designed by Kim Hiorthøy.
Ah, Norwegian culture! From the '90s onward it's been a battle of naïvety vs. irony—both sides of the escapist coin, united by their equally cowardly strategies to avert one's eyes from ugly truth, and to avoid the potential embarrassments bound up with things actually relevant to human experience. And while pop culture hipster nerds with too much cool (read: self-consciousness) to ever feel comfortable in their own trendily covered skin used distant sarcasm to flee from any kind of expression that could ever touch a nerve, another answer to the problem of reality was proposed…
Jörg Mager Ensemble: «Siemens» [mp3]
classic Treetop Drive («Treetop Drive 1», «Towboat») and two as-yet unreleased pieces, one of which («Dead People's Things») would later be released—in a different version—on Deathprod.'s final album before Sten's retirement from solo recording, 2004's Morals and Dogma. Only the above piece, «Siemens», remains unreleased.
Electrophon, the Kurbelsphäraphon, the Klaviatursphäraphon, the Partiturophon and the Kaleidophon—none of which survived the devastations of the Second World War (except in Helge Sten's imagination). These instruments were oscillators, supposedly similar in sound to the theremin. You know, that 1950s sci-fi sound as if a violin got confused with a voice in your slipping consciousness:
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