Jörg Mager Ensemble: «Siemens» [mp3][Download disabled.]
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)
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