Discreet Music – 01
Saturday, December 25, 2021
Arv & Miljö / LR - (2012) Påsk CS
Joy De Vivre – JDV015
Loke Rahbek ( Damien Dubrovnick, War, Posh Isolation) + Matthias Andersson (Heinz Hopf, Kallarbanen, Release the Bats).
A collaboration as a result of the Utmarken / Posh Isolation connection. Sources was provided by both acts, everything was mixed and finalized in Gothenburg in July 2011, although most of the material is older. The recordings are framed with field recordings from an Easter mass in a church in the Netherlands. Modern Scandinavian industrial tones.
Various Artists - (2019) On Corrosion 10xCS
  Helen Scarsdale Agency – HMS050 (Richard Allen) ----------------------------------------------------------- The drone release of the season is finally here: ten tapes in a wooden box, featuring nearly seven hours of music. This has been a labor of love for the Helen Scarsdale Agency as it celebrates its 50th release. On Corrosion is about entropy: the corrosion of civility, of sanity, of society. Many of the artists have a personal stake, writing about the end of relationships. Some fear the end of the world. Together they create a tapestry of things falling apart, with little hope of retrieval. This is a bleak worldview, but in the hands of these artists, it’s also beautiful: the glory of decay. Years from now, these cassettes will themselves erode, embodying the dreams of their creators. Where to start? The experience will be different for every person as they work their way through the box. We’re especially in awe of the female artists on the roster, so that’s where we’ll begin. “All Is Crushed All Is Perfect” is an evocative title for the opening track of 9 Dreams in Erotic Mourning, evidence that titles do count in instrumental music, if we allow them to do so. Alice Kemp plants elongated tones in a meditative fashion, but it’s a bit of a curveball, as the electronics enter into the second track, accompanied by sighs. What is erotic mourning? Is it missing sex, or embracing the idea of sadness in eroticism (sometimes known as “beautiful agony”)? She’s not happy ~ but she is. She also makes dolls: Purge Dolls, Chapel Dolls, Little Dolls, Burned and Kissed. As one might guess, these are not normal dolls, but beautiful in a charred manner. “Song for Unnamed Things” returns to the sparse nature of the opener, but sounds more like an appliance being turned on and off, accompanied by chimes. Then another left turn: painful exhalations akin to a rusty hinge; ritualistic tolling, as if for one lost. Kemp turns her voice into a tea kettle, but we’re not sure it wants to be removed from the heat. When “A Small Act of Violence” concludes with the sound of a spade, the implication is that Kemp may not be as passive a mourner as first believed. Turning now to another Alice (Kundalini/She Spread Sorrow), we find another complex artist whose work addresses issues of sex, pain, and degradation, while underlining female power. This is a difficult twist, but Kundalini has managed to discomfort and energize in a cycle of releases over the past few years ~ her visual art being as important as her aural. “The Solitude of the Giant’s House” begs for exegesis. While the protagonist ~ a psychological captive? ~ roams the halls, foreboding tones drip from the walls. “Star” offers a different sort of short story, in which another woman “had a little girl that she loved so much … she wouldn’t take care of herself, and she was always so tired. She couldn’t feel anyone’s love. She was lost in fairy tales and fantasies and darkness. She was so alone; do you miss her eyes? Her mind collapsed.” Is the little girl real, or a memory of the girl she was? The tale is harrowing, delivered in Kundalini’s signature whisper. The listener may approach Orchid Seeds as a work of narrative poetry, and attempt to read between the lines ~ or simply give in to the darkness of this claustrophobic music. At first, one is put off by the title of Torn Asunder – The Half Girl‘s opening track. “Fucking Bitch” is an ugly epithet from which one wants to turn away. But Ester Kärkkäinen (Himukalt) has another goal in mind: to expose the soulless nature of toxic masculinity. Her music is an indictment of the violence directed at women, and is violent in return: abraded, distorted, industrial. At times she sounds as if she is wielding a power drill over planks. Is she reenacting “The Cask of Amontillado?” The cover seems to dare the viewer to judge by appearance, but the photo is less about the viewer than the artist. At the same time, it seems a self-assessment: is this all I am? Sadly, to some people, the answer is yes ~ but that doesn’t mean it’s true. “Cruel by Most Estimations” smacks down every bit of dialogue with harsh feedback. Himukalt is the destroyer of the degrader, and her album is a powerful document that is too loud to ignore, turning the tables on those who use volume as a weapon. Many half-girls live throughout the world, but Kärkkäinen hears them ~ she may have been one herself ~ and seeks to lead them to wholeness. Tacking a different subject, Kleistwahr offers two side-long meditations on the upcoming season. Everything sounds pretty at the beginning, like the first flakes ~ but it doesn’t last. The appropriately titled Winter is awash in synth, harp, and buried voices, and seems mournful and resigned. Or maybe it’s just the titles, which include “Everything We Loved Is Gone.” Ten minutes into Side A, the ambience is swallowed in a blizzard of drone, and then the cycle begins again, with organ tones laying the groundwork like permafrost. “Rust Eats the Future,” says Kleistwahr’s Gary Mundy. “The Solstice Will Not Save Us.” And by Side B, the drones have indeed taken over the sound field. Winter may not sound like winter, but it sounds like the feeling of fear and loneliness that winter can produce. There’s no reason to fear winter, but millions suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, and it’s unclear whether this tape will offer them solace or despair. Either way, Mundy produces a cold, dark empathy, a soundtrack of the land’s apparent death before its inevitable ~ yet hidden ~ resurrection. Pinkcourtesyphone (Richard Chartier) calms things way, way, way down on Shouting at Nuance, and the title suggests possible intention or interpretation. In recent years, nuance has been devalued in public discourse, ceding space to ever-louder repetitions of dug-in themes. No one wins in such exchanges. Terry Tempest Williams’ recent Erosion: Essays of Undoing makes a connection between the erosion of objects and the erosion of civility; Chartier uses a pair of side-long meditations as metaphor, reflecting a myriad of deep emotions in the face of decay. Memories fade; tapes corrode; the past becomes an untrustworthy loop. The loops of “Problematic Interior 3” start in static and dissolve in wind; in “Alternatory,” they blow around as if trapped in a ghost town. Snippets of classical music waft through the air, melodies forever incomplete. By mid-piece, a dust storm of drone descends on the town; shuttered in their houses, the lonely residents hear harmonies borne on the breeze. Is it safe to go outside? Only as safe as it is to remember. Francisco Meirino takes the loop experiment a step further. If we didn’t know any better, we’d guess that he hates tapes. After discovering an old set of reel-to-reels, he “scratched, crumpled, drowned and buried” these elderly victims, then exhumed them for A Collection of Damaged Reel Tape Loops. One can imagine the tapes ~ seen in tangled Christmas light fashion on the cover ~ groaning “Why won’t you let us rest in peace?” But in their new form, new beauty erupts: disembodied voices, sluggish songs, savage static. The end of Side A sounds like a locked groove, the beginning of Side B like an alarm. The music conveys the message that corrosion need not be a nemesis. Ironically, the existence of this composition on cassette suggests that some admiring listener might break the case apart, remove the tape and dissect it for their own nefarious purposes, creating yet another generation of repurposed sound. We can’t help thinking that Meirino would be proud. Fossil Aerosol Mining Project is known for excavating the past; their practice is portrayed by their name. But unlike its peers,, Hydration Equilibrium also contains phrases of funkiness, as found in the opening piece, “Not Intended As.” The effect recalls Tom Petty’s video for “You Got Lucky,” which begins with members of the band finding an old cassette player in a post-apocalyptic landscape. FAMP also works with VHS and 35mm film, creating montages that rummage through raw material while offering a tangled nostalgia. The group calls the opening sample “an ugly reminder that not all things from previous decades should be treasured;” yet the fact of its inclusion means that it is treasured, if only as an example of what not to treasure. What will listeners make of this aural spaghetti? Some may muse on the disposability of popular culture. But others, hearing tracks like “Beneath the Rails,” may be buoyed by the resurrection of sounds thought lost. G*park (Mark Zeier) offers the sparsest album of the boxed set, packing protuberances of percussion with distorted snippets of everything from water to screams. Nosode is a chopped-up affair in which every sound receives a dark reception. We think that’s an ear on the front, but we’re not sure; the implication is that every sound is important, from a dripping drainpipe to broken pottery. While much of the tape celebrates found sound and the glee of smashing things up, there’s also a sense of the macro ~ the sound that lasts only a second, but resonates in the mind. As such, the composition focuses on echo as erosion, reminding listeners that while decay is a slow process, sometimes things fall apart quickly as well. The glass is neither half empty nor half full, but lies in shards at one’s feet. Relay for Death stretches from drone to noise on Mutual Consuming. The project is comprised of twin sisters Roxann and Rachal Spikula, whose music taps the ritualistic, occasionally receding (in the middle of “Intone the Morph Orb”) to allow room for meditation. In contrast, “Terminal Ice Wind” leaves little room for anything but survival. One imagines the generator dying at a polar encampment, the scientists battling the forces of nature, walking though white-out conditions with one hand on a rope. The music is a reminder of the harshness of nature; sure, we’re destroying our planet, but our planet can also destroy us with fury raw and untamed. The piece’s most powerful moment arrives nine and a half minutes in as it descends to silence: the silence during which someone decides that it’s safe to go outside, and then gets eaten. The full fury of the storm arrives in the final minutes, the sisters taking out their frustration on the world’s ills by imagining themselves as a purifying fire from which only crows can escape. And now to the tenth tape, an outlier from Swedish noise duo Neutral (Dan Johansson and Sofie Herner). Their drones seem perpetually on the verge of eruption, even when accompanied by abraded whispers and sparse monologues. Lågliv (Lowlife) is preoccupied by “murk,” which the duo describes as a discontent with the staid condition of rock. Their solution is to apply their own brand of aural corrosion to the pre-existing corrosion of creativity, hoping that two negatives make a positive. The music is lo-fi, a purposeful avoidance of the glossy. Each dead fly might be the corpse of another band who allowed their punk spirit to die. The suite on Side A concludes with “Punkt,” which seems less the MTV show (“Punk’d”) than a new application of the punk ethos. It’s refreshing to hear a modern act so unconcerned with the mainstream. On Side B, an organ accompanies their plaintive, distorted vocals. Handel’s Messiah this is not; it’s not trying to be high art, but raw emotion, a response to the corrosion around us. This boxed set weaves a tapestry of anger and despair, raging at the forces that be. On Corrosion is a rejection of misogyny and moral bankruptcy. These ten artists may be aghast at the forces of societal corrosion and the resulting effects on the planet, but they’ve channeled their emotions to create a new artifact for the 21st century. Open the box and one will encounter many of the world’s dark forces; but as Pandora once discovered, at the bottom of the box is hope. |
Neutral - (2014) Grå Våg Gamlestaden LP
Omlott – MLR 004
Gothenburgers’ Dan Johansson (Sewer Election) and Sofie Herner’s Neutral is the product of Sofie’s instruments and voice, and Dan’s manipulation and reel-to-reel technique. After previously making music together, in 2013 they had the idea to start compiling the recordings to make an LP. Originally released as a cassette edition of 25 on Ingen Våg.
Grå Våg Gamlestaden was released in the fall of 2014, with strong themes of a certain kind of bleakness, but with a wry smile, closely relating to the area of Gamlestaden. The title “Grå Våg Gamlestaden” was chosen after jokes were made with Matthias Andersson (IDDB label boss and project Arv & Miljö), about the neighbourhood Gamlestaden, where Dan, Sofie and Matthias lived.
Neutral - (2017) När LP
Omlott – MLR 020
A troubled 8-track mini album that stayed on the other side of the Atlantic for a bit before returning firmly to the Omlott headquarters. Meanwhile, the band kept busy doing one-off shows in the US and micro-tours with Lydia Lunch in between the occasional shows in Belgium and Sweden. If you seen Neutral live during the last few years, chances are good that you already heard tracks like 'Du' and 'Köldgatan', both already prominent parts of their live set. The opener 'Du' is a wonderful take on Chris Knox's everlasting 'Not Given Lightly', arguably the strongest love song ever written, though respectfully mangled through the Neutral filter. Recorded hot on the heels of the second album, the duo almost completely abandons the guitars on När in favour of synths and electronics. The pace is traditionally slow and moody and the mumbled kitchen sink realism is forever, yet När could very well be the most melodic and direct recording we've heard from the band.
Neutral – (2017) Live På Autodidaktik CS
Happiest Place – HP01
Everyone who reads this most likely have the same reason to do this & know what it’s all about. As said in previous sales pitches - Gothenburg is the centre of the universe. It’s a bold statement, but it’s possible to make it fairly un-challenged because everyone more or less knows that it’s true. There are a few essentials pieces who give these words credibility - but no one ave proven to be more bearing, more of an essential cornerstone than Neutral.
Dan Johansson & Sofie Herner are known under variety of different names. Be it Herner’s Leda or Johansson’s Sewer Election - or in groups such as Amateur Hour, Enhet För Fri Musik, Heinz Hopf or whatever - it’s nonetheless the foundation on which we stand, which we have their efforts to thank. This was the feeling I had when, as a weeks fresh 18 year old entering the door of an industrial estate in my hometown to experience my first Neutral show in 2016. An earth moving & essential experience for me, in many ways.
Originally released in 2017 on cassette in 50 units total - now you can enjoy the live experience of Neutral in high-end lo-def, which holds up perfectly after being remastered for vinyl from the original tape.
Neutral - (2016) Neutral LP
Yellow Green Red:
Don’t skip past this review on account of the band’s simple moniker – without a doubt, this’ll be one of my favorite records of the year! Neutral are a Swedish duo consisting of Sofie Herner and Dan Johansson, and they play an utterly enticing form of glacial acid-rock, full of bent corners, rippling electronics and primitive riffs. I hesitate to even classify Neutral as “rock”, in the way that their music seems to shift like clouds, at times slowly wafting forward and at others remaining an expansive grey blanket that lacks both beginning and end. They’ll build a simmering riff on bass or guitar (or both), and trickle little snaps and deviations throughout, as if Helm was lurking somewhere beneath the mixing desk. The use of Sabbath-style riffs for non-metal elevation reminds me of the wonderful Them, Themselves Or They single from maybe a decade ago, but Neutral put their own spin on it entirely, both focused and willing to indulge their least-musical ideas at length. I’m totally captivated (and the slick heavy gatefold sleeve seals the deal) and think that you might be too, lest we need to have a talk.
Omlott – MLR012
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Matthias Andersson:
In a sweaty art space open to no one and just a stone’s throw away from the Utmarken venue where it all in more than one way kind of began, Neutral did their first show in front of maybe 25 people. The free jazz drummer Peeter Uuskyla opened the night with a shimmering set of absurd, life-elevating bliss and Neutral just ripped it all apart. There and then sort of Gothenburg underground ground zero, or more like ground nothing. New beginnings and grey waves of something very exciting. It’s been close to 2 years now but it’s one of those nights that I will remember forever. Since then I’ve seen Neutral on several occasions and it’s always been a pleasure, always refining their craft but at the same time shredding the improvement to tiny pieces with every heartbeat. It’s like they are taking one step forward and two steps back with every minute they produce, and in a very rare and weird way getting better and more interesting doing so.
The untitled second album, following up Grå Våg Gamlestaden (Omlott, 2014), does just that. It takes everything that made the debut album so special and puts it in a rusty meat grinder, taking a piss on the deconstructed mess and puts it together again, piece by piece. The formula might be almost identical, but the final outcome is different. Where the debut was immediate and fairly easy to resonate with, the new album is almost impossible to penetrate at first. You can sense that there’s something resembling a ragged beauty somewhere, but it’s hard to reach. It’s like Neutral deliberately placed various obstacles along the way, fucking with everyone’s expectations and rightfully so. Still, after each time spent with those 35 minutes things will slowly unfold themselves and there you are, pleased with one of the most fully realized and beautiful recordings to ever come from the shitfaced Utmarken camp of misunderstood geniuses. Yeah, I actually heard them all. Neutral manages to connect the dots between everything from Chrome and Siltbreezian gold from the 90’s to the more experimental sides of Dome, while throwing in some tape work that could only originate from Gothenburg and brutish guitar playing bringing JFK, Skullflower and maybe even rock-era Ramleh to mind at times. Let’s not forget the mysterious field recordings scattered along the way, and Sofie Herners dry, talked vocals, leading at least this listener to the realization that there’s no end to this fucking winter.
Anna Högberg Attack - (2020) Lena CD
Omlott – MLR 024
In my list of the most anticipated albums, this one was on the top it, ever since the blog conducted an interview with Swedish sax player-composer-bandleader Anna Högberg two years ago. Thinking again, actually since the release of the debut album of her sextet Attack four years ago. There are very few bands that can put a spell on you so quickly and with such spiritual-emotional power as this one. Högberg’s mentor, Swedish sax titan, Mats Gustafsson, who wrote the liner notes to both albums, tried to decode this spell and came out with “a primal force of something… real” and after numerous times of listening to the new album Lena felt wrote that it “hit me like a split axe in a split second”. Yes, this album asks for a certain degree of addiction. You may find yourself listening to it a few times a day, enjoying the many spells of it.
Lena, titled after Högberg’s mother, features one major change in the line-up of Attack. Trumpeter Niklas Barnö replaces tenor sax player Malin Wättring who pursued a successful solo career. Tenor sax player Elin Forkelid, pianist Lisa Ullén, double bass player Elsa Bergman and drummer Anna Lund round this band. The sensual cover art of Lena corresponds with the art of the debut album of Attack debut album, both done by Lisa Grip. It is released as a vinyl and lasts only 41 minutes, as the debut album.
And, indeed, continuity, is a key idea in the world Högberg and Attack. Clearly, the seminal influences are the fiery free jazz of the sixties in the United States and Europe, but Högberg and Attack don’t dwell on the past but suggest a very personal take on this legacy, opening it to new, beautiful avenues. Gustafsson thinks that it has something of the location of Högberg’s home, in the forest of Höga Kusten (the Swedish High Coast) and very close to the sea, a place that charges her music with unique, innocent flavors (and he mentions that this region is “famous for the ultimate delicacy Surströmming, the sour herring”). I am no expert in the Swedish herring delicacies, but Gustafsson is obviously right. There is something pure and very profound in the music of Högberg.
Lena begins with a brutal solo alto sax cry of Högberg that pays her respects to Peter Brötzmann and Gustafsson but lacks the manic rage of the German titan. Instead, Högberg takes the sextet into a wild, soulful fanfare on the opening piece, “Pappa Kom Hem”. The following “Det Är Inte För Sent” develops gently. Lund sets the sparse atmosphere, Ullén and Barnö intensify it patiently and with beautiful, poetic imagination, and inviting Högberg, Forkelid, and Bergman to join them for the melodic coda. “Dansa Margit” dances around a hard-swinging, free theme (swinging beyond swing according to Gustafsson), call for personal interpretations but aim for open yet collective dynamics, with strong, emphatic support and no rush. The second side begins with “Tjuv” that presents Attack in full force, a tight and powerful unit that celebrates its deep roots and distinct personalities and voices with an engaging theme, groove and uncompromising force. “Pärlemor” and “Äntligen” cement, again, how the addition of Barnö enriches and deepens the sonic envelope of Attack. His own poetic, precise attacks turn to be the secret ingredient in the most tasteful, creative stew of Anna Högberg Attack.
And back to Gustafsson. He promised early on in his liner notes to the debut album of Anna Högberg Attack that this band will “melt your brain as we know it”. Mine is already melted. I can guarantee that yours will reach that state soon enough, despite the dire times.
Anna Högberg Attack - (2016) ST CD
Omlott – MLR 011
The Quietus:
Attack. It's a wallop around the chops or a desperate lunge at the body. A rallying cry of defence in the face of provocation or a frenzied barrage to reclaim what's rightfully yours. So, those entwined bodies which compose the cover shot of the debut LP from these six outstanding Swedish jazz musicians can't help but project allusions onto the gazer's inner eye. Limbs contorted and faces buried in each other, we seem to see the aftermath of a deliberate collision filled with giddy joy. Those figures are going to be down for some time by the look of it, having crashed into one another with all the impact of a bracingly friendly contact sport.
It's the perfect visual counterpoint for the joyous barrage coming from this perfectly formed sextet, a spiky and visceral group who collectively wrap themselves around your head and body in a bone-breaking bear hug and whisper honey in your ear. Having previously been subsumed within the vast density of Fire! Orchestra, Anna Högberg here steps out as a relatively small unit bandleader with ferocious vigour. Her richly sonorous alto sax is joined in a three-pronged frontal assault unit with Malin Wattring and Elin Larsson on dual tenor and soprano duties to form a sisterhood of breath.
Indeed, breath is the very first thing you hear on the opening 'Attack', exhaled air moving through reeds and valves as darkly ominous piano chords rumble and cymbals scrape and clatter. It sounds like a charcoal pencil sketch is being drawn, a rough and potentially volatile assembly of fragments which suddenly roars into colour with a jubilant fanfare from the three sax players. Shapes begin to manifest inside this slow-gathering offensive, the piano, bass and drums providing the engine power for the horn trio to weave delicate yet resolute lines which can swiftly drop into fleeting whirlpools. By this point, the six players are focused in tumultuous interplay lingering on the edges of full free jazz maelstrom while constantly withholding the necessary loss of tension which would ensure that release.
The Attack's surge then disperses while piano and percussion grind their teeth before that sax fanfare emerges once again, now more ragged and torn, bruised and howling for comfort. It's all done in just over eight minutes setting a standard for the Attack as they mould their tightly-packed compositions into seven short and stripped-down pieces across forty minutes. 'Familjen' begins like a piano trio, jagged keys colliding with percussive shards and nimble bass thrum until a mournful, blues theme drapes itself with slow sorrow across the manic intensity of string and skin. Lisa Ullen's piano work becomes part of the rhythmic drive which powers the Attack, working in tandem with Högberg's exultant sax chorus as well as rooting around inside the spokes and pistons of Elsa Bergman's bass ripples and Anna Lund's drum battery.
'Borderline' squeals open like a tyre blow-out on a rocky road auguring maximum demon expulsion, all six musicians engaged in brutal duel while still hollering punctuation points until they stop and try to remain calm right at the cliff edge. 'Lisa Med Kniven' sets out on a violently playful bass excursion, Bergman lovingly bashing wood and strings before being gently coaxed out of this savage mood by Ullen's soothing piano clusters as the group coalesce down a darkly-lit street on a cubist noir tip, angles and elbows rubbing against each other's abrasions. Högberg reaches out with dynamic solos and then gracefully retreats back into group shadows, her Attack a star-turned whole which manages to be even more than the sum of its parts. The brief outlines of 'Skoflikargrand' and 'Regnet', tiny wakes turned to carnivals, don't waste a second while finale 'Hogberger' has Bergman playing her bass like it's being sawed in half as Högberg's throaty sax skirls through a blood-pumping group frenzy before a final drift downriver, away from the heat of battle with horns softly mopping fevered brows and joints. What a blast it's been
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The Free Jazz Collective:
Swedish sax player Anna Högberg's all-female sextet Attack's debut album is one of the most expected releases this year. Attack premiered in the 2013 edition of the Stockholm Jazz Festival and since then its performances gained praises all over, including a heartfelt endorsement from Högberg role-model, sax-titan Mats Gustafsson, who promises that Högberg’s Attack will “melt your brain as we know it”.
Attack features Högberg (who plays also on Gustafsson’s Fire! Orchestra, guested in The Thing recent Shake! and plays in the Dog Life trio) on alto sax, Malin Wättring and Elin Larsson on tenor and soprano saxes, Lisa Ullén (who plays in the Nuiversum trio with bass player Nina de Heney and vocalist Mariam Wallentin and leads her own quartet), double bass player Elsa Bergman and drummer Ann Lund.
Högberg's compositions, as well as a short one by Bergman, emphasize the individual voices of Attack and suggest a fresh and irreverent perspective on modern and free jazz. Högberg playing tends to burst instantly into fiery, restless solos, rich with melodic inventions, while Wättring and Larsson, each in her own distinct manner, opt to structure their solos in a more patient and methodical way; Ullén fleshes the loose theme with resonating, skeletal segments and inventive rhythmic playing while both Bergman and Lund inject a highly personal sense of pulse and space, still locking in driving rhythms.
Together Attack can alternate quickly between melodic and contemplative interplay, almost as if breathing-singing tender songs, and an intense and energetic eruptions, often in the same piece, and at times even adds experiments with sonic searches. Attack can attack powerfully, without holding back, as on the opening piece “Attack” or on “Borderline”, or trying to merge the contrasting approaches as on “Familjen”. “Lisa Med Kniven” highlights the imaginative and creative language of all musicians, beginning with unique bass lines of Bergman, rolling into light yet open swinging pulse with Ullén and Lund while the three saxes front adds layers of the theme with high-octane power and beauty, culminating with a great solo of Högberg. The last piece “Högberger”, stresses again the saxes massive front, bursting now in nervous parallel solos, but concluding in a poetic, compassionate hymn-like coda.
Attack delivers Gustafsson promise, “freeing the jazz, attacking the jazz”.
Dog Life - (2017) Fresh From The Ruins CD
Omlott – MLR 019
Dog Life explores free improvised music on a high-energetic plateau, descending from the outskirts of free jazz, and further towards a harder, darker and undefined terrain. Their debut album was critically acclaimed in Europe as well as in the US. On their new album Fresh From the Ruins, Doglife continue to push the freejazz-punk limits and sets out new directions with elements of doom and noise.
Enhet För Fri Musik - (2017) Det Finns Ett Hjärta Som För Dig LP
Omlott – MLR018
Embedded in the ever exciting Swedish underground scene Enhet För Fri Musik continues the quest for innovation numerous legendary Swedish bands started during the 70s, Pärson Sound, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Arbete Och Fritid. Taking the ideas of communal music craft and experimentation, on this album the group comes to a unique combination of Jandek-like atonal guitar, organ, tape effects, field recordings, saxophone and Sofie Herner’s amazing loner voice running over it. Adding another inspiring document to the world of open-minded music.
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Discovering the Förlag För Fri Musik label and the associated acts has to me been one of the major highlights of the last few years. I've been lucky enough to have taken part in events and acquaintances some people could only dream of, but for me it has always been about the music. Yeah, I got to know Albert Ayler in the autumn of '66 when we shared a cab in Stockholm. I somehow lured myself into the crew around International Harvester and their early stage, not really socializing much but would still found myself half asleep on the floor while Sov Gott Rose-Marie was being recorded. Was it the same week I somehow ended up in charge of the café at the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin? Possibly. It’s all in my biography. On my many travels I've been floored, spoiled and overwhelmed. Lester Bangs owes me $27 and an excuse. During my stint in the UK, I was at the first The Jesus & Mary Chain show and a few years later drank myself through an dark period of schmucks staring at their ugly shoes while awkwardly playing their guitars through endless chains of effect units. My life has been good and rich of fantastic encounters. Some terrible ones too. Towards the late 90's my life-long passion kind of ended. Not because I was getting older really. No, I rather blame the lack of interesting sounds. The lack of interesting artists. My passion drained, I stopped going to shows, I stopped buying records. I remained friends with plenty of people but a whole era of my life just seemed to be over. I emerged myself into literature and cinema for the following 15 years, and my listening habits were mainly focused on private pressed 80's heavy metal from USA during this period.
Fast forward to early 2015. My oldest daughter knocks on the door to my home office and throws a copy of the Enhet För Fri Musik cassette Inom Dig, Inom Mig in my lap. Listen to this, will you. Right up your alley, blah blah. The usual exaggerations in another tiresome attempt to wind up the old man. A fucking cassette, how cute. This one however... Wow! Mind blown. That something. Memories of a lifetime flashing by. A feeling of something else, finally. I poured down the last drops of my Scotch, took my bicycle down to Music Lovers, the store where my daughter supposedly had obtained this particular little gem, just to found out more about this band. Which I didn't, but that's another story. I must've listened to the cassette about 20 times a day for at least a month. It was like seeing photos of Les Rallizes Denudes for the first time, but the photos being music instead. It was like seeing Träd, Gräs & Stenar at Gärdet in 1970, but this time not having sex with my girlfriends’ brother behind the scene. It was like my first exposure to Jandek (never been a fan, but you know what I mean). Trying to figure out more gave me the same feeling as sending well-concealed francs for some LLN cassettes to a friggin' castle in southern France, just hoping for the best. Or receiving the very first jiffy with via-USA Japan-imported noise cassettes from Ron Lessard. Just as if no time had passed at all, I shortly found myself fully immersed in a musical universe again, this time the Gothenburg underground. It turned out that the cassette was only the beginning and that the two following LPs, one released by themselves and one on an Italian label, were not only much better but both minor masterpieces in their own right. So yeah, I just did what I had to do and soon enough could address myself a "writer" again and even being paid for that.
I managed to hustle down an unmastered advance tape of the upcoming Det Finns Ett Hjärta Som För Dig album from the band after a few weeks of weird negotiating which could be described as walking into a wall headfirst over and over. From my many years as a music writer I'm used to the other way around, bands and labels basically begging you to accept their promotion copies and lame-ass one sheets. But Enhet För Fri Musik, it was like they knew they had something big on their hands even though they obviously didn't realize it themselves. Every question was received with suspicion. Like, what do you want? Really, what do you want? The mentioned advance tape had a life itself it seemed, like a jinxed holy grail it mysteriously disappeared from my bag the same night I received it to early the next morning be found by my neighbour outside my door. I had the pleasure to meet the whole band (that's Hugo Randulv, Sofie Herner, Gustaf Dicksson, Dan Johansson and Matthias Andersson) a couple of weeks ago. In all honesty I can't really decide if it really was a pleasure, but an interesting gathering no matter what. Prepared with 20 questions, my ambition was to get a piece done for a Norweigan publication, a text focusing entirely on this new album and the peculiar aura around the whole collective. They choose the time and place, a bar some 30 minutes from the city centre which the taxi driver had a hard time locating at all. I arrived in a timely fashion but no one there of course except for a lady in her 70's firmly placed in front of a Jack Vegas machine. After 20 minutes all of them emerged from the kitchen behind the bar, all heavily into a discussion about some Christmas album. I spent about 5 hours with the band, but managed to get 0 answers to my well thought-out questions. Nothing to use at all, actually (if you don’t count the answer to my #14, Q: “Does a great combined record collection help when making an album together?”, A: “Yes.”). Nice people and all, but Hugos' constant yapping about the best Sarah Records compilations and the similar rants on whatever-band-you-never-heard-of from New Zeeland from Matthias got a bit tedious after a while. Every attempt to steer the conversation at least somewhere near the masterpiece that is Det Finns Ett Hjärta Som För Dig resulted in more beers plus jokes and references I didn't get.
What I did get, however, and that’s solely from letting this album become an integral part of my life and not so much from my few conversations with the band members, is that this is one of the most wonderful albums I’ve ever heard from Sweden. People will try hard to figure this one out in the future. A comment on a welfare system collapsing? Just a glimpse into the creators’ childhood memories of rainy summers cut-jumping back and forth to scenes of cases of 3.5% beer smashed on the concrete behind the Sibylla, neverending confirmation camps, virginities forever lost and trimmed mopeds disappearing in the morning fog? The letting go’s and the joys and the sorrows of it all. Who knows with these cats, what I have on my now much treasured tape is not necessarily even what will be on the actual album. For whatever its worth, I’m thankful for my brief encounter with this band and my only wish right now is that they one day will perform live.
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Omlott could close shop today and I’d still be praising them for years thanks to the two monumental Neutral albums they released into the wild, but their fingers continue to actively dip in other bowls of Swedish strangeness. They just delivered a new one from Enhet För Fri Musik, replete with the full heavy-duty glossy gatefold treatment, and it’s a satisfying venture into private sound. This group features both Dan Johansson and Sofie Herner of Neutral alongside I Dischi Del Barone mastermind Matthias Andersson and a couple other friends who probably drink coffee at each others’ homes and take long bicycle trips through the forest together. Det Finns Ett Hjärta Som För Dig doesn’t feel like a group recording so much as a culmination of various solo pieces – maybe Herner drones on an old Wurlitzer on one track, then Andersson picks up an acoustic guitar and it’s his turn for two minutes of improvised fingerpicking. Field recordings, horns, ’60s pop tropes, even the slight residue of harsh noise contribute to this motley collection of songs. I’m reminded of Finnish avant-noise hippies Avarus in the ebullient kitchen-sink approach shown here, as both groups make music that brings the listener in… it’s as if there’s an open chair waiting for you and all contributions are welcomed. Any one track of Det Finns Ett Hjärta Som För Dig won’t quite do it – you have to sit down with the whole thing to truly understand, but it’s a time worth taking.
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