This in from Ulf a couple of months back (been too busy procrastinating to put it out);
Phlu and Bananeter (aka. Eddie Tambongo/Snared) ate tacos, drank beer and made this EP on a friday night last fall. Two of the tracks can be slightly reminding of a drunk or high James Blake. While made on a friday, the tune ‘Happy Friday, Motherfucker’ resembles that old friday-feeling most people get when the working week is over and they can pop their first beer of the weekend, finally free from the chains of societys money-making circus (At least as long as they are at their own home.) But we know that as a reality, it won’t last long. It’s just for a limited time-span called the weekEND. Another working week will come. That insight can cause a sad moment even though it’s a friday night, so play this EP loud and sing along like you are a drugged down, drunk walrus who’s never going back to work!
Cover by Phlu.
Preview the track ‘Free Pills Through My Soul’;
Tracklist;
1. Impregnated World
2. Free Pills Through My Soul
3. Happy Friday, Motherfucker
DMZ, or De Militarized Zone, is a physical or logical subnetwork that contains and exposes an organization’s external services to a larger untrusted network. There’s a certain noir comic vibe to this release, although, musically speaking, there’s no escaping the comparisons to Burial, Mount Kimbie and Sepalcure. Some league to be in though! Sounding somewhat like a mix between the three pioneers within experimental and perhaps more subtle dubstep isn’t exactly a negative feat, it’s a pretty incredible accomplishment in my book! The good kind of spine shivers. There’s a hazy and frail fidgeting feeling over this, slightly skipping with off-beat jazz-like rhytms, but the textures and melodies are oh so warm and comforting.
I’m really honored to release this 6-piece on the label, and like so many other releases on the label, it really deserves a vinyl release. So, if you feel like sponsoring or lending us money, give me a holler! Artwork by Morten.
Preview the track ‘Cease All Creation’;
Tracklist;
1. Cease All Creation
2. Encourage His Arrogance
3. Bolstering Lost Ground Fortress
4. A Golden Bridge To Retreat Across
5. Penetrating Spies Cannot Pry
6. Secret Ops
When I in a few minutes will press ‘submit’ to free Thomas Bergsten’s latest contribution to the human race, I will take great pride in knowing that the level of weirdness in the world just increased by 36. On this phenomenal record, we have nothing less than 12 exceptionally outlandish, beautiful pieces of music made for a film that is just around the corner. The fabulous thing about this movie is the fact that the movie itself was shot with the intention of describing the sound, yet not making it a mere music video, but a full fledged Jim Jarmusch-like flick with lots of awkward people doing whatever it is awkward people do. You’ll see, you’ll see.
‘New Orleans Vampire’ opens the show with a strange african/mexican-sounding blues track that suddenley drops into a stripped down 80’ies hip-hop beat, before the title song, ‘Jesus Was Walking On The Water’ rips your head open with some Nick Cave-like aesthetics, and then Oscar (from the movie), or what have you, takes it too far (honey), and has to cool down on the beach. Et cetera! It just goes on! I’m finding it very difficult to choose one track for preview on this, because they are all so different. A personal favorite it is though, ‘Subway (Club Scene)’, which is absolutely sublime! Artwork by Thomas.
Preview the track ‘Subway (Club Scene)’;
Tracklist;
1. New Orleans Vampire (Vampire Band Scene)
2. Jesus Was Walking On The Water (Title Song)
3. Honey I Went Too Far (Beach Scene)
4. Disney (Turn The Page)
5. Don’t Drink And Drive (End Credits)
6. Fuglane (Last Scene)
7. Indianarane Kjem! (Theme Song)
8. Subway (Club Scene)
9. Subway (Praying Scene)
10. The World Is Burning (Birth Scene)
11. The Dada Priest (Preaching Scene, Amazing Grace)
12. Aix Sponsa
A walk through the dire mud of everyday life, sprinkled with the occasional sunshine penetration. Mental dwarfs looking for pussy behind doors, blow pads, metal piece nose separation. A neurotic cartoon ‘Nirvana’, oozing sprays of sticky aromas, clinging to matter like tar sand. To enjoy light, one must also appreciate darkness. Balancing on the thin line stretching over the nuclear waste covering parts of a flourishing meadow. The king of snooze-techno has returned, and it’s an LP! 12 new tracks, damn!
Ulf/Phlu produced this record over the rainy summer, which gives us a few pointers to its ambivalent nature. There are some wonderfully warm melodies on show on this record, as well as some much welcomed rhythmical experimentation. ‘Juxtapositive Minds’ skips along like a slightly damaged old record, while ‘Another Re-Detached Surface of Thought’ explores a different musical realm altogether. Artwork by Ulf.
Preview the track ‘Juxtapositive Minds’;
Tracklist;
1. Weak End
2. Blabbering Of The Quitter
3. Hippielusions Of Grandeur
4. Psychobabble Theft
5. Juxtapositive Minds
6. Five Joints Left
7. Disconcerted & Discombobulated
8. No Use For A Brain
9. Another Re-detached Surface Of Thought
10. Decomposed Soil Of The Soul
11. Dark Lights
12. End Station
Harvey Steel was left on the doorstep of an Amish family in October 1977. He was raised as a real family member, and they didn’t tell him about were he came from until he was fifteen. He then left his Amish family following a calling. A few years later, he met a musician in Mississippi claiming to be Jim Ford. Jim thaught him how to play the guitar. After finding out that the man claiming to be Jim Ford was just a cocaine addicted ex-hippie (he had planted a kilo heroin in his guitar on the way home from a gig in Mexico), Harvey Steel quit music and moved to Norway in 1997 and has lived in a small cabin in the woods just outside of the ski jump hill in Vikersund. He hadn’t even touched a guitar until one day he came home from a walk in the woods and someone had set up a small studio with a small amp and a few guitars with a note;
- I’m sorry, Harvey, hope this makes up for something.
- Buck
PS! It took me ten years to find you.
Harvey Steel then recorded ‘Turn On Your Lovelight’ right away (after figuring out how to use the equipment) and used the two more days to write and record the rest of the album. Harvey Steel has now put together a band and we are waiting for the comeback concert! All songs by Harvey Steel except ‘Turn On Your Lovelight’ written by Joseph Wade Scott and Deadric Malone aka Don Robey, ‘I Told You A Lie’ written by Harvey Steel and Jan Fredrik Bjerk. Artwork by Åse & Morten.
Preview the track ‘Standing On The Corner’;
Tracklist;
1. Turn On Your Lovelight
2. Standing On The Corner
3. Dead Ahead
4. Outer Space (Part 1)
5. 1969
6. Outer Space (Part 2)
7. I Told You A Lie
Ulf returns with his silver tailed dream character moniker ‘Phlu’, and with him he’s got a couragous mission; reclaim your sleep! And it’s a mission well worth fighting for. For what better, more noble activity can man partake in without causing this world any further pain or misery? Lulled away on distant alien shores, quietly flying about observing an ever changing absurdly exotic environment. Talking to another version of you, playing fantastic sounding music on a three sided elephant with a conch-like marshmallows trunk, having your arms float up in space, only to drop two parallell velcro curtains bursting out naked ladies with caramel tits. This arcadian existence time and again disrupted only by the sound of an alarm clock. Waking up. Going to work. Misery.
These tracks are an ode to the art of sleeping in. To travelling away to the lands of our actual dreams. Spiritual perfection, light and creation. Turn off your alarm clock and sleep in, it will change your life. Artwork by Ulf & Morten.
Preview the track ‘The Awakening’;
Tracklist;
1. Days In The Sun
2. Snoozing
3. Dreams Evolve
4. Sunbeam Walk
5. The Awakening
6. Road
7. The Working Week
Welcome to a schizofrenic battle of the weirdos. It kicks off with a noisy processed violin by Jokkemaskinen & The Police, when Gunerius Quack answers with an eleven string meditative improvisation in the style of John Fahey and Robbie Basho. Jokkemaskinen & The Police then tries to go ballers with the guitar, but ends up making it sound more like home, coffee and newspapers on table (resting on couch). Big Chief then plays (and sings) a standard blues song that Jokkemaskinen & The Police steals the reverberation from, and showcases a minimal drone, before turning it into an electro piece. At the very end Thomas Bergsten comes with a minimal organ duet similar to the early minimalist works of Philip Glass and Steve Reich.
So that’s sixteen minutes and fourty two seconds of hazy Wednesday evening vegetable patch card game music for ya! Artwork and track names by Morten.
Preview the track ‘Paradigm Mom’;
Tracklist;
1. Calibrate For Ice-Hockey
2. Paradigm Mom
3. Goloc House
4. Experience ISO
Bekkestua Bronx – home of the hard, finally being paid proper homage to by one of its finest citizens, Stjerna, who started shaping his skills with Fruity Loops back in the day when occupying the only crack den not to have been raided by the police this side of Baltimore (said crack den much depicted in the ‘Brik’ music video posted below). Some of those older experiments ultimately lead to a few of the tracks on this record, which is why you can smell a light hint of purple caps and yam-yay sieving through your speakers when you listen to them. There’s also a mystique going on in this record, people in the know claim it contains a hidden underlying melody, if decoded correctly, it reveals the location of a secret haven known as ‘Bakgaarden’.
Mostly hard hitting, well produced, intrinsically rhythmic, weird, experimental and downright brilliant, Bekkestua Bronx delivers with one of the best odes to life on the streets in contemporary Bekkestua. Artwork by Morten.
Preview the track ‘Brik’;
Tracklist;
1. Skuxxx
2. Base Di Alcool
3. Brik
4. Hilfe
5. It’s Not
6. Kompl
7. Paethon
8. Pwnd
9. Showdem
This EP just in from an alcoholic cowboy who thinks he’s an indian (The Native American kind); Big Chief. His first release, a cassette called New adventures in love-fi (released on the Big Chiefs Traveling Medicine show label) was a lo-fi folk record, but this EP takes a strange new path. The singing is inspired by people like Frank Sinatra and Scott Walker, but that really doesn’t shine through. The songs are about murder, and the simple instrumental melodies are fronted by reverb soaked drunken crooner vocals.
Murder EP is a taste of what’s to come from Big Chief. These seven tracks are written, recorded, performed and produced by Big Chief (unless otherwise noted), but the coming full length have contributions by (amongst others); Frank Benjamin Finger, Children and Corpse Playing in The Streets, Stefan Remen, Jakob Myhre and Andreas Lande to name but a few. Artwork by Morten.
Preview the track ‘I’ll Be Running From The Law (Feat. Red Velvet)’;
Tracklist;
1. I Want To Murder You (*1)
2. I’ll Be Running From The Law (Feat. Red Velvet)
3. Jingle Jangle Murder (*2)
4. Bohemian Friend
5. I Knew It Was Tomorrow
6. Paralyzed
7. God Came In Through My Window
*1 The bassline is co-written with Ace of Spades.
*2 Words and melody by Eri Myhrebonus and Big Chief, synth by Ace of Spades and Big Chief.
The many faced creative force that is Stjerna returns to the frame with a deep four track EP titled ‘Bügeln’. The title of the EP, being a certain give away to Stjerna’s German connection (‘bügeln’ is the German word for ‘iron’), is also an obvious statement of the actual sound on the record. Deep basslines whoomping underneath a cold industrial spectre of drugged out textures and primal rhythmic patterns, progressing steadily as it wipes out all warmth as a stone cold lazer over the ever returning presence of an horizon in orbit.
Fall is upon us, and this EP serves as a sort of reversed psychological trick, if you like – invite the cold and dark in voluntarily, and it won’t bother you as much as it would normally. Sit down, let go, and be in ease with the freeze, consume the gloom, and inquire the dire. Artwork by Morten.
