FNS & Svarte Greiner - Sound Of Mu 28 March, 2010 (Concert)

As you probably know if you already know me is that I'm usually to be found at almost all concerts held in Oslo within the experimental scene, and most of the time with a recorder in my hand. I finally decided to start writing reviews of memorable concerts as there's not many of those to be found no more, and my first concert review will be of the release concert for the new album of FNS (Fredrik Ness Sevendal).

This concert was held at Sound Of Mu on March 28th to mark the release of his new self-titled album "FNS" which was released on Miasmah. This is actually a re-release of the debut album which was originally released on CDR by Clearsnare in 2005, but this time it's a remastered and pressed CD and there's even a bonus track on it for this new release. Anyways, the guy behind Miasmah is the man behind Svarte Greiner, Erik Knive Skodvin who also played.


First off were Svarte Greiner (translates Black Branches) which is, as said above, the solo project of Erik K. Skodvin. Skodvin is hard to describe as anything but a truly nice guy, but as soon as he starts playing music, everything becomes darkness. It's all in the music as well, because what you see is a usual concert with the musician sitting there playing his music and using his ears and intuition to decide where to go next in the soundscape. He started out quite easy with only his guitar fading slowly into his line-up of pedals. Within the first 5 minutes I'd become part of the music and it sounded like it was the soundtrack of a slow and dark film (without any specific references here). It evolved and evolved and I enjoyed the whole thing, although I think the last part worked best, but that also may be because I had had the time to digest the previous material presented as well. It was dark and beautiful, but the amp used seemed to have a bad response to the lower frequencies played sometimes, so I'm afraid I lost my concentration a couple of times at the beginning, but as said, after 5 minutes I was part of the music through to the end. Lovely performance!


Then it was the headliner of the night, the man the release concert were held for, FNS. I've seen and heard his music many times before, so I was prepared of a good show, but this just blew my mind. In just a few weeks I've seen tons of concerts, but this took the cake and will be one of those memorable concerts I will look back at with a smile. Also here were it a bit too much amp-distortion in the very beginning, but that was quickly fixed. From playing hands at his acoustic guitar he went to use a bow, and as soon as the bow touched the guitar it was pure magic. This means that the last 90% of the show could easily be described as one of the most pleasant concerts I've ever been to, and I how well he manages to use the loops and keep evolving slowly but steady is just amazing. If you've heard either the FNS-album or his No Foly Bow from 2007, you should know what I'm talking about when I say he has control in his music, and it also worked live. I could've listened to this guy playing for many more hours, and hopefully it's not the last time I see him do a concert. I'm not sure, but I don't think I know any guitar players who does folky sounds as good as Mr. Sevendal. A true evening of joy.

Take a listen to some extracts from each of the concerts:
Svarte Greiner
FNS

Jazkamer - Musica Non Grata

I originally planned to do a review of the whole 2010 monthly releases series by Jazkamer, but after hearing the difference between all the three first releases I figured it would've been too much to write about, at least for now. I decided to go with the february release this time and why would that be? Well, I have a good experience listening to Jazkamer. I've heard almost all their released music so far and they are probably the band I've seen live the most, and after hearing their classic Sound Of Music, I didn't think they stood a chance making a new release that I would like better, but they proved me wrong! Not just is it my new favorite Jazkamer release, but I'm pretty sure it's among top 5 noise releases overall for me as well, and probably the only one not being classic harsh noise. Here it is feedback and not much more, but it never gets too much. Exhausting, yes, but never does it make you wanna turn it off. It's pure bliss! I didn't even get to play it at a good volume because I played it at night and wouldn't wanna wake anyone up, but damn, it blew me away.

What you get here is not the common feedback noise we've heard so many times before, but a very well produced composition where feedback is used more as a tool than an effect. It's extremely variated, but at the same time drony with a feeling of ambience to it. Not at all ambient, but space like. Not sci-fi space, but a feeling that makes your head float around the room and try to pick up everything that's happening. It may be because I was quite tired the first time I heard it I experienced it this way, but I would compare the feeling with the exploration of the album in the same way I experienced the film 2001: A Space Oddyssey (again not the sci-fi part of it). It's a simple idea, but it's so well done. I can't really explain it. Take a listen and judge for yourself.

Sound clip on youtube

Francisco López - Nowhere Short Pieces 1983 To 2003 (10CD Box)

Francisco López should be a well know name for most people who has listened to noise for a little while now. I have to admit that I haven't heard too many records of his, so I decided I should get me the Box set "Nowhere Short Pieces 1983 To 2003", released on Blossoming Noise and Gender-less Kibbutz in 2008. The release comes as a standard 10 CD box, but there's also a special edition limited to only 100 copies where you'll get a pin + a 5" vinyl as extras. I do have the special edition, but I decided to review just the CD's as it covers a wider audience and more importantly, I have an auto-return on my turntable so I haven't had the time to enjoy the vinyl yet.

But let's get started, and as a contradiction to the Hijokaidan box, I'm not gonna do a one and one CD sum up here. The reason why I decided to do it as a whole is because I think it should be listened to that way. I know it's a collection of various pieces from a time period of as much as 20 years, but still, I think it works as whole. I usually have a hard time listening to "concentration music" on records and especially for many hours at a time. I think it's much easier to put on some of that good ol' harsh noise and sit back and relax and let the noises wash away everything else. I like combining the listening experience with other activities, and I find that hard when I feel I have to pay more attention to the music that takes away my focus from what I do on the side. Francisco López makes music that could easily have been a focus-stealer, but it's not. I have no idea what the average dB on this record is, but it spans from complete silence to the very opposite, and I had a few episodes where I had to check if the disc was still playing or not. It's a situation that you may find absurd, especially if you're not used to silence being used as an effect to intensify the listening experience even more, and most of the times I hear silence for as long as this I fall out of it. But here do we have an artist who can really master the most important tool in any noise, namely silence. I didn't get bored once during the ten hours the box lasts, and even though the truth is that I had to walk up to the speakers once in a while to see if I could hear anything at all, I think this was a fantastic listening experience. The intensitivity and excitement of every minute of this box made me really happy, and I couldn't wait putting the next disc on the stereo as soon as possible after each disc was over.

Before you now think that I'm contradicting myself on the statement that I don't like records that takes away the focus of any other activities, this is not what I've tried to say here. I had no problem doing other stuff while listening to the music. In a strange way I feel that I managed to absorb all the elements in a subconscious way and listen to the easier parts as I usually listen to music. And also since so many of the silence-parts (most of which has more lurking in them than you would know) lasts for quite long periods, I learned quickly to work with it.

Well this has been quite a scratch at the surface, and maybe more of a look into my personal feeling while listening to the music rather than a review of the music itself, but what should I say if I decided to do just the music. With a few exceptions on the latter discs there's not much more to say about the music than it's a combination of silence and different pitched white noises, and if that's all that would've been said I don't feel I'd get the message across on what it's actually like. 'Cause it's good. It's really good, and I don't think this is a release that would just be sitting in the shelf gathering dust in the future. I'm looking forward to listening to it on a headset, on a different stereo, but most of all, just to get through it again. And when I get some good speakers on my computer, I'll definitively load all discs and take a full day's listen. It's like a ten hour piece, but never is it too long. ...and most importantly, there's nothing to get. I'm tired of explaining people who try to "understand" noise that there's nothing to get. Just sit down, enjoy, and listen like any other record. Just let your ears adjust!

Kobi - Live in Japan & Earplugged

Live in Japan | Earplugged

Kobi should be a well known name for people who knows their Norwegian experimental underground-music now. It's a project by Kai Mikalsen, usually joined by various friends. This time he comes with a solo studio album (Earplugged) and a live album from his Japan-tour in 2007 (surprise surprise, Live in Japan). I've never heard Kobi as noisy as this before (with the exception of the album's release concert in Oslo), but at the same time I would not say it's complete noise either. This could be said about both albums, but let's try to separate them as they're quite different from each other.

Earplugged: You'll find a good combination between low and high frequencies, and though its loads of variations on the release it's also a good example on how important a tracklisting is. It works very well as a whole and the thirteen pieces on the album floats through each other smooth as silk. Kai shows us here that he has the ability to very well control what he does and it gives me a feeling of being both a very composed, but at the same time improvised album. It's very organic and it's just enough material on there. I hear an album every once in a while where if I didn't have a clock near me I couldn't tell whether I had listen to music for 10 or 80 minutes, and this is such a release. It gives me just the right amount of music to want to maybe wanna put it on again as I could've listen to it for a little longer, but at the same time it's not at all too short. It's perfect, and I love finding records that gives me this feeling. It's also produced very well, and being packed with many high pitched tones all the way through, I think the final master has come out very well. It could easily have been an exhausting listening experience, but at least to me it was not. It may be because of my hardened hearing (to say it like it is, I'm not quite earplugged), but I think the balance is done very well here. I may have just repeated myself here with different ways of saying the same thing over and over, but I wanna get it through that I truly enjoyed the production value of the record as I hear loads of albums based on similar ideas that really doesn't work that well. It's in a way very minimalistic and I would rather call it a musique concrete album than a noise album. It's a total different listening experience than what I get from regular noise releases, and also very different from the rest of Kobi's discography so far.

Live in Japan: Here you'll find three live recordings from Kobi's Japan tour in March, 2007, that he went on with Love Hz and Crazy River. Here we get Kai joined by others as we're used to and on the first two tracks he plays with Petter Flaten Eilertsen (now a member of the regular live constellation of Kobi, and also the guy behind Love Hz) on two very different tracks. The first could hardly be classified as anything else but noise, while the second is more, well... Kobi. Its noisy ambient music and I have a hard time trying to explain what I mean about it being Kobi-sounding, but that's what it is! The same could be said about the third and last track where Kai is joined by Kelly Churko. It's a bit more noisy again and maybe a little more space sounding than usual, but Kobi nevertheless. It's way more variated as a whole than Earplugged, and more a documenting release than an album, but I bet the pieces chosen for this disc are carefully chosen, 'cause it sounds good, and never does it get too much.

Both are available from LOOOP.