Phenomenal set from 2017 courtesy of the Norwegian duo of Kim Myhr and Lasse Marhaug, which followed the release of their debut album together, On The Silver Globe.
The album’s title refers to Andrzej Zulawski's powerful, hallucinatory film of the same name, and from the off the pair conjure a similar uneasy, fractured atmosphere. Fragments of sound are looped and warped, circling round in a slowly spiralling groove which is never the same twice, but flows forwards with its own inchoate dream logic.
As the momentum builds, so the soft tones of the first half of the set gradually erode and fracture into a densely insistent electronic scree which seems to fill the room - a synchronous interplay with a common target - before collapsing back down into a sparse, almost conversational electronic chatter.
There is an insistence to these sounds that seems to have the same prophetic urgency of some of the most visionary characters in Zulawski's science-fiction epic, promising some deeper revelation that always remains tantalisingly just ahead. As with On The Silver Globe, there can be no easy resolution, but the real epiphany is of course - as ever - in the journey.
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- Recorded by James Dunn
- Mixed and mastered by Lasse Marhaug
Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC
Tracklisting:
1. 31.5.17 - 34.11
Norwegian guitarist and composer Kim Myhr has been touring internationally since the early 2000s and has released several records under his own name. His album You | me (2017) was nominated to Nordic Music Prize, and received wide acclaim internationally. As a composer he has made music for Australian Art Orchestra, Canadian string quartet Quatuor Bozzini, Kitchen Orchestra and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra of Norway, and has collaborated with Jenny Hval (on the 2012 collaborative album “In The End His Voice Will Be The Sound Of Paper”, Tony Buck of The Necks (on the album “You | me”), Lasse Marhaug, Christian Wallumrød, poet Caroline Bergvall and many others. His last record Vesper with Australian Art Orchestra was nominated for a Norwegian Grammy in 2020 in the contemporary category. His new record Hereafter on SOFA is the ninth album under his own name.
Lasse Marhaug has been a fixture in Norwegian experimental music for the last 25 years, with hundreds of releases, collaborations and projects. He composes music for film, theatre, dance and installations, and is also a writer, magazine publisher and visual artist. His favourite astronaut is Michael Collins.
