Björn Berglund on Hjorten - Omringad av mörker.
Ergo, January, issue 1, 2007.
It's in the noise music's nature to be associated with the extreme: that which starts when musics own language breaks down, implodes, and a wordless state, which many would call noise, starts.
In the e-mail with the review description of the local Uppsala noise musician Hjorten's new album, the editor Hannes calls the music "completely, hopelessly non-commercial noise scrap", and that's exactly what this is about.
Experimental sound terrorism, to use Hjorten's own words.
The opening track, "Skit under naglarna", is a rather boring and monotone pulsating with low frequencies that is randomly beset by an electronic crackling that evolves into a ear numbing beep after three and a half minutes, until thirty seconds remain and the music dies out followed by fifteen seconds of rest.
The first real exciting things happen at 5.44 into the second track, "Synskadad framtidsvision", when the alarm goes off, followed by short analog howlings as different types of rusty engines trash the sound image into a meaty factory swarm accompanied by something that sounds like a giant gong.
Then and there it's really powerful.
The problem is that I don't really know why it's so powerful. I have a hard time judging Hjorten by any strict assumptions of quality, even if it feels poor that a number of tracks follow the same pattern of a monotone background that is then are decorated with atonal sound scrap from other frequency ranges with random intervals.
For that reason, I like the track "Intelligent nonsens" the best. Instead of beginning with a massive sound layer, it bangs a couple of metallic beats and then turns on a muffled transistor radio on something that sounds like a Russian pirated radio channel.
All too often, I wish that the music be provided with proper body music drums and become a dancefloor hit in the passages. But it's of course doomed from start. "Omringad av mörker" is a title that says exactly everything about the music.
Ergo, January, issue 1, 2007.
It's in the noise music's nature to be associated with the extreme: that which starts when musics own language breaks down, implodes, and a wordless state, which many would call noise, starts.
In the e-mail with the review description of the local Uppsala noise musician Hjorten's new album, the editor Hannes calls the music "completely, hopelessly non-commercial noise scrap", and that's exactly what this is about.
Experimental sound terrorism, to use Hjorten's own words.
The opening track, "Skit under naglarna", is a rather boring and monotone pulsating with low frequencies that is randomly beset by an electronic crackling that evolves into a ear numbing beep after three and a half minutes, until thirty seconds remain and the music dies out followed by fifteen seconds of rest.
The first real exciting things happen at 5.44 into the second track, "Synskadad framtidsvision", when the alarm goes off, followed by short analog howlings as different types of rusty engines trash the sound image into a meaty factory swarm accompanied by something that sounds like a giant gong.
Then and there it's really powerful.
The problem is that I don't really know why it's so powerful. I have a hard time judging Hjorten by any strict assumptions of quality, even if it feels poor that a number of tracks follow the same pattern of a monotone background that is then are decorated with atonal sound scrap from other frequency ranges with random intervals.
For that reason, I like the track "Intelligent nonsens" the best. Instead of beginning with a massive sound layer, it bangs a couple of metallic beats and then turns on a muffled transistor radio on something that sounds like a Russian pirated radio channel.
All too often, I wish that the music be provided with proper body music drums and become a dancefloor hit in the passages. But it's of course doomed from start. "Omringad av mörker" is a title that says exactly everything about the music.