Supersilent is a jazz / improvisation band featuring a lot of unconventional instruments. The group features ambient trumpetist Arve Henriksen and sound artist Helge Sten of Deathprod. Each album is completely improvised (and some albums have a very aggressive electronic sound not very common in jazz).
Supersilent 6.2 Album: 6 (2003)
Painting: Aurora Borealis (1865) by Frederic Edwin Church
Some things take time. This band, for example. I've had the first album of Wardruna for more than a year and I didn't listen to it much. Maybe my musical taste has changed, or it is another of these intense musical phases that I have but it is now in among my favorites.
Wardruna is a band making music centered on the theme of Nordic spirituality and shamanism. It's members are Einar "Kvitrafn" Selvik (drummer of Black Metal band Gorgoroth), Lindy Fay Hella and Gaahl (famous for being the signer Gorgoroth). Up to now, the group has only released Runaljod - gap var Ginnunga, but two more albums are supposed to be in creation with the aim of creating a trilogy (called the Runajod Trilogy). Each album explores the theme of 8 runes. The group uses ancient traditional folk instruments (deer-hoof percussion, hide drums, bone flutes, goat horn), field recordings (water, thunder, birds), and vocals. The signing is really impressive here. Lindy Fay has a beautiful voice and she really can sing, there is also some throat singing by both Gaahl and Kvitrafn.
Wardruna has had a lot of success and recognition lately. They have played live on Norwegian television, had a concert in the Viking Ship Museum of Oslo and they are part of a lot of festivals. Their next albums seem to be expected by a lot of people.
This is great music for people who like ambient/tribal/medieval bands like Dead Can Dance. Sure it's not the only band to try to tackle the viking theme, but it is really a good interpretation of it. I'm not sure how historically accurate is Wardruna's music but I like it that way, very cinematic.
Deathprod is the musical dark ambient project of Helge Sten. His music is often oppressive and scary. He also plays for the jazz group Supersilent (that features famous jazz trumpetist Arve Henriksen). Sten also works as a producer (with ambient group Biosphere). Here is my favorite Deathprod song.
Deathprod Dead People's Things [edit] Album: Morals and Dogma (2004) Photo: Darren Nisbett [photograph taken inside the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation)
Peter Beste is a photographer from Texas who has spent time in the Norwegian Black Metal scene to document it. He has published a book called True Norwegian Black Metal. It is a large format book, with superb pictures (you can see there's been a lot of care at the graphic design of this book). The book is a fascinating look at the Black Metal scene and it's extreme tendencies. Even if the pictures sometimes outline the ridiculous of dressing up as evil warriors to take a walk in the streets of a Norwegian suburb, it is a sincere attempt at understanding and even appreciating this marginal subculture [I already shared my appreciation of Black Metal in this blog].
Black metal is probably one of the most marginal musical genres. It is, not surprisingly, the genre that makes the most efforts to be marginalized. New albums are released on cassettes with photocopied artwork, sound is dirty and low-fi, imagery is morbid or shocking. Everything is calculated to make it as unpleasant as possible to the majority of people. Black metal has been in existence since the 80's. However, it is in Norway during the 90's that a little group of friends were to make the music known to the world. Murder, church burnings, satanic statements did the headlines of Norwegian press in the 90's.
Burzum is the one-man band of Varg Vikernes, one of the figures of 90's Norwegian black metal (later imprisoned for murder and church burnings). He released a few surprisingly good albums, different from what black metal was used to sound like at the time. This genre was later called atmospheric black metal.
Filosofem is my favorite Burzum album. It has a minimalist sound, often repetitive, very low-fi and dirty. Varg coined the term necrosound to describe it. Dunkelheit, the opening track of the album is pretty good and you can feel yourself transported to a nightmarish universe listening to it. It's a music that evokes nature and pagan rituals (like the beautiful artwork of Theodor Kittelsenon the cover. Towards the end of the album there is two ambient electronic music tracks, very simple, sometimes too simple but I like them. One of them is 25 minutes!
Musicianship isn't impressive but it is very expressive within the limit of the musician. A little bit like a children's drawing, naive art or primitive paintings. This album succeeds in being touching, with limited resources. Varg Vikernes isn't a great composer but he's an artist with a vision. Altough I prefer to enjoy his music and keep a distance from his ideas (an idiotic mix of fascism and paganism).
Surprisingly, black metal is getting fashionable nowadays (much to the despise of "true black metallers"). There is a new american black metal scene, sometimes labeled "hipster black metal", with a more artsy approach. But we can definitely hear in these groups the influence of Burzum (Wolves in the Throne Room and Liturgy).
