SINDRE BJERGA / DUNCAN HARRISON / CLAUS POULSEN / PAUL WATSON
Blind Dates
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.294) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Pretty much fresh off the bus. Cosmic true head vibes. Bjerga and Watson scrape and scratch in gleeful unison. Norwegian ALF cassette. The kind of Happy Birthday drop that only The Baron can get away with. Edition of 66.
Dig Your Own Hole
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.275) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Sound collages, gnarled-out microphone psych and the glorified magic of everyday rituals, filtered though shit-stained cassettes and over-cooked frequencies. One complete live recording from Oslo (including a section where a tower of chairs was pulled down from the stage) and a mobile phone recording of parts of a show at the Klinker Club in London.
Huffing The Semantic Smoke From The Deep Hum
(Chocolate Monk - choc.490) CDR $6.75
In the midst of it all, Sindre Bjerga escaped for a while through secret tunnel passages and met up with Tanto in his underground lab, where piles of tape machines oozed and buzzed, dozens simultaneously. He hooked up his stuff to the main frame, which made it overheat, creak, thump, and melt until the sounds were on fire and language combusted into a cloud of fog. Words and meaning went up in smoke and duo was cast into the big, deep hum of vapor. Edition of 60
Voice Studies 09
(My Dance The Skull - VS09) Cassette $9.50
Three live performances by the founder of Norway’s Gold Soundz label. “The Demise of Personal Hygiene” is a series of gurgles, blonks, boings, and thuds, while “Procrastination is the Square Root” and “A Possible Outbreak of Clinical Hysteria” continue the contact mic clashing crashing guttural rumble. “At various time [Bjerga] sounds like a child talking through a balloon while being manipulated by evil adults,” notes The Wire. “He breaks some plates in an industrial kitchen accident, then we take a ride through his digestive system (à la Roger Waters / Ron Geesin) until we emerge worm-like through his bottom….”