Lasse Marhaug "The Shape of Rock to Come" CD
[Smalltown Supersound]
Five lengthy tracks of experimental noise from this seminal Norwegian artist, totaling nearly an hour of rather diverse and interesting sounds. "Sleeper" opens with a thick, throbbing low-end pulse and some faint harsh electronic frequencies cutting into the background and sweeping quickly in and out/back and forth. The harsher textures gradually increase in volume and movement, slowly taking over the foreground of the piece, but certainly maintaining a tangible atmospheric quality that I find quite original. By the midway point things have reached a fairly traditional level of straight harsh noise, but there's still a good amount of clarity and strange twists and turns that fuck with your ears, so I can appreciate that. "Magmadiver" is more minimal as far as layering goes, and the volume just ranges from fairly loud to somewhat subdued, but the persistent tones are caving in on themselves in a way, and are certainly not easily listening! The same goes for "All in Good Spirits", which, while it does contain a few distorted musical tones (Or, dare I say... melodies?), is certainly a loud piece that does eventually give way to some thick, rhythmic loops and lightly grinding midrange distortion accented by brighter treble crunches. "Headless Piss" is the "midget" of the group, so to speak, clocking in at a mere 4:51 while keeping lots of stereo effects intact, but probably the most obviously blending low-end tones with thin high-end wisps and the occasional burst of more aggressive and tangible distortion. The last track, "It is My Kind of Top", is what I would actually call a bit of an ambient piece, and is actually my favorite selection herein. There are definitely some very abrasive moments, but something about the mood of the track keeps more of a sinister thread in tow, and there are a lot of softer, eerie undercurrents or breaks that really dominate the piece. For the most part the tracks each have their own individual approaches that remain largely consistent for their individual duration, which actually works quite well here as the material is well recorded and does have a real undertone of effort and intent. The layout consists of abstract photos with tangible human figures in them (some appear to be live photos) that use heavy motion blurs, interesting color schemes, etc. The text is nice and clean, and everything is printed on matte paper, which of course looks very cool. Very good work here. I'm not too familiar with Lasse Marhaug's large body of work, but this is a great release for both the project and the genre at large. I'm intrigued... (7/10)
Running time - 57:20, Tracks: 5
[Notable tracks: Headless Piss, It is My Kind of Top]
Smalltown Supersound - http://www.smalltownsupersound.com

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