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GAMMELSAETER & MARHAUG - Higgs Boson

Format: LP Label & Cat.Number: Ideologic Organ SOMA 043LP Release Year: 2022 Note: incredible collaboration by MARHAUG with vocalist RUNHILD GAMMELSAETER, once singer for THORR'S HAMMER and KHLYST (with JIM PLOTKIN), a dark and haunting, almost occult sounding album, inspired by a large array of topics, i.e.: Japanese cinema, Futuristic comic books, landscape photography, Glass Bead Game by HESSE, the discovery of the HIGGS BOSON and work of quantum physicians like SCHRÖDINGER.. black vinyl ed. Price (incl. 19% VAT): €24.00 More Info Runhild Gammelsæter and Lasse Marhaug are two Norwegian musicians/sound artists. Both started in the early 1990s music underground and have worked in many constellations with a wide range of collaborators. Despite knowing each other for a long time, Gammelsæter and Marhaug's first collaborative work was the Quantum Entanglement LP in 2014. The project lay dormant until Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson invited them to open for Sunn O))) for a special gig in the St. James Church of Culture in Oslo in 2019. The two gathered for a long series of rehearsals, and after the successful performance, it was clear that it was time to start working on new compositions and recordings. That process initiated in late 2019 and continued to early 2021, before and after the lockdown. The result of this long development to be heard accumulated upon their new album Higgs Boson on Ideologic Organ. Marhaug drew inspiration from concepts informed by the structuralist experimental cinema of Japanese directors Takashi Ito and Toshio Matsumoto, futurist worlds of French comic book artists Philippe Druillet and Jean Moebius Giraud, landscape photography of Fay Godwin, Kåre Kivijärvi, and Tamiko Nishimura, amongst others. It became a metaphysical juxtaposition involving Gammelsaeter's research and lyrical ideas based on several seemingly unrelated principles. A process of association inspired by The Glass Bead Game (1943) by Herman Hesse. The discovery of the Higgs Boson as a confirmation of the physical universe. The work of Ernst Schrödinger on the uncertainty principle. The four forces of physics. The Force. Helplessness under armed forces -- as the war sailors in World War II. The influence of magic as expressed in tarot. Gammelsæter experiments with a boundary involving the thresholds amongst various states of focus and legibility by forensic experimentation with techniques such as exclusive expression of consonants, syllabic repetition, retrograde text vocalizations and multi-lingual layering. Her vocal inspirational sources include Sidsel Endresen, Diamanda Galas, Natacha Atlas, the choral works of Rachmaninov, and the bands Carcass and Grave. Two worlds coming together, making the music special. Mixing hard facts with science fiction helps create a kaleidoscopic cross point between the complex realities of the past and a possible future. Across eight parts, the two artists brought a broad palette of instrumentation and sound on Higgs Boson. Electronic and acoustic, objects and field recordings, and pipe organ define the structures of which the center is Gammelsæter's magnificent voice. She In the mix, Lasse approached the instrumental elements like landscapes, then Runhild's vocals as characters that inhabit those worlds. Often, Gammelsæter multiple characters fused with the landscape. As an album, Higgs Boson is direct and focused, drawing on song structures. Within these tracks are vast strata of sound, an immersive multi-dimensional depth of music. A1. The Stark Effect (2:52) A2. The Magus (4:44) A3. Static Case (3:56) A4. Ondes De Fase (4:00) A5. Forces (5:50) B1. Propeller Arc (6:46) B2. Hadron Collider (5:35) B3. These Questions (9:55) "Two totemic Norwegian artists bombard and fizz the senses with a powerful invocation of metal and noise energies on a new album for Stephen O’Malley’s radical Ideologic Organ imprint. The thrilling complex of ’Higgs Boson’ furthers Runhild Gammelsæter & Lasse Marhaug’s fascination with the field of physics following 2014’s ‘Quantum Entanglement’ with Milwaukee’s uncompromising Utech Records. Gammelsæter, a one-time vocalist for O’Malley & Greg Anderson’s legendary pre-Sunn 0))) band, Thorr’s Hammer, and regular contributor to O’Malley’s subsequent projects, is also a professional biologist with a PhD in cell physiology. Marhaug is the prolific, multifarious figurehead of Scandinavian experimental music who surely needs little introduction on these pages. The duo collapse a spectrum of non-musical influences into an immensely compelling sound that, as their LP’s title suggests, strives to confirm the meta- and physical presence of the universe thru opposing forces, and the unquantifiable, uncertain energies produced therein. Gammelsæter’s vocals are evidently a big attraction on ‘Higg’s Boson’, naturally drawing on 30 years of extended works to project a range of unearthly inflections and affective tonal colour unmistakably forged in the belly of radical metal. As her relatively short but perfectly realised catalogue with Thorr’s Hammer, Khlyst, Sunn 0))) (notably ‘Gates of Ballard’!), proves, few can match her might. Summoning structural concepts from the Japanese experimental cinema of Toshio Matsumoto, french comic book futurism of Phillippe Druillet and Jean Moebius Giraud, and landscape photography of Fay Godwin, Kåre Kivijärvi, and Tamiko Nishimura, Marhaug, in turn, galvanises the personalities of Gammelsæter’s voice to extraordinary degrees, conjugating their mutual spirits in vast, electro-acoustic and illusively noumenal space with frankly shit-the-bed results comparable with everyone from Diamanda Galas’ tempered rage to the catharsis of Carcass and Rachmaninov’s choral arrangements. A genuinely unsettling summoning of dark energy." [Boomkat] https://ideologicorgan.bandcamp.com/album/higgs-boson