Your cart (0 item)

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA - Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna

Format: CD Label & Cat.Number: Helen Scarsdale HMS008 Release Year: 2006 Note: ultra desolate hallucination drones, not from this world.. Price (incl. 19% VAT): €13.00 More Info Zweite Zusammenarbeit der Skandinavier, und wieder wird eine geheimnisvolle, einsame & endlose Soundwelt erschaffen, die seltsam entrückt wie frühe WERKBUND-Sachen auf uns wirkt.... Wie DEUTSCH NEPAL oder KARJALAN SISSIT scheinen auch der ex- HAZARD- (und die Isländer von STILLUPPSTEYPA sowieso) eine geradezu obsessives Verhältnis zum Alkohol zu besitzen, die in diese Aufnahmen mit eingeflossen ist; wie der lange Absturz nach der rauschvollen Ekstase, surreal halluzinierend und beklemmend... "In Scandinavia, it's not uncommon to hear of someone's mother, grandfather, uncle, or plumber who drank him-or-herself to death at an early age; and the Swedish drone artist BJ Nilsen has felt the alcoholic pangs which may foreshadow his own demise. In recent years, Nilsen has turned to his Icelandic neighbors Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson (collectively known as Stilluppsteypa) in existential sympathy over the problems of their collective lust for alcohol. Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna marks the second collaborative document of abject minimalism that these three have composed; and like its predecessor Vikinga Brennivin, this album is spiked with drunken thought. Any alcohol induced euphoria has been tempered by perturbing blackouts, moments of cruelty, and an all-consuming nihilism. Beyond their shared Scandinavian heritage, their expressionist urge for the frigid drone, and their penchant for drink, BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa intend this recording as an open ended experience, wandering through their sound without the burden of any exegetical text that may get in the way. Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna resolves itself as a grim kaleidoscope, where the bleakness of the wintry Scandinavian landscape and the langour of a drunken escapade constantly mutate through the highly refined sensibility of dronescaping. Sonar pings announce the beginning of this album, with its echoes returning as an amorphous fog and locating little but a gloomy pall upon the event horizon. Clattering electronics scurry across the barren sounds like death-watch beetles upon the tundra; and creaking doors offer something much more foreboding than what Pierre Henry envisioned for musique concrete. Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna adheres to the psychological dis-quiet through sound design that Alan Splet provided for Eraserhead or that Nurse With Wound achieved on Salt Marie Celeste. Yet for all of their tendencies for brooding and desolation, BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa retain a compulsion for a glacial beauty through their intoxicated visions of the sublime.... " [label info] "...On the same Helen Scarsdale Agency label the second collaboration between B.J. Nilsen and Stillupsteypa. One perhaps wondered if the latter were still around, because the last thing we heard was the previous work with Nilsen (see Vital Weekly 460) and again alcohol abuse in the Scandinavian territory is the main theme here. It's a firm continuation of the previous album. Using also field recordings this is much along similar lines of the Jim Haynes album and far away from the last thing we heard from Stillupsteypa (which was close to being a disco band). A winter landscape, frozen roads, empty swirling through a desolate country is what is on this album. They captured the stale wind and put it to music. If the term Isolationist music hadn't been invented before, it should be done for this album. Droning landscapes, quietly humming, and even at times using a faint trace of a melody, such as in 'Undir Ahrifum/Sunderlaus' (all credits are in Swedish and Icelandic - two entirely different languages) with something that might very well a guitar. And sometimes it seems nothing is happening at all, such a breeze, such as in 'Supbröder/Drykkjufelagar', humming quietly. This album is a great one, excellently produced, but perhaps not holding something that is entirely new to the world of electronic music, but rather carries on a tradition, which sometimes is fair enough." [FdW / Vital Weekly] "For a country whose entire population is only half that of San Francisco, Iceland has an exceptionally prolific arts community. One could easily look to the big Icelandic names in pop music (i.e. Bjork and Sigur Ros); but there's also slightly lesser known (but even more adventurous) music from the likes of Johann Johannson, Apparat Organ Quartet, and the entire output of the Kitchen Motors institution. But our personal favorite from Iceland remains Stilluppsteypa, whose dada drunkenness and black humor has developed arctic undercurrents to their increasingly bleak drone-based work. On Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna, the Stilluppsteypa duo of Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson have hooked up once again with the Swedish sound artist BJ Nilsen, perhaps best known for his triumphant elemental drone work as Hazard released through Touch. Sigmarsson sums up the communal idea behind this album as a "love for drones, Scandinavia, and alcohol." Of course, he then proceeds to type a polysyllabic onomatopoetic bunch of drunken text that makes our extend-o-spelling of doom seem trite by comparison. The previous collaboration Vikinga Brennivin was an homage to the Icelandic firewater of the same name; yet it held a clarity and singlemindedness rarely attributed to alcoholic excess. Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna has that same contradictory dualism of conceptually relating to being fucked up without totally losing a grip on reality. Or perhaps these three Scandinavians have gotten so loaded that they drifted into a parallel universe of liquid physics and amorphous gravity. Needless to say, Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna is another masterful album of alchemical drone, that's even darker and more morose than its predecessor. Sonar pulses and crackles of wood break up the jet-black atmospheres of frozen electronic drones, resonant frequencies, and hallucinatory echoes rippling way out on the outer regions of the event horizon for this sonic black hole. At times falling close to the constant spiralling of Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste, and times recalling the best isolationism of Thomas Köner. Somber, magnificent, and exquisitely constructed!" [Aquarius Records]