joe/murray/on/bjerga/iversen/bandcamp/project

October 13, 2013 at 6:47 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a comment
Tags: bandcamp, drone, electronica, improv, jan-morten iversen, joe murray, new music, no audience underground, noise, sindre bjerga

Bjerga/Iversen – various Bandcamp downloads.

(Editor’s note: apologies for the delay in comms from RFM – ten days between posts is most unusual.  The silence has been due to your faithful editor taking a short recuperative break.  No music, no email, no writing, no work of any kind save chopping wood for the fire – just time spent with wife and child.  Most refreshing.  He is now back, batteries recharged and arms flailing like the duracell bunny, so hopefully the flow will recommence.  First up: some bullet points from Joe, to follow: the hard word from Scott.  Take it away Joe…)

Bjerga/Iversen are a Norwegian duo who take the long view of things.  Over the last ten years Sindre Bjerga and Jan-M. Iversen have released approximately 125 (according to discogs) CD-Rs, tapes and floppy discs and clocked up almost as many live appearances all over Europe.  Their latest project, over and above their normal avalanche of releases, is to place an album each month on Bandcamp.

So who are these extraordinarily busy men?

If you poke a stick randomly into the tangled mess that is the no-audience underground you’ll not jiggle long until you hit upon the name Sindre Bjerga.  He pretty much is the essence of D.I.Y. avant garde: running Goldsoundz, touring extensively everywhere (recently Russia & Japan and the UK jaunt every October) and releasing a slew of records on every micro-label of note; Discogs lists at least 100 solo releases…and this I fear is a conservative estimate.  He is a solo player and the consummate collaborator; plays in a bunch of semi-regular groups (be sure to check out Star Turbine with Claus Poulsen) and you know what?  He’s a funny, modest and generous chap to boot!  Sindre flits between hazy drone, four-track recidivism, jump-cut dictaphonics and, more recently, rambunctious vocal studies. Sindre is the improviser’s improviser.

When left to his own devices Jan-M. Iversen is almost as prolific, recording solo and with guests, masterminding the drone lounge and also finding time to knock out a tower of ambient/drone videos. A look through his back catalogue is sobering, racking up dozens of remixes, collaborations, solo CD-Rs and tapes culminating in the cheekily titled masterwork ‘Monotonous – A Collection of Drones’ released in a snazzy 10 CD box set emblazoned with Jan’s grinning boat race.  Jan’s solo work mainly digs the rich seam of electronics.

Together they specialise in longform drone and organic interrupted glitch.  On paper the idea of the punk-ass fiddler making show with an electro-boffin seems destined to failure.  But they both bring out a third quality, a more-than-the-sum-of-it’s-parts-ness that gently skims over the rough surfaces like weed-drenched plaster.  Time is taken.  And the occasional allusion to Prog Rock fits like a velvet loon.  In an alternate reality I can see Peter Gabriel era-Genesis using Bjerga/Iversen as intro music to stull all the patchouli beards before their theatrical pomp takes the Old Grey Whistle.

Ask them if they are a noise band and the answer is an emphatic ‘no’ but the hallmarks of noise: drawn-out minimal sound sources, clotted notes and the abandoned factory vibe are all here.  They prefer the term psychedelic drone and with such thorough fieldwork who are we to argue.

The concept of ‘ghost sounds’ is visited again and again with mere whispers sneaking through the cracks in the tiling, mould becomes grout and shadows fall where you least expect them.  At times they are the sound of candle light, with the heaviness of felt.  You often get a curious shifting effect too.  This is no clumsy ‘me to you’ approach but more like some old ‘49er panning for gold; sluicing the freezing cold water and gravel to find the dull nuggets with their heavy burden of gravity.

But what does this generous clutch sound like?  In a sloppy-soundbite style, exactly like this…

• Extended Techniques: Musical saw orchestra in an electric India, arc welding.  The noisiest of the bunch.
• Maps of Electric Transmission: Magnetic waves breaking on the shore while deep sea divers struggle for oxygen beneath.
• Three Units of Magnetic Flux: Algebra comes to life!  Force vs Flow…who will win?
• Divided by Zero: Table Tennis paddle swats steel wool for tin reverberations.  For ex-punks.
• Random Systems: Stavanger nightlife re-imagined for Tubular Bells.  Seriously pretty.
• Harmonic Half Life: Almost a found-sound documenting the nightly slosh of an empty accident and emergency room.
• Crumbling Layers: Featuring a recognisable stringed instrument tugged and bothered among future traffic noise culminating like a Liturgy out-take.  Very beautiful.
• Dripping Galaxies: Fourth, fifth, sixth-generation tape of a marble being rolled round a Bizen-yaki bowl, played out through crackling Walkman.
• Endless Tapes: Once a prophesy, now reality.  Keening geese made of lightning weave feedback loops in and out of the negative zone.  Dr Strange looks on and begins the forbidden incantation.

In an ultra generous offer these fine, fine releases are pay as much as you like on the Bandcamp site.  So, if you have a hankering for music that’s “Carving great gestures out of minimal motives: Immersive soundscapes built from naive assumptions” then look no further.  Spare a dime if you can…you know the score.

What’s that?  You want more?  Then be sure to visit Andy Robinson’s fabulous Striate Cortex label for even more future-ethnic drone from these mighty gentlemen.  Bjerga/Iversen…the mark of quality experimentation.

Bjerga/Iversen Bandcamp project