Lovely clunkoid mad vinyl thing from Norway is now in my pinching claws. If Stavanger creators are involved, we’re guaranteed a good blast of sideways-looking reinvention and loose experimentation from warped brains…those wielding the devices from the fifth dimension are Kjetil Brandsdal and Thore Warland, and the record is called Record Players, Percussion and Sound Effects I (DRID MACHINE RECORDS DMR36 / HÆRVERK INDSUTRIER HÆ036).
Given that title, we need hardly detail the methods by which our long-haired raving maniacs achieved their results, but the ear can’t help be pulled in by loops, repeats, and spare use of an echo chamber to magnify these clonking sounds. Their home-made machines lope across the wooden floor with the charm of a wind-up toy made out of wood and powered by 18 coils, old friction motors, and a bucket of broken carburettors. With track titles like ‘Downhill Planet’ and ‘Laser Tape’, our listening pleasure is also enhanced by suggestions of futuroid astral journeys. Imagine if James Jacson from the Arkestra fell into a time warp and was lured by the twin new-wave sirens of Kleenex and Lilliput to his doom on the rocks.
Oddly enough though, the abiding impression of these strangely-patterned rhythms is their simplicity, as if our creators were trying one experiment at a time and did not wish to over-explain the results, nor add anything in the way of deep-friend sentiment nor golden feathers. Thore Warland has played drums for Kjetil in a more “rock-mode” context, but we first had an inkling of his insanity from the Firmaet Forvoksen record, still causing outbreaks of madness in the northerly climes since its release in 2022. While I do adore the avant-rock textures of Noxagt and Ultralyd, it’s a delight to get the tendrils stuck into these more marginal, outlying, avant-styled statements associated with Kjetil Brandsdal (who also runs this label, by the way).
Well, the cover is textured and embossed and has gold foil stamped into it in a self-conscious homage to the Philips “Prospective 21e Siècle” records of avant-garde music emanating from France since 1967 – Bayle and Henry showcasing their own work but also that of Xenakis, Parmegiani, and others, and reaching out internationally to include Japan also, and giving too much work to the Les Percussions de Strasbourg – which brings us back to the percussion work of Warland here. Although Drid Machine would also love to have the cover – and their music – mistaken for a Library Music release too, which might indicate that the lines between these wildly divergent genres might be thinner than the world supposes.
At all events, here’s one to keep the mice at bay and use in the kitchen when you’re plucking the scales from your blue turkey. (1st August 2023)