From Norway, the duo of Janne Eraker and Kristoffer Lislegaard appearing as Øy with their Live 2023 (HEART BABY HB02) album. Five tracks recorded at various venues in Oslo, Hammerfest, Fredrikstad, and elsewhere, then edited down for this release.
We’ve heard Janne Eraker’s tap-dancing before on Movements For Listening, but this time she’s directly hooked up to the electronics set-up of Kristoffer Lislegaard in such a way that the contact mics on her dancing stage will trigger the sounds from his computers and sequencers. She may have mics on her tap shoes, also. There’s more to it than that of course, and the creators will happily describe at some length the process of working together and how these interactions can influence each other’s performances in a dynamic fashion. Very innovative method, but the music sounds flat and uninspired, with much banal cosmic droning often emerging as a fourth-rate imitation of Tangerine Dream.
Some moments of excitement can be found on ‘The Foyer’, where the percussive foot-falls of Eraker are somehow managing to wrongfoot the brains of the computer and producing some unexpected artefacts. Yet the players clearly don’t yet feel fully comfortable or confident with their invention, and I feel they could be a lot bolder with it. (Nov 2024)