★Smalltown Supersound
Occulting Disk
Deathprod, a.k.a. Helge Sten, has been deeply embedded in the Oslo music community for decades, but his brooding soundscapes and deliberate process make him seem sometimes like a phantom. Sten is a founding member of Supersilent, adding his sounds and treatments to the avant jazz leanings of that powerful collective, and he has collaborated with artists as diverse as Biosphere, and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones. But Occulting Disk is the first new Deathprod album in 15 years; his attention to d…
Lift Every Voice and Sing
**500 copies, strictly no repress** Smalltown Supersound are going hard on the free jazz this year - so much so that they've set up new sub-label Actions For Free Jazz to accommodate the load. This was the slogan for Smalltown Superjazzz and was borrowed at the time from Don Cherry and Krystzof Penderecki’s The New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra track Actions For Free Jazz Orchestra from the 1971 album Actions. The inspiration for the label is BYG Actuel, Incus, Freedom and ESP-Disk. AFJ's latest fora…
Link
Edition of 500, no repress, no digital. After closing out Smalltown Superjazzz’ run in 2015, Mats Gustafson fires up its new iteration - Actions For Free Jazz - in the lacquer crackling, spittle-riddled investigations of ‘Link’ with avant-turntablist Christian Marclay Both known for charting paths less travelled, here they point to strange, liminal zones of perception on their first collaboration, with Gustafsson’s electronically processed tenor and baritone sax channelling an ecology of wee be…
Memory Repetitions
**Limited Edition 5 x CD box**Operating outside the limelight in the underground, Will Long has produced prolifically across genres, monikers, and countries since 2006. Predating his minimal house contributions under his given name to DJ Sprinkles’ Comatonse label and Smalltown Supersound, Long has put forth over a hundred collections of ambient compositions in stream of consciousness fashion under the name Celer. A native to America, Long has been based in Tokyo since 2011, where he has continu…
14
Currently a trio featuring Helge Sten, Arve Henriksen and Ståle Storløkken, Supersilent ’s album number 13 marks a turning point in the group’s two-decade career. After a dozen recordings under the umbrella of the diverse Rune Grammofon label, Supersilent have now signed to Oslo based Smalltown Supersound, where they join the likes of Lindstrøm, DJ Harvey, Prins Thomas and Andre Bratten as labelmates. After live and studio dalliances with Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones in the last few years, the…
Departed Glories
It’s easy to forget that Norway shares a short stretch of frontier with Russia, right at the northernmost tip of the country. That region is where Geir Jenssen, the Norwegian electronic producer behind Biosphere, comes from, and where he has been composing his austere, disturbing and deeply textured ambience since the early 1980s. Biosphere has released many albums to date including 'Substrata,' voted the greatest ambient album of all time on the Hyperreal website, and has collaborated with Arne…
Treetop Drive / Morals and Dogma / Imaginary Songs
Deathprod's album trilogy (in bundle), gatefold cover with Japanese obi pressed on 180g vinyl. Based in Oslo, Norway, composer Helge Sten has been crafting this music since the early 90s, a deeply atmospheric, grainy minimalism that slows time down and explores the very particles of sound itself. The Deathprod concept arose in 1991 when Sten realized his complex array of homemade electronics, samplers, sound processing and analogue effects – cumulatively known as the “Audio Virus” – could ad…
13
Currently a trio featuring Helge Sten, Arve Henriksen and Ståle Storløkken, Supersilent ’s album number 13 marks a turning point in the group’s two-decade career. After a dozen recordings under the umbrella of the diverse Rune Grammofon label, Supersilent have now signed to Oslo based Smalltown Supersound, where they join the likes of Lindstrøm, DJ Harvey, Prins Thomas and Andre Bratten as labelmates. After live and studio dalliances with Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones in the last few years, the…
Frozen By Blizzard Winds
The two sonic masters joins forces for an extraordinary collaboration project recorded live at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo. Features Marhaug on computer and Drumm on analog synth and guitar.
The Soft Wave
Alexis Georgopoulos (ex-Tussle), who is one third of The Alps (released by Type and Root Strata), and half of Q&A (on DFA), has finished his second album as ARP. Recorded as Alexis Georgopoulos (the man behind the music of Arp), relocated from San Francisco to New York, "The Soft Wave" is expansive in scope, unfolding like a collection of short stories or filmic vignettes, each piece building upon the other. "The Soft Wave" incorporates guitars, piano, flute, & Ebows to create a dense bro…
Kokning
"Norway's Bjorn Torske returns with his fourth studio album 'Kokning'. Opening on a playful note with a slow-building title track, Torske strums a lone acoustic guitar against a background of shimmering synths setting the scene for a highly engaging piece of work. Throughout the course of the album a wide palette of genres are taken in and adapted to the Skrangle-House style (an open ended take on house music stemming from the Oslo nightclub 'Skansen'), and dub looms large over much of the music…
Disko
Drivan is a new band project from Norwegian electronica star and graphic designer, Kim Hiorthoy, featuring a line-up of pan-Scandinavian pals: Swedes Lisa Ostberg and Louise Peterhoff and Kristiina Viiala of Finland. The group met while working on a dance piece titled The Potato Country in 2007, and the three girls in the band all come from different corners of the performing arts spectrum, yet everyone involved in Drivan contributed lyrics and melodies for the album, working off the bac…
K-X-P
K-X-P is a drums, bass & synth trio from Helsinki, Finland, born out of the fire & ashes of the seminal OP:L BASTARDS & THE LEFTHANDED, both led by Timo Kaukolampi (best known as ANNIE's main producer & co-writer who worked with her on "Don't Stop"). The band is comprised of Timo Kaukolampi (electronics, vocals), Tuomo Puranen (bass & keyboards) & rotating drummers Anssi Nykänen & Tomi Leppanen. Mixing electronics, krautrock, noise into a hypnotic & minimal motorik groove inspired by Raymo…
On fire
Norway's Smalltown Supersound label is just one of those imprints that you have to keep an eye on, because if not you're sure to miss out on some nugget of psyched avant-metal or North European disco that you'll be kicking yourself over neglecting in 10 years time. 'Smalltown Supersound On Fire' is a very handy and rather essential compendium of forthcoming releases on the label, including tracks from Arp, Meanderthals, Diskjokke and Tussle alongside remixes from the likes of Prins Thomas and Bj…
Real Life Is No Cool
As supportive as Hans-Peter Lindstrøm's fans have been of his random acts of creative fitfulness, one wouldn't blame them for feeling a bit tested by his most recent string of output. Between his brilliant but impractical 2008 long-player Where You Go I Go Too and his 42-minute refit of "Little Drummer Boy", two of the Norwegian producer's recent major releases have accounted for nearly 100 minutes of music across a scant four tracks. In a scene where an elongated 12-minute re…
Live at Cosmopolite
Celebrating their fifteenth anniversary, Norwegian fusionists Jaga Jazzist present their first ever live concert DVD, filmed at Cosmopolite in Oslo on the 4th April 2005. This recording was made around the same time as the release of Jaga's What We Must, and features material from throughout their career, all replicated with remarkable levels of precision on the live stage. In addition to the excellent 80-minute concert the DVD comes with bonus features that include …
Telescope Mind
Tussle's early output on Troubleman Unlimited proved to be quite a hit with tastemakers like John Peel and Trevor Jackson. Now, a few years down the line the group have lost one of their founding members (oddly, Vetiver's Andy Cabic used to play bass for the band) but have honed their modernised take on disco and rhythm music, with Telescope Mind achieving an immensely successful blend of experimental techniques and pop minimalism. After the brief, introductory piece, 'Lyre', 'Warning' comes acr…
Kokt Kveite
Overlooked 12" from Bjorn Torske. With references to 23 Skidoo, This Heat, Residents, Idut Boy and Count Ossie and his unique blend of quirky, avant-garde, dubbed out, psychedelic sounds Torske creates a whole new genre: the free-disco. B-side track 'Soloppgang Over Yukigaya' was featured on Prins Thomas' 'Cosmo Galactic Prism' mix-cd, and rightly so.
Come Out, Come Down, Fade Out, Be Gone
For once, why don't we elide the obvious-- in this case, Norwegian band and recent Vice signees 120 Days' superficial resemblance to certain electro-and-Krautrock forebears-- and experience "Come Out (Come Down, Fade Out, Be Gone)" as a first-order phenomenon, with its own heat and light. A lopsided parabola than spans nine tautly thrumming minutes, "Come Out" is a marvel of ethereal precision, immaculate pacing, Teutonic austerity, trance-inducing miasma, and dark euphoria. A supple motorik cad…
Smalltown Supersound On Fire
Limited edition vinyl! All new stuff taken from the forthcoming STS releases. As well as some exclusive goodies such as Bjorn Torske's great Sunburned Hand Of The Man remix (a Moondog meets Count Ossie & the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari style remix) as well as Prins Thomas' remix of Tussle. The album also introduces the new sinings; K-X-P from Helsinki, Finland, Mungolian Jet Set from Oslo, Norway, Meanderthals from London/Oslo, and, Drivan, which is Kim Hiorthøy with 3 Swedish girls on vocals…