The human voice is by far the most complex, and perhaps
the least recognised of all instruments. Maja Ratkje
knows the importance of the voice as a musical element
like no-one else. Her first solo album, simply entitled
Voice and based entirely on her vocal performance,
reveals the vast array of sonorities and contrasts that
can be found in one’s voice.
Born in 1973 in Trondheim, in the centre of Norway,
Maja Ratkje has already an impressive CV behind her.
Although she claims that her main commitment is with
all-female improvisation quartet Spunk
which she formed with friends in 1995, and with whom
she has released two albums, her extra curricular activities,
as a composer, singer, violinist and electronics and
Theremin player, have won her numerous international
accolades. A former student at the Norwegian State Academy
Of Music, Maja Ratkje first got noticed through her
orchestral and electro-acoustic work in her native Scandinavia,
but it is with Spunk
that international recognition came, when they released
their first album, Det Eneste Jeg Vet Er At Det
Ikke Er En Støvsuger, which roughly translates
as The Only Thing I Know Is That It Isn’t
A Vacuum Cleaner, on Norwegian premier experimental
imprint Rune Grammofon in 1999. The album offered the
perfect platform for the band to promote their tongue
in cheek approach to improvisation, and triggered the
interest of a wide range of musicians, from Kim Hiorthøy
and Phonophani to Svalastog and Lasse Marhaug, eventually
developing into a remix project, Filtered
Through Friends, released last year.
Maja now publishes her first solo effort, only a few
months after the release of the second
Spunk album. Produced by Norwegian duo Jazzkammer,
Voice is a weird a beautiful record. At times
dense and fierce, at others peaceful and controlled,
the music presented here never ceases to surprise, amuse
and disconcert. Exposed in its most minute details,
twisted, filtered, lacerated, layered, the voice becomes
drone, beat, texture or wave, deflected from its natural
course to rise above its organic structure or crash
in convulsive distortions. Using a mixture of Norwegian
and English, the songs serve no other purpose than convey
the extreme diversity of the vocal input. The frontier
between the actual singing and the processed elements
is irremediably blurred, and the listener soon loses
touch of what’s real and what is not. The twelve
minute epic centerpiece of this album, Vacuum,
encompasses all of what makes this voice such a particular
instrument. From its delightfully introverted beginning
to its majestic peak, which is not without evoking part
of Pierre Henry’s Apocalypse De St Jean,
and its uncomfortable silences, the track throws out
all expectations by constantly changing focus, as Ratkje
toys with the listener’s mind and emotions. Balancing
the raw recording of her voice on a Dictaphone with
digital processing, Dictaphone Jam is as unsettling
and fascinating. The title track, which follows, opens
up new doors again, as the voice seems to be captured
in its most natural form. Enveloped in whirlwinds of
echoes, almost bare of any other elements, Voice
is beautifully ethereal. At last the listener is able
to contemplate the purity of Ratkje’s singing,
almost undisturbed by the reintroduction of digital
processing on Chipmunk Party. The album concludes
with the most disconcerting moment on offer here. After
an outburst of layered screams and laughter forming
the main body of the piece, the three remaining sections
cascade onto each other to draw this magnificent album
to a close.
Very few records give such space to vocal performance,
and very few artists would be able to carry such a piece
of work with ease. More challenging than her work with
Spunk, Voice
is a unique experience, at once charming and disturbing,
and Ratkje can only be admired for undertaking such
a project. Let alone achieving beyond all expectations.
4.8/5 |
