ULTRALYD
Inertiadrome
RCD2105
Rune Grammofon 2010
05 Tracks. 40mins44secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP iTunes: DLD

Even to Rune Grammofon’s standards, Ultralyd are a pretty odd offering. Taking elements of contemporary experimental jazz, abstract composition, rock and heavy metal and fusing them together into something quite unique. Formed in 2004 when bass player Kjertil D Brandsdal joined the trio of saxophonist Frode Gjerstad, guitarist Anders Hana and drummer and percussionist Morten J Olsen, Ultralyd released their first self-titled album, published on UK imprint FMR Records, that same year, then a second, Chromosome Gun, a few months later on Load Records. Gjerstad left in 2006, and was replaced with Kjetil Møster, just in time to record their Rune Grammofon debut, Conditions For A Piece Of Music. Inertiadrome follows the very limited, vinyl-only album Renditions which Ultralyd published last year on RG’s sister imprint The Last Record Company.

Conditions For A Piece Of Music was quite an eclectic and angular affair, stretching from dark atmospheric to  much more upfront and hard-hitting compositions. Focused around just five tracks of fairly equal length, Inertiadrome is a more concentrated and direct affair, which, despite some rare moments of calm, favours the deployment of heavy groove structures. The template is applied time and time again, each new assault proving more devastating than the last. Things kick off pretty gently with Lahtuma, with, at first, just fragments of sounds and noises dropping randomly, but, when Olsen brings in a shimmer of cymbals, it is only a matter of time until Brandsdal brings in a hypnotic bass pattern and sets the album on its way. The band ease themselves in gently though, as if they were only warming up, finding their feet again after a few months apart.

The driving force of the band is undoubtedly the partnership between Olsen and Brandsdal, but while the rest of the band are often slightly at the back of the two, Møster’s sax effusions regularly jump in with the rhythm section for a pretty unnatural ménage à trois. It is his contribution that sends Lahtuma into orbit, while strips of guitars float above it all, and it is his contribution again which binds the various components of Geodesic Portico or Cessathlon together, but it is on Street Sax that he really lets rip, pushing blistering phrases into the foreground, at times almost eclipsing the rhythm section. Geodesic Portico could at first appear more tamed and under control, but below the constrained sax and guitar loops, the drums and bass are bringing the whole piece to the boil, and maintain the pressure for most of the piece. On Contaminated Man though, it is Hana who steps up and inflicts a series of harsh and corrosive slabs of guitars into what is a rather abstract take on heavy metal, and while the quartet never quite reach such devastating heights on Cessathlon, the piece is propelled by incendiary sections where Hana and Møster take it in turn to confront Brandsdal and Olsen.

With this latest album, Ultralyd appear to have narrowed their field of experimentation, abandoning in part the near-musique concrète incursions, which had them team up with N-Ensemble for a masterful epic collaboration on Money Will Ruin Everything 2, to achieve much greater focus. The result is a record fueled with energy and angular moments where the intensity rarely drops out, and when it occasionally does, it is only to grow more devastating.

4.1/5

Ultralyd (MySpace) | Rune Grammofon
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP iTunes: DLD

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Twenty Centuries Of Stony Sleep
RCD2100
Rune Grammofon 2010
13 Tracks. 75mins24secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD | LP Norman Records: CD | LP

Twelve years on from Supersilent’s monumental triple CD debut release, Rune Grammofon have reached a new milestone with this, their hundredth release. Twenty Centuries Of Stony Sleep collects thirteen tracks, twelve of which exclusive to this album, from quite a wide cross-section of the label’s roster, ranging from long-serving acts (Alog, Scorch Trio, Supersilent, Ultralyd, In The Country, Deathprod or Maja Ratjke) to more recent joiners (Espen Eriksen Trio, Puma, Bushman’s Revenge or new signing Jenny Hval).

There are few record labels who have developed such a strong and consistent aesthetic as Rune Grammofon, not only visually, there is not one release which hasn’t had the Kim Hiorthøy treatment, but also through its catalogue, which, in the case of Rune Grammofon stretches from abstract jazz, traditional Scandinavian folk to ambient electronic music and from ethereal pop to avant-garde classical to heavy metal, always with a strong exploratory angle at its core.

Unlike the two Money Will Ruin Everything retrospectives or Until Human Voices Wake Us And We Drown, the collection published to celebrate the label’s fiftieth release, which all intended to offer a comprehensive, if not by any stretch of the imagination exhaustive, round up of the label’s activity in the years leading to their respective publication, Twenty Centuries Of Stony Sleep is more akin to a snapshot of the current roster and of the music that Rune Grammofon continues to champion. There are some notable absentees here (Arve Henriksen, Susanna & The Magical Orchestra, Phonophani, Scorch Trio, Humcrush), dropped in favour of artists who, for the most part, are fairly recent addition to the RG stable.

Considering some of the utterly angular and challenging music released on the label over the years, the mood is overall rather subdued here. There is the wonderfully melodic and rich piano-led jazz of In The Country (Slow Down) and Espen Eriksen Trio (Ambitions), the equally evocative  and delicate pop tendencies of Hilde Marie Kjersem (That Day In The Shower) or Rockettothesky‘s Jenny Hval, who delivers here one of the standout moments of the record with the magnificent Golden Locks, the atmospheric escapades of Ultralyd (Salinity And Brine), Puma (3 A.M. Moth) and Supersilent (7.1), the avant rock effervescence of The Low Frequency In Stereo (Aux Club) or Bushman’s Revenge (Barbara). There are however some more radical moments, from the heavily distorted and abrasive short opening Alog contribution (My Card Is 7), and the complex and playful Discipline Of Undiscipline from Stian Westerhus, to Maja Ratkje’s uncompromising Breathe, for which she miaows and purrs over very effective textural drones, built it seems primarily from processed vocals.

The album, released on CD and double LP, is also due to be made available as a special edition box set, limited to only 100 copies, which will include both the CD and double LP, plus a live recording of Supersilent, captured in Paris in 2000, and a special 12” record with two locked grooves from an unknown artist. With Twenty Centuries Of Stony Sleep, Rune Grammofon offer once again a compelling collection of experimental music which while focussing on just a handful of artists and remaining for the most part a surprisingly tamed record, is as essential as any of their releases.

4.7/5

Rune Grammofon
Amazon UK: CD US: CD | LP Norman Records: CD | LP

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Money Will Ruin Everything: The Second Edition
RCD2072
Rune Grammofon 2009
25 Tracks. 152mins42secs

Buy: CD

‘It’s hard work to sell Rune CD outside of a small group of freaks’. To celebrate its first five years of activity, Norwegian label Rune Grammofon issued Money Will Ruin Everything, a beautiful limited collection documenting the label’s first few years spent charting the outer reaches of the music industry, spread over two CDs and presented with a book designed by Kim Hiorthøy. Fast forward five years and a few months, and it is time for label owner Rune Kristoffersen to look back once again and take stock of one of the most eclectic and forward-thinking catalogue around. And once again, Kim Hiorthøy, who is still single-handedly responsible for the visual identity of the label, including its occasional advertising, has designed a beautiful artefact, which collects not only the two CDs of this second edition of Money Will Ruin Everything, introduced by Geoff Travis and Robert Fricke, but also essays by Wire collaborator Rob Young and design consultant Adrian Shaughnessy, photographs and artwork reproductions.

The statement opening this review, sent via email to label owner and creative lead Rune Kristoffersen by a distributor, is an increasingly pressing concern for him, as he reflects on the plummeting CD sales the label has been the victim of in the last couple of years. In an interview with Hiorthøy published as part of this release, he deplores the fact that CDs, a format that has served his label well, are progressively disappearing to make way for MP3 files of inferior sound quality. This makes this release even more unique and brave. Bravery is however nothing new when it comes to Rune Grammofon. The label’s first release was, after all, a triple album by an outfit then largely unknown, Supersilent. The gamble paid off though, cementing both Supersilent as one of the most important experimental jazz acts to have come out of Norway, and Rune Grammofon as an uncompromising label.

This second edition of Money Will Ruin Everything, subtitled But The Music Goes On Forever, document the releases of the label since 2003. Featuring tracks ranging from visionary improvised jazz (Supersilent, Arve Henriksen, Scorch Trio, Eivind Opsvik Overseas, Box) and all-out experimentation (Ultralyd & N-Ensemble, Maja Ratkje,  Alog & Spunk) to beautifully crafter electronica (Phonophani, Skyphone, Deathprod, Svalastog) and surprisingly smooth and gentle pop music (Susanna, with and without her Magical Orchestra, Jessica), this line-up is an undeniable testament to the sprawling reach of the label. Deliberately juxtaposed, with very little apparent regard for progression or chronology, the tracks collected here, some dating a few years, some so new they haven’t yet been released, draw an extremely detailed map of the label’s outputs. In the first half hour alone, the contrast between the elegant electronic formations of Skyphone’s Cloudpanic, the heavy-handed Scorch Trio entry, Hys, the more nuanced Huntsville offering, Will Goes Hunting, or Conditions For A Piece Of Music II, the dense electro-acoustic journey carved by Ultralyd and N-Ensemble, couldn’t be greater. Yet, the aesthetic that has been at the core of the label for the last ten years binds all these together. So much so that it is actually hard to isolate any particular highlights here. Very much like on MWRE 1, the scope of this collection satisfies any particular mood, and highlights can change from one listen to the next. At times, it is the breezy elegance of Opsvik & Jennings’s Leaves And Smoke, the delicate traditional Norwegian folk swathes of Nils Økland’s Passacaglia or the ethereal brushes of Arve Henriksen’s No Horizon that captivates, while at others, the mind is caught by the prog energy of Shining’s 21st Century Schizoid Man, the sheer brutality of BOX’s Untitled 6 or the otherworldly escapades of Supersilent’s 6.1.

Even more so than with MWRE 1, one is pushed into the darkest, most inaccessible corners of Rune Grammofon here, and every time, it turns out to be a totally unique and fascinating enchanted world. That after a monumental piece of heavy noisy rock can rise a wonderfully delicate and fragile slice of futuristic jazz, or that a complex exposé in contemporary classical can give way to a carefully crafted piece of electronic music or a disconcertingly ice-cold pop song featuring only piano, voice and discreet electronics is what Rune Grammofon is all about. May it take an army of freaks to ensure that there are plenty more editions of Money Will Ruin Everything.

4.9/5

Rune Grammofon
Buy: CD

ULTRALYD
Conditions For A Piece Of Music
RCD2065
Rune Grammofon 2007
12 Tracks. 54mins20secs

The third full-length effort from Norway’s Ultralyd rings true as an allergic reaction to the present-day obligation to see, to the impossibility of not seeing. To the extent that the quartet compresses their frenetic energy – displayed with some extravagance on previous efforts – producing tightly wound compositions that exploit extremes of pitch and dynamics, they cling to a certain disheveled denial of words, and a conscientious objection to the transparent object. Album opener Saprochord seeks to demobilize itself, the players nailing themselves down to sharp-honed, muted tone and harmonic contour and a bubbling rhythm section.

With time, the group begins to trade self-awareness for transcendence, letting the intensity level rise while exploring angular contours and varying instrumental textures. Take Comphonie III, for one, its muscular and spirited tenor sax maintaining a narrative dimension while a fluid groove grounds it in a sordid, sensual aura. Even in its more uncouth phrasings, in which the dry edginess of Kjetil Moster’s sax emits a rich polyglot of ethereal tones and caustic hisses against blunt jazz guitar licks and the arrhythmic lurch of Morten Olsen’s drumming, pieces never entirely betray their strategic origins – a fact which sets it apart from previous efforts, in which the group seemed all but lost in the labyrinth of their own chaotic musings. In its relentless concentration on dark moods and numbing cyclical themes, more often than not, Conditions For A Piece Of Music successfully exploits its insensitivity, and asserts its right to blindness.

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