Einstürzende Neubauten - or collapsing new buildings in English - is a German industrial band. I discovered Einstürzende Neubauten through Nick Cave, whom I was introduced to in high school by Lars Tomren Støring, who was in my grade and with a more alternative musical taste. He introduced me to the album Tender Prey, and that really opened up a new and slightly more alternative door for me. The early music Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was noisy, sometimes chaotic, but with Nick Cave himself holding some strange, hypnotic control of the chaos. His right hand man in The Bad Seeds was Blixa Bargeld, so when I found out about his other band, I was curious. However, it would take quite a while before I was able to digest all the chaos first in the early music of Nick Cave, and a little later in Einstürzende Neubauten.
Their industrial sound is not marked by very mechanical beats, such as bands like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry use, nor are they into too many synthesizers like the British bands Throbbing Gristle and Coil (and the aforementioned American bands). What makes Einstürzende Neubauten unique is their desire to use industrial equipment as part of their musical sound, mostly on the percussive side. This isn't necessarily a new idea. I grew up listening to The Typewriter, a piece composed for orchestra and typewriter by Leroy Anderson. Yes, it was composed with a comedic effect in mind, but it also brought the idea of more everyday sounds fitting in with music.
When it comes to what can be considered music, I do adhere to Frank Zappa's notion that if someone wills it to be music, it is music - or, as the composer Larry Austin said, "Music is wanted sound." What that means is that if something is put in a piece of music for a reason, it is music. John Cage famously composed the piece 4'33" - which consists of 4 minutes and thirty three seconds of musicians not playing their instruments - but it isn't about silence, it is about all the sounds present in the room. All those little noises that are being heard when it is being performed are sounds that are wanted - so in my view, 4'33" is indeed music.
But, although Einstürzende Neubauten declared that Silence is Sexy with one of their albums, silence is not the key component of today's song. We are entering a world of noises, very strange noises at times (some of them are coming out of lead singer Blixa Bargeld's mouth) - of instruments played in very unorthodox ways - and of very unorthodox instruments. There is concrete and metal tools, and there are electric guitars. And there is Blixa. The title, Sehnsucht, means intense longing, and I really think that the pain of longing or yearning for someone or something is expressed perfectly well in this piece. To me, the best music invokes intense emotion, and that is in my very humble opinion very much the case in Sehnsucht.
I will be cheating a little today, because I instantly liked this song even though I still have a hard time counting it when I feel the rhythm (yes, I count to find meters). However, this is to me a very accessible song that illustrates a lot of what I listen for in music.
Speaking of what I listen for - I still remember being back in middle and high school learning about literary analysis, thinking it was stupid and a waste of time. First and foremost I was convinced that nobody thought of all of the literary elements when writing, because all writers did was tell a story. I was also convinced that with so many different possibilities for interpretation, it was really just left to chance - because, again, writers only tell stories, right? And finally, I was convinced that looking for all of these literary devices took away from the experience of reading. Here's the thing: at that stage it probably did take away from my reading experience - and I was never any good at it.
When it comes to music, I can see the same argument unfold. Analyzing it you listen for meters, chord progressions, melody line, lyrics, timbre and more. In the beginning, it is probably a big struggle - but for me, this process was driven out of interest and not as an academic exercise, and that made it a lot more organic than when I learned literary analysis. And, lo and behold, for me, listening to all these elements enhances the experience rather than take away from it - even when it gets difficult to unwrap the many layers of a song.
So today's song only has one difficult element to listen for, and that is the meter - or the time signature. Well... Actually, there are a couple of things, which we'll get to in a minute. However, the beginning of the song has an odd meter to it - or rather two of them. It alternates between 5/4 and 6/4. Explaining odd meters (or time signatures) is a little tricky, but I'm still going to try. A lot of traditional pop music uses 4/4 as a time signature, which means that there are four beats to a bar. A lot of pop/rock music use accents on the 1 beat to develop a pulse where you can count ONE two three four ONE two three four. It can (and will) be subdivided further (add an and in between every word to see how it works), but the basic pulse goes to 4, then repeats. Think about the Beatles song She Loves You for an example of a song in 4/4 (especially the verse).
The other time signature of my elementary school days was the good old waltz tempo, which is in 3/4. ONE two three ONE two three. And then... In band, we'd sometimes encounter 6/8, which is kind of a hybrid meter in that you really are counting ONE two ONE two - but the notes are subdivided in threes, so it becomes ONE and-a two and-a ONE and-a two and-a. The differences between 3/4 and 6/8 are used to great effect in the song America from West Side Story ([6/8:] I like to live in A[3/4:]me-ri-ca) - which counted in 8ths becomes something like ONE two three Two two three ONE two Two two Three two. I know - it's somewhat complicated to write it out - but listen to America again (I know you know it) and you will hear the difference.
Then I started encountering Rush - but before I did, I listened to Pink Floyd. The song Money from the fantastic Dark Side of the Moon is in 7/4, and you can detect that when you start counting the riff that goes over the cash register sounds - it repeats itself after 7 beats. It is artfully done - and what's even more skillfully done there is the switch over to 4/4 for the guitar solo before it goes back to 7/4 again.
In Jacob's Ladder you will encounter two odd meters: 5/4 and 6/4. Just count the beats contained within the guitar arpeggios in the beginning (arpeggios is really a fancy word for the picking Alex Lifeson does - it goes either ONE and two and three four five or ONE and two and three four five six with the three being the highest note he reaches before descending again in either pattern). Now I wish that I could stop here, but that would take away one other very effective element of the song - something I will revisit later this week as well - and that is the polyrhythm. When Geddy Lee sings, he sings in 4/4 on top of Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart continuing their 5/4 and 6/4 pattern, which creates an eerie effect.
Now I want to stress that you can listen to the song without worrying about all this meter stuff and still be perfectly fine. That was how I started listening to it as well. However, there is something else that pops up when you start finding the meters, and that is what I hope you do. We will get into other meters later this week - at least I have a feeling we will...
I thought long and hard before I decided that I indeed should do this - have a week where I post "difficult" music. For me, this is music that it took me a while to grow into - sometimes the difficulty simply is with an odd meter, sometimes there are intricate polyrhythms, sometimes the song structure can be difficult, sometimes the song can be abrasive, sometimes it's all of the above - and sometimes it is simply a very different melody line, which is the case today with the song Inca Roads.
In 1973, Frank Zappa gathered his Mothers (of Invention had been dropped at this point) again - Napoleon Murphy Brock on sax, flute, and vocals; George Duke on keyboards and vocals, Ruth Underwood on percussion (her marimbas on Inca Roads are spectacular), Tom Fowler on bass, and Chester Thompson on drums - and in September 1974 they found themselves in Helsinki, Finland. The band was extremely tight - and they had really developed some serious speed to some of the material. Inca Roads is still played in a moderate tempo, but if you listen to the different runs throughout the song, it is still highly complicated. I have given up on keeping track of all the meters used throughout the song - and to me, the melody lines and different runs don't follow traditional melody structures, but appear to be more inspired by contemporary orchestral music - and perhaps Varèse and Stravinsky.
All I know is that I am hooked on the strangeness of the initial melody, but I don't lose myself completely until the guitar solo - and even more so in the ensuing keyboard and marimba solos. This is one of my favorite pieces of music, as it merges rock with jazz and classical music, and it is well worth a listen. And - if you don't "get" it on the first try, come back to it later. That is the purpose with the music this week.
This is the end of the first week of great Norwegian music that isn't Motorpsycho - and I think the song I have chosen fits the occasion. The song is called Trist at det skulle ende slik - or "It's sad that it should come to this" I think that means that there will be another week of great Norwegian music later this year - but I have other plans for next week.
I came to Raga Rockers in 1988 - or should I say that they came to me. I was working in Radio Ung, and this record came in with a fairly interesting cover - it was their fourth album, called Forbudte Følelser (Forbidden Emotions), and when the needle dropped on the first track, I liked what I heard - but when it reached track 4, I was hypnotized and mesmerized. The song was Rundt og Rundt (Around and Around - but with no relation to Chuck Berry's classic song). The riff churns and churns, and the monotony of the vocals suits it perfectly.
Seeing them live was seeing a solid band, but they were pretty static. The singer, Michael Krohn, stood pretty much straight up and down - but the music gained so much more power played live. I started diving into their back catalogue, and their debut album, The Return of the Raga Rockers, has some great songs on it. The song Trist at det skulle ende slik is about how people change and abandon their ideals as they grow older, and as I grow older, the meaning of it grows with me - although I don't think it's sad that it should come to this...
Elg i solnedgang (moose in sunset). Troll. Bunad (regionally determined national costume). Ibsen. Hamsun. Grieg. Munch. These are just some of the phrases and people that represent the most Norwegian of what's Norwegian. And then there is Vårsøg. It is a song, an album, and a band. And I don't quite understand the lyrics either, because the dialect it is sung in really is hard to understand - even though it is geographically fairly close to where I am from. It is one of the most Norwegian of Norwegian songs, and I do not hesitate to declare Henning Sommero, who is the composer of the song, a genius. Hans Hyldbakk wrote the lyrics, and while I don't understand every word, there is no mistaking this for a song that longs for summer (and it works as an allegory for the freedom Hyldbakk was longing for as Norway was occupied by Germany when the poem was written).
While living in Norway, this song was inescapable to the point of me really not giving a rat's ass about it every time it was played on the radio. However, distance has truly had an impact once again - and I asked for the CD for Christmas, and I believe this song is just about as perfect as can be. Sommerro's use of the Fender Rhodes is impeccable and the production of the original is very close and intimate. The walking basslines are hidden in the background of the mix on the YouTube version, but the oboe solo is still there. This version also adds the next song on the LP, which also is worth listening to, but not as perfect as the song Vårsøg itself. However, I prefer the original to the later remakes, so here it is, in all its glory.
When I talked about DumDum Boys, I mentioned three other Norwegian bands that were popular at around the same time - and they also had in common that they sang in Norwegian. My least favorite of those three other bands was deLillos, which has a singer whose voice annoys the living daylights out of me, and whose lyrics in their naiveté get on my nerves. However, there are exceptions. Their third album, released in 1989, was a sprawling double album called Hjernen Er Alene (The Brain is Lonely), with a great murder ballad (Balladen om Kåre og Nelly - The Ballad of Kåre and Nelly), a happy song about spring, simply called Vår (Spring), a slow moody rocker called Venter På Telefon (Waiting For A Phonecall), and one of the greatest songs ever written about depression and loneliness in the title track.
I have to admit that there have been versions of this song released later that also have been great - and the best version is probably from a Norwegian TV show called Hver Gang Vi Møtes (Every Time We Meet), where Norwegian singers gather to interpret each other's songs, where the singer Elg (Elk - or Øyvind Elgenes) interprets it, bringing the rest of the singers there to tears (I had to include that one too, to contrast a little). While Elg's version has the desperation found in the loneliness, the original's very bare sonic structure and use of echo makes it more stripped down and naked, and so the emptiness of the loneliness is emphasized a little bit more. It is such a great song, and while I was set on only bringing you the original, I simply cannot help myself... First, here are deLillos from 1989:
Elg's version changes the character of the song. And I think he took lessons from Joe Cocker...
And finally, Seigmen's version of the song brings out more of the melancholy and gothic character of the song - at least to my ears...
In 1993, when I was discovering Motorpsycho, there was another band that started to make waves. That band was from Tønsberg, in the southern part of Norway, and they started out quite similarly to Motorpsycho - all newspapers called both bands grunge bands, yet listening back to it, I think that was a very easy way out to try to connect Norwegian music to what was going on in Seattle. I don't think there ever was a huge feud between the two bands, but there seemed to be two camps forming. I was rooted in the Motorpsycho camp, which was more of a hippie aesthetic with long jams and experiments with noise. Seigmen, on the other hand, was more of an art project - at least they turned into one. Where Motorpsycho would go on stage and jam, Seigmen's lead singer was much more theatrical and studied, and their concerts always seemed to be studied and rehearsed, whereas Motorpsycho always have prided themselves in not repeating the same setlist from day to day.
Seigmen is in other words great music from Norway that absolutely is not Motorpsycho. I really developed an appreciation for Seigmen in 1994, when they released their album Total. The album was far more rooted in art rock and the type of metal bands like Tool played, and it was really propelled by the cover version of a Norwegian classic by deLillos called Hjernen Er Alene (The Brain is Lonely - watch tomorrow's post...). While that song was what made me initially open my ears, the rest of the album was stunning, and one of the singles from the album is the gorgeous Döderlein. It combines ethereal guitars with more aggressive and discordant breaks, creating the kind of contrast I really love in music.
I don't trust my memory. I don't trust everything I think I remember about this night, but I do know one thing: the very first rock concert I ever went to, I went with my friend Geir, and it was TNT playing at Skansen, a venerable venue in Trondheim that is no more. I am fairly certain the concert was on a Sunday, because I seem to remember that I still was ecstatic telling my 7th grade teacher all about it the very next day. I also believe that Geir and I ended up walking home from the concert - but that is a little less certain. It would have been quite a long walk, and it would have been late at night. However, Trondheim was pretty safe, and the evenings were pretty light as it was towards the end of the summer, so I am not ruling it out. But regardless of how we made it home, I was very happy to have encountered a real metal band in concert.
TNT started as a metal band singing in Norwegian in 1983, but they really didn't take off until they dropped Dag Ingebrigtsen as a singer - he had all the passion of a great singer, but metal singers in the 80s needed to sound as if castrated, and Dag had more of a manly growl than the high pitched squeals needed - and found American Tony Harnell. It didn't hurt that they got Morten Skaget - or Morty Black on bass as well, but the core of TNT has always been guitar player extraordinaire Ronni Le (or Rolf, as his birth certificate says) Tekrø and Hells Angel Diesel (really Morten) Dahl on drums. While these two are still keeping the band goin, I have to confess to having lost some interest in them as they started changing their sound in the mid 80s to really sound more and more like a run-of-the-mill 80s hair metal band.
So I saw them back in 1985. Two years later, my sister got me a ticket to another TNT concert as a confirmation present (I should note that this was not the traditional Christian confirmation - I did an alternative secular "confirmation"). That concert was supposed to be in Studentersamfundet, I believe - but as the day approached, I got in, ticket in hand, only to find that the concert had to be cancelled as Tony Harnell had an upper respiratory infection. I could get a replacement ticket, I think, but my interest was in decline after that disappointment (I am still thinking there is something fishy about that cancellation, as last minute as it was), so I cashed it in instead.
However, in 1985, when I saw them, their album Knights of the New Thunder had received a new cover, free from bare chested cartoon women, but including a battle axe and a viking helmet, clearly in keeping with the viking themed lyrics of the album. It is short, but it is still a solid album. Le Tekrø should really be up there with Malmsteen and Van Halen - that's how good he is in his genre - but I will leave that to you to decide. My favorite track from Knights of the New Thunder is a true little viking gem: Seven Seas
Some songs simply define a year. A whole year. At least in retrospect. The year I am talking about is 1989. I was 17 - or rather about to turn 17. At least when the song was released, I was about to turn 17. I was doing my rock show in Radio Ung, I think the name at this point was Madhouse, and DumDum Boys were giving interviews with the local press as they were readying for what I think must have been the release concert for the album at Rosendal Kino, an old movie theater that was turned into a pub/concert arena as well as housing the local film club, showing arthouse movies (although that part might have happened later). It was also the place I had loyally watched all three Star Wars movies during fall and winter breaks since 1983 until it stopped being a regular cinema in 1986.
But, anyway, I was there on assignment, with a tape recorder in hand - and I got one of the guys in the band assigned to me. I was nervous beyond compare - and at one point, I asked my victim, "which one of them are you again?" he was gracious - only a few years older than me - and responded that he was Persi, and he played bass. I remember we walked and talked, there was snow on the ground, and we walked past UFFA (Ungdom For Fri Aktivitet - Youth For Free Activity - a house for creative and alternative youth in Trondheim - I might have to cover the place a little bit more in detail later), which was right across the road from Rosendal and where DumDum Boys had spent much of their formative years under the name Wannskrækk (Hydrophobia). I don't remember any other questions - but I do remember that I got him to record a promo for us that we used extensively in the months to follow.
When it was time for the concert, I had a problem. Minimum age was 18. I had my press card with me, which really was a homemade little thing that our managing editor, my very good friend Svein Ola, had provided for me. It looked good, but it wasn't really all that official. I was under the impression that I already had been cleared for it, but that was not the case. The bouncer finally let me in, but with the warning that if he every caught me with a glass of beer in my hands... He left the end of the sentence dangle the same way I was convinced my teeth would hold on to my gums if I tested his mettle. However, he need not have worried - I was not drinking at all at this age, even though I really was the exception among most of my friends.
So I was let in, and I got to experience the frantic beast that is DumDum Boys for the very first time. And man, what an insane show. I was blown away. Prepple Houmb, the lead singer, is a man possessed on stage. Piercing eyes that bulge out of his forehead - he had the audience eating from the palm of his hand from the time he stepped on stage. The rhythm section, with Sola Jonsen on drums and Persi Iveland on bass, was incredibly steady - and there aren't many who write guitar riffs and lyrics like Kjartan Kristiansen, whose guitar sound dominated the sonic landscape. DumDum Boys was THE Norwegian rock band in the late 80s and through the first half of the 90s. People also talk about Raga Rockers, DeLillos, and Jokke & Valentinerne from this era, but none of them ever touched DumDum Boys in my opinion (and I liked all four bands). The monster riff that starts Splitter Pine was one of many highlights of this concert - but it is one that I clearly remember.
So this concert set the stage for the year. The song was repeated again on the 17th birthday party of my good friend Sissel, who now is an established archeologist in Trondheim - I couldn't be happier for her - as DumDum Boys played on the grounds of Trondheim Katedralskole (the oldest high school in Trondheim, linked to the Nidaros Cathedral). We, as in a group of friends, had gathered at her place first to warm up, then headed downtown to "Marinen", a strip of land adjacent to Nidelven and the cathedral, where youth traditionally gather on May 16th, the evening before Norway's national holiday. When it was time for the concert, we found our way there, and for some strange reason, my evening really was complete when the blue light bathed the stage as the lyrics to OppNed went, in slightly free translation, "The moon is plugged in tonight, casting off electric blue light". And then Splitter Pine started again.
The summer was no different. For the first time, I went to the national convention/summer camp of DNTU, a Norwegian youth organization dedicated to reducing alcohol consumption - and requiring its members to abstain from all use of alcohol and drugs. I had already made that choice and was a member of a rival youth organization, NGU, but Jon Inge convinced me that nothing was quite like DNTU, so I decided to go to the summer camp, which this year was in Grimstad, in the southern part of Norway. Every night, there was a dj playing and people dancing, and the song that got everyone moving was once again Splitter Pine. It was indeed the song of the year.
So, for those of you who wonder what the heck Splitter Pine means, the answer is simply nothing. By itself, it really has no meaning. However, if you add the word gal at the end, it means stark raving mad, so I guess my best translation is stark raving... Persi is the guy in a top hat - and this was before we had heard of Slash and Guns'n'Roses in Trondheim. Also, Splitter Pine is not the ultimate DumDum Boys song, as that is Tyven Tyven, which came out of a tragedy about 5 years later - but more about that in a later post. Just enjoy Splitter Pine.
Migration can do strange things to people. I don't think very many who knew me back in Norway would consider me a nationalist - even in the most positive sense of the word. However, I've never been more Norwegian than when I moved to the United States. I have mentioned my interest in traditional music before - but until I moved to the US, that was much more a question about other tradition than Norwegian tradition. After I moved here in 1999, that started changing, and I developed a very big interest in Norwegian traditional music - and while Gåte was one of the bands I eventually started really connecting with, they were not where it all started.
The roots had been laid in the years in Studentradioen i Bergen, as they had two CDs that were called The Sweet Sunny North by David Lindley and Henry Kaiser, two virtuoso guitarists who had made a trip to Norway to record and play traditional music with Norwegian musicians. They had done a similar project prior to this that resulted in A World Out of Time, featuring recordings from Madagaskar. So I had listened to this music, as well as some Finnish traditional music (Hedningarna), and some Swedish hybrid of traditional music and metal (Hoven Droven). I was curious, and I had a gateway to traditional music, but I wasn't yet quite convinced.
And then I moved to the US - and I ended up feeling the need to really explore my own heritage a little bit more. Music was indeed a part of it, but other traditions became important to understand a little as well - mostly because people always would ask me about Norway and traditions. Some questions have really shown the ignorance of some of the people I have encountered - such as earnest questions about the prevalence of electricity and indoor plumbing as well as being asked if I knew what a library was (I am surprised Trondheim Folkebibliotek - the public library in my home town - still is open now that it isn't supported by my chronic late fees). Someone asked me if the Norwegian language really is English with a Norwegian accent... I could go on - but really, the more interesting questions revolve around culture and traditions surrounding holidays. And while people here may not know why American Christmas traditions are the way they are, they sure want to know why we do them differently (read: wrong) in Norway.
So, around the same time I moved to the United States, there was a new band that started developing in Norway. Their name was Gåte - the direct translation is riddle, but it could also be translated to mystery - and they played traditional music with a very modern sound and arrangement. The instrumentation was drum, bass, and guitar with keyboards and electronics, which is a very traditional rock setup, but they were also augmented by fiddle, which is heavily featured in Norwegian traditional music. Gunnhild Sundli, who was the singer, was only 14 when she joined the band and the little sister of Sveinung Sundli, who was the fiddle player. They released 2 studio albums before calling it quits in 2005. By then, Gunnhild Sundli was 20, which means that she was a teenager when all their studio albums were recorded, which is amazing both given the power of her voice and the style of music they were playing, which often takes many years to perfect.
I should also mention that during the last part of their tenure, their drummer was one Kenneth Kapstad, who now plays drums for Motorpsycho. I think that is more than a good enough reason to let Gåte be the start of a new week, this one featuring good Norwegian music that isn't Motorpsycho... Here is the song that opened my ears for Gåte: Bendik og Årolilja.
