Eric Holm — Andøya
The spiel goes that the entire record has been produced using material from a single recording of a contact mic attached to a telegraph pole on the remote arctic island which gives the record its name. If that is indeed true then Holm has produced a work considerable alchemy. Opener and one of the records longest pieces is Måtinden where out of a fuzz of filtered static and reverberated noise come stark vaguely organic sounding rhythms. Over close to nine minutes Holm varies the dynamics and timbre around the central simple beat emphasising the acoustic space and the density of his collected sounds.
This is more or less the formula throughout and it's a credit to Holm's inventiveness and sense of drama that it never once wears thin. Ghosts of the darkest and most minimal dubstep haunt tracks like Stave and Åse , having been stripped of all sense of familiarity and warmth leaving only the bare bones of rhythm, noise and landscape. Music inspired by the desolate environments of the poles is nothing new. Usually they fall back on droning soundscapes and ambient washes evoking endless tracts of snow and ice. Andøya's virtue is in taking another less well travelled route through abstract bass and atonality. The effect is similar insofar as it heightened the feeling of isolation but the ever shifting patterns of dissonance and tonal colour ensure movement and dynamic change are also in the mix.
Occasionally as on Kvastinden the density and force of the sound veers towards full on industrial techno territory, at which point it's hard to keep the frozen world of the arctic in sight, but these moments are few and for the most part Holm does a fine job of presenting his meditation on nature, man and isolation without reference to established forms.