Lasse Marhaug — Tapes 1990-1999(Cd Boxset)

This impressive Boxset brings together a selection of almost five hours of Norwegian noise maker/ soundsmiths Lasse Marhaug tape work over a nine year period. And it highlights his changing sound, different sound experiments and above all his  inventive, clever, distinctive take on the noise genre that has made him one of the scenes most respected and critically acclaimed figures.

The four disk come inside a nice classy grey box with silver blocked title. Inside you get the four disks each inside there own paper sleeves and 24 page booklet with introductions from Tommy Carlsson(Abisko,Sugerhuva) and Tore H. BØE (Origami Republika, The Nodic Miracle). The bulk of the booklet is taken over with the interesting,often bizarre and comical selves from the original tapes.

The first disk offers up seventeen tracks with varying  running of one to six minute a piece with only one track going over the ten minute mark. The first disk mainly concentrates on Cut-up media and turntable collages. Sourcing from films, TV, stuck music elements and low grade noise elements. But it’s clear from these early stages Lasse had an ear for sound and how to place it in an enjoyable often surprising manner. This really side steps a bedroom project and present the listener with real audio art collage work. A few stand out moments would be the effective and eerier opener Untitled, from Zonked Scum Demo,which is made of great wind storm and bizarre beast roaring sounds. Giving the feeling of walking in some creepy snow cave and been followed by something, underneater  the noise you can just make out almost-gone clunking doomy piano notes. Urethra which utilized coin feeding sound and speeds up and randomizer them, before adding in cut-up microphone buzz, muffled voices & scrunching sounds ect, all  making a very enjoyable grey but darkly funny track.  But these are really the tip of the iceberg as there so many enjoyable and varied tracks on offer here.

The second disk offers up six tracks and show him lengthening his tracks with a lot nearing the 10 minute mark and the last track Monster clocking in at near half an hour. This disk seems to see lesser use of recognisable media samples, more use of guitar and noise to sculpture the tracks, again with a real ear for building up sound textures and placing surprising and entertaining juxtaposition of sound with-in the tracks. It goes from; roaring storms of different textured static, to grey chugging guitar/electronic craft, to streached /bent clouds of voice muffle, to eerier and choking feed back buzz and cloud, to bellowed and chopped up rumbling tones, to rhythmic like static bashing and rolls of sound. The last track Monster been a highlight here as it bashers you through static and rumbled voice tones, with angler streached and bends of sound appearing like roaring oceanic Juggernaut's. Side steeping into rhythmic cluster of metallic sound, overload by billow roars and fog-horn call, before building up impenetrable electric feasting and ripping tones.

Disk three presents another ten track with a good mix of shorter and longer tracks. And it sees a slight return of more recognisable media elements, like sampled and morphed and melted easy listening loops, bent and overloaded Christmas jingles and drum patterns. But it also sees the tracks really boiling and seething this is noise at its most powerful, deadly and artistic. A lot of the tracks having a grab-your-throat urgency as Lasse cuts his noise craft into rhythmic choppngs, static storm overloads and melt you face audio cookings, but always with really artistic sound understanding, these tracks are moulded and developed then let loose to cause real terror.

Disk Four again features 10 tracks and another nice mix of shorter and longer tracks. Again a collection of varied and original noise craft going from ; bent sinister and speed up guitar atmospherics, to crawling whining noise loops, to bellowing static storms under run by strange rhythmic chatters, to laser sighted pulse grinds that boil in to creative phrase punches and hits. It's as good and  varied as all the disks here. Amazingly enough over the massive near on five hours running time of the whole set, there are really no miss step or dud throw away moments.

One of the most important noise document to be released by one of the worlds premiere noise artist. Clearly one of this years noise releases and if your noise fan and don’t already have this you really have to ask yourself why? To find out more, see pictures and buy direct drop in here