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 The Third And The Mortal - Project Bluebook - Decade Of Endeavor [Voices Of Wonder - 2005]It's been very quiet for quite some time around the Norwegian atmospheric rockers The Third And The Mortal. A collection of EP's and rarities was released (the rarity being the Japanese bonustrack to In This Room called Elephantine Waltz, so I skipped that since I have all the EP's) and earlier this year Project Bluebook, which is more interesting for collectors. First we get two new studiotracks that follow the route set out on their last studio-release Memoirs. I resist calling it 'triphop' because there's not much 'hop' in there. It's electronic grooves alright, overlayed with atmosphere aplenty and augmented by Andreas Elvenes' and Kirsti Huke's vocals. Stalker is an instrumental dominated by the saxsounds (and a few wail from a bagpipe) of Håvard Lund (ex-Farmers Market). The liverecordings have been made on minidisc during the European tour in 2002 where I was lucky enough to catch them in Rotterdam. It was a breathtaking show, not in the least because of Kirsti Huke, who is the best singer in a lineage of 3rd-vocalists and standards are high if you're to fill Ann-Mari Edvardsen's shoes. I was in awe of her performances on Memoirs and to hear her pull it off live was even more impressive. On this disc it's no different and nice to have it documented. I didn't count on old material so pleasant surprises during the show were the new arrangements of Sort Of Invisible (from In This Room, now a duet) and the really old song Autophomea from (Tears Laid In Earth, although called Atupoéma there, which always seemed wrong, not that the current title makes any sense), which is spooked up with electronic noises and prolongated with an improvised Huke/Elvenes duet. The album ends with a version of Simple Man which builds into a frenzy that reminds me of early Laibach. The soundquality of the last 4 tracks is not perfect: some clicks here, a dropout there, and the linernotes state you should consider it a bootleg.Project Bluebook nicely fills up the lull in the band's output of late but the roughness of the liverecordings makes a 'fan-thing' primarily. I plan to keep an eye (and ear) out on Trond Engum's project The Soundbyte and even more on Rune Hoemsnes' Calmcorder because that promises to feature Kirsti Huke's spinechilling vocals.  
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|  | | The Third And The Mortal - Projec... | It's been very quiet for quite some time around the Norwegian atmospheric rockers The Third And The Mortal. A collection of EP's and rarities was released (t...
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| | | Crude ‘n’ Hope-corroding Wall... | Back in 2024, I got my first taste of Absurd Reality, and I was so impressed by how crude and nasty its take on walled noise was. Behind the project is South...
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