Jazzkammer: Mort Aux Vaches
CD - Staalplaat, Germany - 2005

Reviews:



MAJA S.K. RATKJE & LASSE MARHAUG - MUSIC FOR FAKING (CD by C3R Records)
JAZZKAMMER - MORT AUX VACHES (CD by Staalplaat)
Following their second CD 'Music For Loving' on Bottrop-boy, 'Music For Faking' is the third collaborative work between Norway's noise guru Lasse Marhaug and Norway's noise girl Maja S.K. Ratkje. The latter of Fe-Mail and Spunk fame and the first of Jazzkammer and solo fame. This album is the result of a day in the studio, with an all frenzy improvisation mood. No overdubs, just a bit of editing. Playing laptops, guitar effect pedals, theremin and god knows what else, the seven tracks are a pisstake at musical culture, at least in the titles of the pieces, such as 'Nihilist Ace Blues For Time Travel' or 'How Much Noise Can Make? (Let's Find Out)'. They thrown in sounds of popular culture in their blenders, and put the temperature all the way up. So, yes this is full blown noise, for at least 90% of the disc, but the two are capable to produce some noise that really matters. One in which something is happening, a dynamic field of sound, small stuff is enlarged and amplified, like a high pressure cooker. Noise as it should be. A lesson to study for many.
Last year Marhaug's duo with John Hegre as the ongoing Jazzkammer was in The Netherlands to play the Earational festival and took up the occassion to record a session at the VPRO radio studio and now being released in what should be known by now as the John Peel sessions for underground music: Staalplaat's Mort Aux Vaches series. This is not the first entry for noise in the series, following Merzbow and the Sensorband. Jazzkammer has one piece to play of sonic overload, building from scratch. A highpitched tone, scraping the surface with a contactmicrophone and from there building things up by adding layers of nasty frequencies. As the piece evolves the high end techniques of laptopnoise start to mingle with low-end electronics. This work, a straightforward, unedited recording is of course more uniform in approach than the edited work of Ratkje/Marhaug, and therefore a bit on the regular side of noise. But even at that, Jazzkammer on an ordinary day is way more interesting than many other noise heads on a good day. Perhaps not the greatest addition to the Mort Aux Vaches catalogue, but nevertheless still a good one at that. (Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly)

Jazzkammer
Mort aux Vaches
Staalplaat

In Den Bosch to play the Earational Festival on March 27 of 2004, John Hegre and Lasse Marhaug stopped in to the VPRO radio station studio and recorded this single track of scraping static, feedback and still more feedback.  Although that may sound noisy – and simplistically so – the track is rather subdued and multisubjectival as it unspools across the sundeck.  It has progression, it has evolution, it has an actual build – like prayers offered to Heaven by an increasing throng of the faithful who are confused but still pious. In fact, it’s very close to the climactic sequence in Tobe Hooper’s “Lifeforce”, in which the space vampires from Halley’s Comet are infecting Londoners from their cathedral lair, bolts of lightning striking the hapless and the hot femme space bloodsucker taking her human male concubine to the spacecraft stuck in the head of the comet. That said, there is probably a point at which even Jazzkammer sees a natural end to their live and recorded actions, and so unplug and bow in gratitude to the still-present fuzz-addled masses. They tour constantly – it definitely happens.  “Produced by Berry Kramer and Maurice Woestenburg”, because they don’t receive nearly enough credit for these things. (David Cotner, ei mag)