COURTIS / MARHAUG North and South Neutrino CD / antifrost
They are just two small specks in the musical landscape coming from opposite sides of our globe. Lasse Marhaug, from Norway, and Anla Courtis, from Argentina, but they have minds, plans and abilities far bigger than anything on this planet could hold. This CD contains a single epic track of subtle noise that ranges from high-frequency hissing that creeps up your spine to low bass-rumbling and ends in a gigantic manifesto of the beauty of noise. You will be moved from one state of mind to the next slowly and gently, but also with a firm grip on the steering wheel and no discussions about it. Silence can be much noisier than sound. At first there is nothing, then a little sound creeps in, gets bigger and bigger, expands, explores its surroundings, possibilities and abilities. After casting away byways and misguided sideways it will find its way straight into the dome of the auditive sense of the listener - if he or she is able to stand that crucial first quarter of an hour, the birth of a sound, when there is nothing but a crackling, hissing static with steadily rising volume and a proportionally rising factor of unnerving the listener. (Actually, this CD is a good one to drive unwelcome visitors out of your room, or just about anyone.) Slowly, just like everything on this work is growing or decaying slowly, a droning bass-sound crawls in. Some seven minutes later it is gone again and the whole mood changes to a flirring and blazing high-pitched ringing, or is that just my ears hurting. But that is only half of it. The best parts, the distorted and distorting parts, are yet to come. Static noise, blazing fire, raging wind, icy rains and growing nervousness alternating with soothing primordial stillness. Until, at my personal highlight, the track starts to breathe over the soothing sound of a gentle interference. A moment of pure magic and silent (?) beauty. Like diving in a giant iceberg. Obviously, there are two ways to listen to this: One is to play it at a sensitive volume on a regular stereo, to blend in with the background noise of traffic, people next door and me typing on this keyboard. The other one is to play on a irrationally loud volume and listen to it with headphones on. I have tried both, and the second one will leave you internally bleedingand psychotically torn and broken in your mind. Three quarters of an hour is all that it takes. Lasse Marhaug and Anla Courtis are well experienced in the field of noise. The Scandinavian extreme noise-diver Marhaug has been around about 15 years or longer as a central part of the noise-scene over in the northernmost parts of Europe, From the legendary Scandinavian Noise Manifesto via the whole Origami-network (together with Tore H. Boe in the central musical manifestation Origami Replika) and doing the Jazzassin-records label, then moving on to an almost free-impro avant-rock outfit called Del and ever so on. Marhaugs list of releases and collaborations is vast and truly inspiring including Merzbow, Kevin Drumm, Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Matt Davis, Aube, Bad Kharma, Grunt, Gob, and dozens of others. Funnily, he has never really worked with minimal electronic artists or any of the new breed of electronic experimentalists, but I guess his art is still one that relies a lot on "traditional" noise-making, foregoing the purely digital pc-based sound-construction and also rarely ever taking harmonious or soothing keyboard sounds into his equation. Anla Courtis is leader of the very great avant-rock-band Reynols from Argentina, about which you can read here, because they have just released an album in Europe. Lasse Marhaug has worked with the Reynols before, but this collaboration is quite different from everything Courtis has done before. It is a possibility for him to explore the side of really long noise-drones with all their subtleness and extremity to the largest extent. The source recording for this album, or rather: this track, was done in 1997 /1998 and it has taken over five years to mix and construct the final result. My guess, mainly due to the filled schedules of both artists. Great art is timeless anyway. I am not sure, whether this CD will ever be regarded as such (the artists seem to be sure about their minor status, when choosing the title of this record) but the art world has never been fair to the real avantgarde, has it.
(Monochrom.at)

Courtis/Marhaug: North and South Neutrino
The collaboration between Jazzkammer's Marhaug and Reynols' Courtis is 45 minutes of speckless radiation starting from utter silence and slowly turning into an exploration of cavities revealing much about our sense of resistance to aural attacks. Low frequencies wavering in and out the pictu throughout the record; impressive solar winds and worrying rumbling soundquakre are paralleled by a continuous, stinging high pitch which constitutes the main presencees put our nerves through serious ordeals, especially if volume is more than soft. This music worms through your guard like something destined to do damage, bearing a sense of inexorability, alerting too late about something we won't be able to escape from. It's without a doubt one of the most intense and beautiful Antifrost releases, too. (Touchingextremes.org)

Lasse Marhaug and Anla Courtis‚ North and South Neutrino is simply euphoric. Reynols fans should be familiar with Courtis (Argentina), and Lasse Marhaug (Norway) is an unsung colonist of the Scandinavian noise scene. The rumors are true, Neutrino is a production the two had undertaken over a period of five years(!). A single piece, the track is as breathtaking as anything to come out of "experimental" music, though the textures sound anything but thrown together. Ultra-slow transitions are steered over its 45 minute course, from high-pitched whispered fizz to low, shaking resonances, often overlayed to form a sensible junction of the field recordings used. There is an evolution to the music which Marhaug and Courtis apparently designed without any inclinations to shock, but rather to delicately craft their selected materials. It‚s ultimately a step in the direction away from the anything-goes mentality that is sometimes more evident than necessary in new music.
(www.bagatellen.com)

Courtis/Marhaug: North and South Neutrino
The Antifrost label has put out some of the most challenging records
of recent times, and this collaboration between Lasse Marhaug, one
half of Norwegian noise thugs Jazzkammer and Anla Courtis, the musical
mastermind behind the unruly Argentinians reynols, is as forbidding
as they come. For the opening half hour it is a minimalist exercise
in the slow motion deployment of a small clutch of extreme frequencies.
Then a richer mettalic texture emerges from the brittle digital atmosphere
recalling the isolationist going pieces of Thomas Koener. This darker,
more brooding sound is submerged once more into the digital realm, as if we
are viewing the same vast, immobile object from above and below the waterline.
Or perhaps it is the subatomic particle referenced in the album title under
two different magnifications. It's certainly not an easy listen, but submit
yourself to its cold, dramatic logic and you will be rewarded.
(Keith Moline, The Wire)

Courtis/Marhaug: North and South Neutrino
Nettin lailla soittimen rajoille kulkevat edesmenneen Reynols-yhtyeen jäsen Anla Courtis ja norjalainen melutaiteilija Lasse Marhaug. 40-minuuttinen elektroniteos North and South Neutrino hyödyntää > äänentoistolaitteiden harvoin käytettyjä ultrataajuuksia. Se virittää > hyvin korkealle välkehtivän, hiljalleen eri tasoja paljastavan ääniverkon, joka auki taituttuaan levittäytyy koko kuuntelutilaan.
(Juuso Paaso, unknow finnish magazine)