Lasse Marhaug: The Quiet North
CD - Second Layer Records, UK - 2010

Reviews:

LASSE MARHAUG "the quiet north" CD
Second Layer
Well, as opposed to The Rita, Lasse is the guy who is doing certainly harsh noise. Damn harsh. But it's restless. There are no cut ups, there are no changes what comes to overall spectrum of sound. It is non stop brutally saturated gigantic wall of noise. But it goes on. As opposed to plenty of regular wall noise minimalists one hears now, this isn't THAT. This is more of what harsh noise walls perhaps were before they were separated into subgenre itself. This is just plain old good noise. Thing is, that Lasse is incredibly talented in what he does, and despite movement of piece is restricted to something which I may assume to be table full of gear, it is going forward all the time. New elements are flowing in, new slightly different sounds or sources bombard you from all directions. Sound is indeed incredibly distorted and saturated, but not like The Rita above. You can still hear many details and many elements what generate the bigger thundering sound. 30 minutes is pretty damn good length for it. I think even 20 minutes would have done it. If it was longer than this, I would have probably started to ask for stepping outside the frame of track, and do more drastic changes. Change the whole pallette of sounds at hand. But now, it's not necessary. 1 piece, 30 minutes. It's everything else but "quiet north"! Cover images are amazing, and Second Layer haven't saved ££ on doing nice multi panelled cardboard sleeve. (Mikko Aspa, Special Interest)


Holy fuckin shit! This Lasse Marhaug 'The Quiet North' CD on Second Layer will blow the cobwebs out to say the least. This is some seriously extreme and harsh abrasive racket to separate the men from the boys. Good gosh this is relentless insanity! Created with guitar, microphones, metal objects and pedals. The man Marhaug is in top form here and looking super cool on the sleeve with a big snow vehicle. I've heard a lot of noise over the years and I reckon this is as skull shattering as I've heard. I reckon the man sleeps inside Tauntaun's. Also I like his jacket. Noise fiends should give this a blast... Oh man this is mind melting!  Marhaug rules! (Normal Records catalogue)

MARHAUG, LASSE The Quiet North (Second Layer) cd 15.98
Back in 2006, Lasse Marhaug released an album with Joachim Nordwall from
the Skull Defekts and Johannes Helden called When The Ice Is Leaving,
Scandinavia Is Burning. With a title like that, the album should have been
all fire and brimstone of Nordic noise: abusive, throttling, and demonic.
It was not. Instead, that was the album you would expect from an album
called The Quiet North; and The Quiet North is certainly not quiet. Pure
brutalist noise is what Marhaug has in store for us. This wall of
obsessive, oppressive distortion comes by way of guitar, various effects
pedals, and various pieces of metal to tremendous effect. This is not a
subtle record, the various squalls from the guitar strings being grabbed
with bloody fingers and scraped with those pieces of metal have the crazed
wall-of-sound frenzy you could hear in any number of Matthew Bower
productions setting upon a rumbled low-to-mid range distortion that comes
across like a two ton pile of gravel being slowly dumped upon the roof of
a tin shed. The album begins with a bang and does not let up until its
abrupt conclusion some 30 minutes later. Exhilarating to say the least. (Aquarius)

Lasse Marhaug - The Quiet North [Second Layer Records - 2010]

Lasse Marhaug is apparently a noise veteran with many important releases under his belt, but "The Quiet North" is the first I've heard from him. This release is a single track, 29 minutes of heady harsh noise that sometimes displays the minimalism of HNW but is very clearly being actively performed by Lasse Marhaug.
This album expresses the nonverbal emotions of solitude, and fits very well with the album art, which depicts a man with his truck alone in the snowy expanses of "The Quiet North". Sometimes there are also sounds that recall a harsh, howling wind, although that could be said of much of the noise genre. I find this to be a peaceful disk, actually - the process of creating sounds such as these would certainly create some kind of relaxed zen state, an enveloping womb. It doesn't feel violent at all, and if you can stomach the opening minute none of the other sounds should surprise or grate on the listener. In fact, if you're not paying attention, you may not notice the sound changing much at all.

It's a very full sound, although there are frequent gaps in the layers, and the stuttering sound only rarely breaks into a flowing wash of noise. Textures of noise struggle to climb atop each other, sputtering and crunching in and out of audibility as the mix runs out of space. It's produced / recorded well - A generally lower mid-range, meaty sound to it, with a deficiency of crisp treble that gives this music its 'cold' feeling, and which may be the reason this disk doesn't seem that harsh to me. It's definitely the intentional sound of the disk, and it's hard to tell what the original sound sources were, though analog synths, feedback, guitars and sheet metal are definite possibilities.

Some of my favorite moments are near the beginning. At times the noise is almost tonal, or rather sounds like there is a tone somewhere behind it, obscured except for rare glimpses - pure, harmonic feedback pitches that almost sound like notes stab out of the mix in periodic pointillism, and for a second the noise almost hints at a drone, and despite all its harshness, possesses serene beauty. This is what most sets it apart from other noise releases.

I personally think he would have been better off making the piece more wall-like. It's already very samey, and if anything there's a bit less intensity at the end than at the beginning, although the intensity is somewhat adequately sustained. This puts it in an awkward middle ground between harsh noise and HNW: It's samey-ness means that when I'm looking for minimal noise, "The Quiet North" comes to mind, but I'm likely to end up wanting to go all the way and indulge in some actual HNW. Then, when I'm in mood for some straight, roaring, screeching harsh noise, old Merzbow records from the 90's, among others, will provide a more engaging and visceral experience. Seeing as he inhabits this middle ground, I can see how this man may have inspired the genesis of the HNW genre, but in 2010 I feel this sound has decreasing relevance. All in all, not among my favorite noise releases I've heard this year, but solid. (www.musiquemachine.com)


Lasse Marhaug: The Quiet North
Lasse told me that he made the Quiet North to make a better version of what he thought The Great Silence was lacking. On the face of it, this is a half hour long, dirty slab of layered, extreme distortion. I’ve got loads of this on my ipod so why does this work for me in a way that no other noise record has for a while? There is this undulating texture within the distortion itself which is really hard to explain. So on a break from contemplating The Quiet North I read an interview with jazz drummer Andrew Cyrille in which he says “ You can look at the water flowing and it doesn’t have any division but it’s rhythm ….Rhythm is just nothing but motion and movement.” What on the face of it seems a bit simplistic takes on a very different context when you hold it up to a pure noise record like this one. You see despite all of the brain scrubbing ferocity, there is a type of rhythm in the pulsating distortion of The Quiet North. It may not be apparent from your first listen but I guarantee you it’s there. So if a type of rhythm defines what we call music, is The Quiet North music? I’m not going that far but it may in the scheme of things this may be as important a noise record as you are likely to find. If their was any justice this will feature in many best of 2010 lists. (http://ducksbattlesatan.com/)