Andreas Brandal - This is not for you

Eh?40 is a departure from the improvisational mood of the label, but then you come to expect that from anything related to Public Eyesore. Brandal is a Norwegian who has been working on various projects since the 80s and releasing solo-work for about a decade. He runs a label - Twilight Luggage - which has one of his albums plus collaborations and some other groups. More on them in the next post. Is This is not for you for you? When I first put this on I had been listening to The Tone Generation podcasts (mentioned here) They immediately came to mind - but this then goes beyond that. So here are some thoughts.

The burning room with long slow tone melodies, crackles that move around, throbs and notes noises that slide in and out is a stately piece of concrete electronica. Ringing tones and gongs of the title track are lovely with muted crinkling and crunches. Soft tones form bookends to a rising ratchet and gentle voiceiness in The ghost opera. Acoustic guitar appears in Sleep miracle along with more tones soft and high gentle ones before a long scraping fade. A door opens at the start of Abreg ad habra taking us into an exploration of plucked notes (metal?wire?), a deep hum, billows that builds and releases, longer harmonica notes and strange crackles join in a fascinating extension.

Scifi tones, drifting restrained radiowaves all Shine. Then an aleatoric ambience of The mirror stage full of gentle stuttering, high and deep tones, wind, drifting simple warmth and guitary shimmers.  Concluding with Julien torma where loose cable skitters, a deep hum, sweet tones and guitar strums contrast harsher tones and clicks which emerge, sliding into harp-like reverb tones and crackles as the track ends.

This is an excellent album - amongst the often improvised and lo-fi recordings of Eh? it provides another view of where music can go - and this one definitely is music and belies its title for the sort of people I imagine reading this blog. Some more has dropped in from the label in the last few days, so expect some more noisier stuff soon - and meanwhile get this.

 

(And it's nice the see Eh? website get the full catalogue/review structure of Public Eyesore)