JOACHIM NORDWALL - CONCERT

(confront collectors series ccs 15)

 

Recorded by John Olson at bla, Oslo, Norway on 22nd March 2008

 

"A recent partner of Mark Wastell in Ocean Of Silver And Blood, Nordwall is here captured – perhaps on cassette, given the self-confessed terrible quality of the recording – during a 17-minute set in Oslo, in 2008. It’s too bad that we can’t really get a hold on the actual gradations generated by this “skull transmission” (I had thought about an Alvin Lucier-like performance with wires linked to the artist’s head, then read that JN is a member of Skull Defects) because what transpires is positively stimulating. These sounds might have ranked in the field of modern minimalism, due to the constant permanence around the same sort of resonance (a slightly mutating reverberant halo where imaginary voices and gritty bowed percussion proceed on parallel levels). They go on without excessive change, don’t shock for the enormity of their beauty yet possess staying power, to the point that four repeats were needed for this reviewer to realize that there were new hues to note and consider with every spin. A properly equalized studio release of this kind of substance would be undoubtedly attractive. So much for “intentionally lo-fi” and Wolf Eyes’ John Olson’s influence on the work, an archetypal case of WTF."

 

(Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes)