It's difficult for me to hear Norwegian music without tying it to ECM Records, the fine art label that has recorded some of the country's best jazz musicians and brought others from around the world to work with the locals. From the cover photos of winterscapes and frigid oil rigs that look so cold they make your teeth hurt, to the label's signature sound of vast reverb and chill precision, ECM was made for Norway. The label has indulged emotional high notes that would embarrass more straight-laced jazz players, but no matter what happens on an album, authenticity radiates from its musicians' independence: The music is framed, not molded. The experiences can be unabashededly rich or pure and still, but they always come directly from the players, who are effectively alone, responding directly to the moment.
The Norwegian quartet Supersilent record for Rune Grammofon, but they're distributed internationally by ECM. In many ways, they'd be the perfect ECM band, though they have an edgier, almost sinister undercurrent that's unlike anything that label has approached. And for all the images they may summon, the band makes music as abstractly as possible: The albums and tracks are numbered, not titled; the personnel aren't listed on the cover; and for all the attempts to label them "jazz," "electronic" or "ambient", the band eschews genres: The music's played so close to the vest that it slips under any classification.
Supersilent is an electroacoustic ensemble, formed when the free jazz trio Veslefrekk-- Arve Henriksen on trumpet, keyboardist Ståle Storløkken, and Jarle Vespestad on drums-- played a show with producer, live electronics artist and self-described "audio virus" Helge Sten (aka Deathprod). That show's success encouraged them to record a three-disc, three-hour set titled 1-3, which was an intense barrage of rhythms and assaulting sprays of electric noise, plus extras, like a monotonous voice reading instruction manuals. They reined it in slightly on the follow-up, 4, and in 2001, they released 5, culled from live recordings that changed the focus to slowly shifting textures and an almost ambient pace. But their latest album, 6, is their most engrossing and tactically varied yet. It's also the most accessible.
For music this moody, it's surprising how neutral that mood turns out to be. The atmosphere is thick, but the band stays emotionally reserved. The sound is almost stoic; its sonic extremes don't so much as nudge the slow tempo or contemplative tone. A piece may be based on a repeating figure or simple rhythmic pattern, but that repetition comes from improvisation: Everything this group plays, every time, is improvised, and each track is presumably edited from a longer session. More to the point, it never settles: Vespestad never locks down the beat, the ambience never grows static, and they never make a noise just to fill space. You can't treat this as background music without getting distracted by the decisions being made at every second, and although the end result is restrained-- almost weirdly cool, even at its messiest-- it refuses to be anticipated.
The electronics largely define Supersilent's music: Sten does live manipulations and processing, and, with Storløkken, deploys sounds from the group's many synthesizers-- one of which is built around the sound processing chip of a Commodore 64. These sounds are incredibly varied, seemingly created with both state-of-the-art and harsh, lo-fi equipment. The keyboards crash like waves on "6.5", one emitting a howling, piercing noise that rises over a great shifting mass below, while on "6.1", the chords are neither bright nor dark, but neutral and stern, like stone chimneys of sound.
Drummer Vespestad is a formidable improviser and colorist, though he plays with considerable (some would joke "Scandinavian") restraint. He shifts expertly around the keyboardists on "6.1"; and on the erratic cat-and-mouse game of "6.3", Sten and Storløkken chase each other, sneaking more and more quietly until Vespestad abruptly slams down on top of them. But Vespestad's jazz drumming comes through on "6.2", which emerges as the most strictly jazz-like track: It's similar to the measured pace and dark, giving textures of Miles Davis' 70s fusion ballads, which are also an influence on trumpeter Henriksen. Henriksen serves here as the soft voice against his colleagues: His tone sounds breathier and more faltering than Davis', but he also sometimes sings-- wordlessly, in a beautiful, pinched high voice-- and near the end, he even whistles, a lone, aching sound against a gently buzzing texture.
6 has gentler passages than Supersilent's previous albums; on "6.4", Sten's introduction of a guitar puts the group close to Sigur Rós or Godspeed You! Black Emperor-- two bands the label is gunning for as they convert new listeners abroad. But most post-rock sounds numbingly rigid next to this: Supersilent may go for a big finish but the crescendos can rise suddenly, or appear so roughly and naturally that it's obvious that no single player is forcing cues or smoothing out the arc.
On those terms, "6.4" is both an easy entrance for new listeners and a pinnacle of everything the band strives for. Melodic without any set tune, it gently escalates on Sten's guitar and the warm synths, with what sounds like an autoharp interjecting in the background. The almost forlorn sentiments appear as the volume climbs, and even though a big finish seems inevitable, you can hear the band deciding moment by moment how to ascend and when to hit the climax. Every note is demandingly gorgeous, every phrase as solid but irregular as a natural object, and the majesty it achieves comes out jagged, loud and even harsh-- and it comes entirely from the musicians: It's a communication that's fierce, human, and immense.
