Deathprod (aka Helge Sten) has spent over a decade tied into Oslo's music community, but his role is impossible to pin down: a performer and a producer, usually at the same time, Sten has worked on multimedia installations and rock concerts, remixes and live improvisation. He brought his "audio virus"-- his mystery box of electronics and production techniques-- to rock band Motorpsycho in the early 90s, while today he's the fourth member of Supersilent, the non-jazzman who adds electronic jolts and subliminal ambience. He's both the band's nervous system, and its agitator.
Rune Kristoffersen describes meeting Sten as a crucial event in the founding of his Rune Grammofon imprint, and Sten remains one of the label's key players. But Morals and Dogma is his first solo release for them, and it's part of a push that includes a box set, simply titled Deathprod, which collects some out-of-print and unreleased material. (Consumer warning: the set also includes this album.)
Morals and Dogma's ominous, immersive tone may not surprise anyone who's encountered Deathprod before, but its purity and rigor are startling. Working with his audio virus and two guest musicians, Motorpsycho's Hans Magnus Ryan and the violinist and saw player Ole Henrik Moe, Sten has created four pieces that are gorgeously horrifying. Even when he makes kitschy or literal decisions-- implying dark rituals, naming a song "Dead People's Things", choosing a sleeve design that's as black as a coal pit in hell-- nothing detracts from the actual music.
Reportedly, Sten often builds a piece out of a single source, and on "Tron", it seems to be a recording of wind-- variable and evolving, but trapped in a membrane to keep it from blowing disruptively free. The sounds of heavy footfalls and the increase in volume at the lowest registers make the track increasingly unsettling; if you listen to it with a subwoofer, you may respond the way your pets to do thunder. The few musical tones at the end, which chime like the sounding of a gong, are almost intrusive.
When Sten uses an instrument or a found sound, he obscures the source, refusing to take advantage of any associations it brings. Although there are acoustic instruments on the album, he blurs the edges or manipulates the attack, keeping control of every detail of the timbre. For just one example, he uses a sound on "Dead People's Things" that resembles the suction tool you'd use to clean an aquarium. You can try to pick apart the sound of pebbles gurgling against the plastic, or the drone of streaming water, but the outlines blur before you can make out what it really is; and in the end, it may be something as basic as a stretched-out violin sample.
"Orgone Donor", the most musical track, was actually written by Ryan and Moe. The piece unfurls on long, droning tones of rising pitch, and it's a break from the rest of the album: The only track here with a clear, simple shape, it's like a beacon of clarity against the amorphous dread around it. But by the time the record closes on "Cloudchamber", Sten has pulled you back into the fog.
Calling the album "immersive" overlooks how much it pushes you away. The more you sink into the details, the more they assemble into something unsettling. It's hard to believe that Sten could perform this material when he plays this year's Sonar Festival in sunny Barcelona: A stern, cold wind will blow through whatever space he's playing, and the audience might wonder why the floor continues rumbling after he's left the stage.
