Sten Ove Toft - Lit de Parade (Roggbif)
» Published by trym on Mar 26, 2008
Label: Roggbif
Year: 2008
Format: CD
Mmmm, this is extremely nice. I’m leaning back in my couch and listening to the latest release on Roggbif Records, Norway’s leading noise electronica label, and this time the record bears the signature of none other than that of label founder, Sten Ove Toft, half of renowned noise duo Ryfylke.
Lit de Parade is a pulsating piece of music, sublime in its approach to noise and not as extreme as you could be getting the picture of when we generally classify an album as noise music. Sten Ove Toft’s new album follows on from the lasting impression of my first meeting with Ryfylke, during the Random System festival at the Black Box theatre in Oslo back in 2006. Similar to that live set, Toft here serves up 7 compositions that share a somewhat similar theme.
Returning to the pulsating notion, Toft’s compositions have a brooding, organic feel, like witnessing some gargantuan organism that heaves slowly and is ready to unleash a world of darkness on the listener to succumb to. That darkness as a theme is also evident by the near pitch black sleeve design where you only barely distinguish the contours of a landscape from a marine blueish night sky. The songs share as common denominator that they grow to an unnerving presence in varied manners of building up, either by a monotonous, deafening tone, allowed to play off itself for several minutes, or through more organic, pulsating soundscapes, like heavy breathing or a bellow slowly igniting a soon-to-become raging furnace. And as these build ups reach their climax, Toft dispels the minimalism and revels in shorter spans of crackling and all-encompassing, sinister noise, not really unintelligble and chaotic, but richly structured and as it lingers, traces of rhythm take form in that wall of sound, that also incorporates found sounds and samples provided by other key artists on the same scene, such as the notable Lasse Marhaug.
As mentioned previously, the album recaptures my lasting impression of that Ryfylke live set some years back, and as such is recommended listening for fans of noise music and dark, droning atmospheres.