DIEM 25th Anniversary
Anker Fjeld Simonsen - Oktav III (1988) [4:34]
Jonas R. Kirkegaard - 802 (2012) [2:27]
Daniel Rothman - Southwest Sky (1988) 10:58]
Band Ane - Hyper Motel (2011) [2:39]
Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen - Omdrejninger II (1989) [7:12]
Jonas Olesen/ Morten Riis - Prim X (2010) [2:59]
Fuzzy - Electric Gardens and Their Surroundings (1989) [11:46]
Puzzleweasel/Richard Devine - Mad Bonce (2008) [6:24]
Per Nørgård - Årsfrise-91 (exerpt) (1991) [5:29]
Halfdan E. / Dan Turéll - Intro
(Team Trash) [1993) [1:30]
Wayne Siegel - Tunnel Vision (1995) [11:31]
Bjørn Svin - 7 circler I 1 matrix (2002) [8:33]
Michael Nyvang - Collage IV, Corona (1996) [5:06]
Vectral - AC-3 (2007) [5:30]
Line Tjørnhøj-Thomsen - Lauria (1998) [13:49]
Hans Hansen - Passiacs Monumenter (1999) [8:17]
Jørgen Teller - Sparklings (2005) [3:03]
Birgitte Alsted - Zu versuchen, die Fragen (2002) [16:20]
Sofus Forsberg - Homework (2005) [1:58]
Rasmus Lunding - On Learning How to Kill (2002) [8:13]
DIEM (The Danish Institute of Electronic Music), Aarhus, Denmark, 1987-2012
DACAPO 8.226559-60 [67:29 + 70:49]
Morton Riis writes, “The story of DIEM (The Danish Institute of Electronic
Music) is the story of 25 years of believing that the newest technology can
move existing musical boundaries, create new sounds, new structures, and pioneer
the development of the music of the future.” Presented in a nice clamshell
box and with very decent documentation, this release presents a wide selection
of works produced at DIEM from 1987 to 2012. Other than Per Nørgård’s
truncated Årsfrise-91 these are all presented in their original
form, and most will be unfamiliar, which is no great surprise as many of these
pieces are released here for the first time.
By chance I happened to commence composition studies at the Royal Conservatoire
in The Hague in 1987, so I can vividly recall the electronic music facilities
there at the time. Atari computers were the cutting edge, but for us untrained
and intuitive types there was still a hands-on experimental feel to the whole
thing which I embraced wholeheartedly for about a year. Tape cuttings on the
floor and loops in procession around the entire studio, turning the old analogue
acoustic chamber which was like a big radiator full of springs into something
which sounded like an exploding atom bomb, pushing and pulling plugs and levers
- those were the common activities which can never quite be emulated by the
relatively easy and certainly more compact range of computers and equipment
we use today. If your system has a glitch these days there’s not much
for it but to turn off, reboot and start again. Back in 1987 you immediately
recorded your glitch and probably made a 20 minute piece out of it - the effect
being one unlikely ever to be reproducible in a subsequent session.
There are many fascinating sounds to be heard on these two CDs, though tastes
will vary and you’ll have to be willing to allow your imagination free
rein in some seriously abstract tracts. Daniel Rothman’s Southwest
Sky is one such work, an airy and free-spirited collection of kaleidoscopic
lines which suggest stars and space, or clouds and deathly isolation, depending
on your mood and associations. This is from 1988, and a more interesting species
of work than its recent predecessor, Jonas R. Kirkegaard’s 802,
which is a disco drum beat which speeds and slows but does little else - something
which would have been impressive in 1988, but which doesn’t cut the
mustard in 2012.
No doubt we did some pretty dreadful stuff in the 1980s and early 90s, but
as ever with this kind of music, it’s the mind behind the art rather
than the means used to produce it which is its guardian of quality and lasting
value. I know I’ll be accused of having nostalgic preferences, but I
sense a consistency and honesty in the microtonal explorations of Carl Bergstrøm
Nielsen’s Omdrejninger II when put against the somewhat haphazard
and softly bumbling Hypermodel by Band Ane. The BBC’s original
‘Hitch Hiker’s Guide to The Galaxy’ radio series had more
interesting background music than this - bless the Radiophonic Workshop and
all who sailed in her.
If seemingly random bumps and squeaks are your thing then Jonas Olesen/Morten
Riis’s Prim X is an interesting collage of what sounds like
a mixture of analogue and digital sources - minimal in their sculpting of
shapes within a deep silence. Grander ambitions in Fuzzy’s Electric
Gardens and Their Surroundings send us into a world of richness whose
cataclysmic opening and ‘gong’ effects remind me of that literary
advice, “start with an avalanche, and go on from there.” This
piece has connections with Morton Subotnik and the like - think of The
Wild Bull - and could probably have been a few minutes shorter, but it
is still a grandiloquent and intensely energetic piece of work. Echoes of
Frank Zappa mixed with one or other kind of acid is the order of the day in
Puzzleweasel/Richard Devine’s striking Mad Bonce, but Per Nørgård
has us more on the edge of our seats with the fascinating Årsfrise-91,
an extract from a multi-layered project originally conceived as Kalendermusik,
originally about 8 hours’ worth of semi-autonomous electronic tone generators.
They should release it as an MP3 file.
At last, humour, with a fairground feel given to the spoken word in Halfdan
E. and the late Dan Turéll’s Intro (Team Trash). I also
like the concept of Wayne Siegel’s Tunnel Vision, which filters
a multitude of sounds into a single, constantly changing note - as if heard
through a tube-shaped seashell.
On to CD 2, and while Bjørn Svin’s 7 circler I 1 matrix
has something of a doom-disco feel to it, the project is an interesting one,
involving the re-mixing of a pioneering 1958 work, Syv cirkler (seven
circles) by Else Marie Pade. Michael
Nyvang’s impressive Collage IV, Corona manipulates sounds
sourced from a piano “to larger or smaller degrees beyond recognition”;
a ‘Music for Virtual Orchestra’ and a man after my own heart.
An if anything more bizarre disconnect between the familiar into strangeness
is Line Tjørnhøj-Thomsen,’s Lauria, which works
on the human voice in a way which can be disconcertingly animal, and can be
both exquisitely expressive and painful at the same time. This piece has an
attractively intuitive and literally tongue-in-cheek feel and is very much
worth persisting with. Talking of animals, there are some pretty desperate
sounding alien ones in the “overexposed panorama of ruins” in
Hans Hansen’s Passiacs Monumenter, one of those real-time recorded
works which either work well or not, and this one does.
I love the desperate cartoon world of Jørgen Teller’s Sparklings,
which should be used as a soundtrack for the final episode of ‘Top Gear’
when the BBC finally cancels the series. There’s a minor typo on the
sleeve of disc 2 which has two tracks marked as number 8. Birgitte Alsted’s
poetic Zu versuchen, die Fragen on track 7 is filled with recorded
sounds such as doors closing and creaking, and with its dense sense of mystery
doesn’t outstay its sixteen minutes of duration. Chilling nuances and
nicely transformed noises also inhabit Sofus Forsberg’s Homework,
which has an admirably surprising ending. The final track is Rasmus Lunding’s
On Learning How to Kill, which is powerfully cinematic. The words in
the piece are those of Lunding’s father, who survived as a Jew in Denmark
during WWII, smuggling German Jews and others into Sweden. The work’s
pacifist message is unmistakable, but by the end you know it is a standpoint
which knows its own terrors.
This is a fascinating compilation of work from Denmark’s DIEM studios,
and with a majority of good work, a few terrific pieces and only a few duds,
this is something which stimulates and educates. I would say it also entertains,
but there are few moments to which I would apply this term, and this is a
world which takes itself more seriously than not. This is not a closed and
intolerant environment however, and there is an openness and eclecticism to
many of these composer’s approaches which allows for its own confluences
and juxtapositions of influence and style; always something which gives rise
to new avenues of discovery. If you want to know what happened in Denmark
after the Yamaha DX7 was relegated to a dusty cupboard, this is a hot place
to find out.
Dominy Clements
Smokin’.