Given the artists’ respective backgrounds, it comes as some surprise that the fruits of organist Nils Henrik Asheim and noise troubadour Lasse Marhaug’s collaboration do not take the form of tactile and exploratory gestures. Recorded some few nights spent in the pit of the Oslo Cathedral, the pieces instead assume the form of an endless broken line. Asheim focuses on long sustained chords, riven by slivers from Marhaug’ razor sharp sonics and airy, uncharacteristically patient electronics, creating a shimmering effect like a mystical fusion between subject and object that doesn’ quite take hold. Long, silvery organ chords hang heavy with resonance and fill the sound field, creating a meditative surface that not only absorbs space and time, but via Asheim’ extensive use of half-stops and Marhaug’ densely stratified layers of high frequency oscillations, tweak and otherwise tinge its various colours.
All of this is apparently the result of improvisation, though one can gleam from the work many infinitesimal combinations and a general concern for optimal modulation, bearing out that Marhaug’ s post-production played no small part in the final product. ‘Phoneuma’ begins with gently articulated harmonies on organ and some almost subliminal pulses wavering on the fringes of perceptibility. The piece stands as a beguiling web of daydream and sunshine, but soon subtle shadings are lost and the work takes on a new ambiguity, acting as a plane on which time and space are decompressed. In the final moments of the composition, this tightly sealed off realm is swung open by a flare of aural ectoplasm wreathing forth. As though responding to the challenge, Asheim’ organ sheds its skin and roars ahead with turbulent, varispeed warbling. Throughout the remainder of the work, a fine cycle is established between these droning, trance-inducing environments and the more volatile passages, each giving effortlessly onto the other like day and night.
Max Schaefer
