The Nordic Miracle - We Shall Provide
(Humbug)
The avant garde music of the Nordic regions of Europe is most often found, it seems, in either the form of slightly reverent, but still forward-looking avant jazz, or distant sparse improvisation. The Nordic Miracle, Lasse Marhaug and Tore Honoré Bøe, are nothing of the sort; instead, the well-dressed Trondheim, Norway pair concoct writhing eruptions of noise in order to find the beauty in the ugly, the peace within disarray, and the pleasure within the pain.
We Shall Provide compiles complete, unedited recordings of the three performances TNM had given up to that point. The first two were recorded less than a month apart in Trondheim, while the third was made almost a year later in Fredrikstad. The group's web site explains that each of their pieces is based on a particular theme, though, aside from the track titles, it would be hard to tell. We Shall Provide contains works commemorating both the 250th anniversary of Bach's death and George Harrison's more recent passing, but there's little in the way of clues, musical or otherwise that would lead an unsuspecting listener to deduce it. Using turntables, samplers, guitar, and physical, "non-musical" objects such as glass, The Nordic Miracle sculpt searing blasts of feedback, tidal waves of static, and warped soundscapes of jagged, broken rhythms. Their music is unrelenting in its attack and recorded and mastered at a volume that makes it seem as though stereo speakers are vomiting the music out in self-defense. A constant battle, the improvisations seem more the result of an large group instead of only two musicians, and there's little room to breathe within We Shall Provide's crowded canvas. "Bright Bright Lights," the disc's first selection, is probably its most punishing, and lengthiest (26:23). "Bach: Die Johannes-Passion BWV 245" is shorter, but barely any less brutal, while the almost seventeen-minute "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (no relation excepting inspiration) offers a slightly more atmospheric take on the TNM's sound, but one that, in the end, dispenses with the silences and more discreet sounds utilized initially in order to pummel the listener yet again with a sound somewhat less erratic but no less volatile.
Since Marhaug and Bøe state in the album's liner notes that they haven't set out to do anything groundbreaking within the realm of noise, there's little room to criticize the fact that they aren't necessarily reinventing the wheel. And though it seems possible that the group still has room to grow (but become no more civil, of course), We Shall Provide is injected with such energy and feeling that, right now, that doesn't matter. It seems from their web site that the groups been largely inactive since the dates that make up this disc. Let's hope things don't stay that way.
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