lim 276:
206 with tile, and 70 with a photo of a tile
Our Scandivanian brothers -- BJ Nilsen of Sweden and the Icelandic duo Sigtryggur Berg
Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson -- offer a wonderful variation on the sounds heard on the
Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna CD. It's not unlike the manner of recontextualization that found The
Hafler Trio returned to similar leitmotifs throughout the golden era of his
recordings (e.g. Kill The King, How To Reform Mankind, Intoutof, etc.) Regardless, the
Nilsen / Stilluppsteypa collaboration is in fine form as always, opening with a thick
fog of wintery distortion sliding into a hypnotic ripple of wooden creaks and mechanical
rattlings. Everything slips into mysterious passages of long-form drones, resolving with
a chiming guitar chord turned leaden grey by the Nilsen / Stilluppsteypa mastery of sound.
Mr. Sandbleistift is the man who published this fine split LP, running the Licht-Ung label
that appears to have a slant towards the clinical and detached side of noise
culture and power electronics. Not surprisingly, his work shares the mongrel noise
aesthetic espoused by the likes of Wolf Eyes and the Schimpfluch Gruppe at times, with
roughly sketched noises aggressively tossed at the audience.
The artwork to this album is also quite notable, as Sandbleistift acquired 276 pieces of
mottled blue & green tiles and mounted each one to awhite sleeve using an adhesive with a
particularly strong odor. Soon to be out of print, if it's not already.
(helen scarsdale)
NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA / MILAN SANDBLEISTIFT split (Licht-Ung)
Holy shit! Is this fucking cool, or what? First of all, it's got a fucking piece of
tile mounted to the cover. Second of all, it's limited to a mere 276 copies. Thirdly, some
of the copies we got enjoy a delightful bouquet from the industrial strength adhesive used
to bind the tile to cardboard sleeve, that may give an additionally psychoactive property
to the album. And fourthly it's another brilliant collaboration between our favorite
Scandinavian sound artists BJ Nilsen (from Sweden) and Stilluppsteypa (from Iceland), who
had blown us away on their previous duets Vikinga Brennivin and Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna.
We're not really sure who Milan Sandbleistift is, but he's authored the other side of this
split LP. His contribution is a teethgrinding piece of dirty drone wandering from lonely
8-bit electronic tones like a random piece of gear yanked from one of the Wolf Eyes' suitcases
and allowed to growl in futility amidst a cloud of hiss and crackle pushed towards a
radioactive self-immolation. It's pretty fucking cool, but even better is the glacial, grim
drones from BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa. They've long mastered a twisted, rumbling ambience
that's dark and dense, mysterious and haunting, deep and rich, that always straddles the
precision of laptop jockeys like Fennesz, Tim Hecker, Stefan Mathieu, etc. and the blackened
atmospheres of Corrupted, Earth, SUNNO))), etc.; and their two sprawling tracks on this
split LP are marvelous additions to their catalogues of drones that drift across the Arctic
Sea on a massive rusted ship between Sweden and Iceland.
STRICTLY LIMITED to 276 copies of which we only got a handful. So once these are gone, they're gone forever.
(Aquarius Records)
static micro-ambient and massive drones, limited split release on Licht-ung label,
comes with flagstone on cover
(René/LOKI)
