The Swedish Mörkerseende, meaning Nightvision, originates from Uppsala. Behind the project is Johan Hjort, who has been active for quite a while (since the mid-noughties), but I hadn’t heard of him or his works before. Maybe it’s because there are so many nice sounds coming from Sweden that he somehow slipped through. I also don’t think he has been reviewed in Vital Weekly before because, well, the search engine, which has improved since we changed platforms, came up with nothing. Johan eloquently describes the project to ‘explore aspects of negativity through dark and raw noise,’ and I couldn’t have said it any better.
“Exponeringsterapi” means exposure therapy, and it’s a type of behavioural therapy where you expose yourself to triggers more and more. For many people, it works, and what comes to mind is that conquering one’s fears isn’t always necessary; in many situations, learning to live with them is sufficient. But that’s a different story altogether; we’re here for Johan’s works.
A whopping triple cassette in a case in a limited edition of 10 copies. Should this review trigger you, be sure to act fast because before you know, they’ll all be gone. It’s not a regular triple cassette, but it’s C60 cassettes with a total of 3 hours of HNW to hypnotise you. The whole conceptual approach musically is always challenging to find out with these types of music (noise, HNW, drone, etc), so I can’t really translate the track titles towards the concept behind this release. The six tracks, however, describe the steps in exposure therapy: “Riskbeteende”, “Metod”, “Behandling”, “Svacka”, “Turbulens” and “Ände”.
Musically, the tracks are straight forward very nice HNW. Some tracks are a bit more noise-driven (“Riskbeteende”) while others are based on heavy rhythmic patterns (“Behandling”, for example). “Svacka” seems to be based on a harmonic layer, but the noise layers in the background are filled with feedback and chaos. “Turbulens” is probably the track with the most activity and changes, which you might expect from the title. Very nice use of feedback. In each of the tracks, a lot is happening, though there aren’t many changes. A very positive thing about these works is that enough is happening to make listening an absolute pleasure. This is not the kind of HNW where there is ‘one setting to rule them all’, press record, have a wank and listen back after a few days to see what came out of it. This is well-thought-out noise and a proper way to have your ears cleaned for three hours. Or play it a bit less loud, and it’s great to get into a zen mode and get some work done.
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