Softcocks - Nasal Sex (mix 2)

Shortly after finishing recording Popped Out in Brygga studio, I grew dissatisfied with the mix of Nasal Sex, finding it rather bland and too polished. A new mix was therefore quickly done. Not that different from the first one, merely distorting the rhythm guitar a little, cranking it up in the mix and moving it from "8 am" closer to "10.30 am". Also, Per Terje's vocal was turned down a notch. I seem to remember that we used the then quite recent Sad Punk by Pixies as a model for guitar vs. vocal panning and volume.

For years, I've thought that this second mix was the one we used for the record. However, in preparing for the recent digital launch of the Pop-Eye catalogue, I discovered that we had in fact used the first mix! I cannot remember why this was done, whether it was a mix-up of some kind, or if I was tricked by the rest of the band who secretly preferred the first one, or if there was another reason altogether (former bandmates, can you shed a light on this mystery?).

Upon hearing it again, I think this unused mix is the better one, although still being way too bland (the 80s type of "big production" must take the blame for that). If you want, you can judge for yourself; here is the released mix, on WiMP and Spotify.

Prior to our EP, this song had actually been released twice before. A few months before, Softcocks had recorded it as one of our contributions for 365 Riff, a cassette compilation debuting us, Monster Blomster and Epinastic Movements. The cassette was released in June 1991, a few months before we went into the studio, on Riff Records (the precursor of Pop-Eye). This recording was done on a 4-track portastudio belonging to Hans from the latter band. This version is rougher and has a better ending (abruptly, rather than sliding that last chord). It's also a bit faster, and it repeats the chaotic "middle 8" twice. The last of which features a beeping toy in an attempt to emulate some of the zaniness of Tin Huey (through some rather strange and mysterious ways, the very same toy sat in as drummer for Polkaninene some 18 years later).

About a year before that, though, at the height of summer in 1990, I had recorded the demo to the song, using a stereo/2-track reel-to-reel tape recorder (adding an instrument means pinging the sound from one track to the other while playing on top of it). Actually, it was not as a demo I recorded it, but as a contribution to another cassette compilation, this time a celebration of the 6-year anniversary of P-productions, a cassette company slash fanzine publisher (I also had another contribution on that cassette). Albeit recording it alone, this version is still a "full band" thing; featuring a very rudimentary drum machine, playing the same pattern throughout the song, and bass, probably played in my usual off-beat manner (for bass, that is not 'off-beat in a good way'!). Frankly, I can't remember much of how it sounds; not having access to a cassette player, I haven't heard it in 20 years.

I do remember, though, that I merely ment it to be a throwaway something. But the band thought it was much better than the other, more "serious" songs that I brought to the band (they were right), so we worked it into our repertoire, and then, in a few months, it ended up on our debut EP. But, then, not in the version you can hear here.

Oh yeah, some of you might wonder about the title? I do too.

Unreasonable pressure from record industry big-wigs

Due to legal threats from the Pop-Eye record company, I see no way around removing the songs that have been issued through proper official channels. However, the songs you can read about here, but not hear, are all available as streams. Helpful links:

Fastened Bulbous on WiMP and on Spotify
Softcocks on WiMP and on Spotify

There are also links to the specific songs within the posts that present them.

And in case you're eager to buy, both bands are on iTunes: Fastened Bulbous and Softcocks

HelgeA - proto-Earth x2

OK, short update for the nerdy ones. I have numerous times mentioned that Fastened Bulbous songs often took on a quite different shape during the recording process. This time I want to demonstrate that through two earlier version of the previous posted song, Not of This Earth.

First off is my demo of the song, slightly edited here from its 9:50 (!) lenght (due to the size limitations over at Reverbnation), which I presented to the band. At this stage it was called Size of a Head, a title I cannot remember the origin of, nor why I changed it. As mentioned in the earlier post, the song started out as an instrumental, and as such we find the guitar theme on the verse to be the main difference. That, and the horrible horrible 80s sound on the (programmed) drums... Another thing that got lost in the translation is the ending, which I kind of like and wonder if we should have kept in the final version.

Having shortened the song, and recorded the drums, it became apparent that the verse guitar didn't sit too well with the rest, so the next version, still instrumental and possibly still called Size of a Head, was an attempt at finding something that works in that respect. And it kind of does. However, before releasing the song, a vocal line somehow appeared (I cannot remember why we added the melody, but I think Per F. was the main creator of it). And with that, the guitar on the verse (which inspired the melody...) had to be changed once more as we felt it was too busy to fit in with the vocals. That kind of "discarding the scaffolding" occurred in a lot of Fastened Bulbous' songs.

I think that both proto-versions have their merits, but in the end, IMHO, the released version is still the preferable one. But, now eager listeners can make up their opinions.

Fastened Bulbous - Not of This Earth

This song is available on WiMP and Spotify.

Because 1991 was the year that Softcocks emerged from the rehearsal room there are a lot of 20th anniversary stuff going on in relation to them, some of which I'll return to later this year. It is therefore easy to forget that there are also are some 10th anniversary things to celebrate. For instance, it's 10 years since Fastened Bulbous' last release. I therefore present a song from that EP, with perhaps one more coming in a couple of days.

As described elsewhere, our last recording was done rather hastily because PG, the bassplayer, was moving out of town. I had conceived of a plan of making this EP fully instrumental, and all the songs I brought into this recording session was indeed instrumental. However, Per didn't agree with this, and had one song with vocals/lyrics. Since it turned out to be the best Fastened Bulbous song ever, the instrumental-plan was abandoned. And somehow, during the course of recording, this song got some vocals too. No chorus though. Still, most of the EP is without vocals.

As we had with the previous EP, we met one afternoon/evening to record some drum tracks for songs that not always was fully worked out. Not of This Earth (named after a film by Roger Corman) was one of those, although it was almost there. I had some (instrumental) theme for the verse, but wasn't entirely sure whether I really wanted to use it or not. During the recording process it changed radically, somewhat building upon the drums, which couldn't be changed. And then, also something approximating a melody appeared.

The hardest part of the recording this song was towards the end where I wanted to lower the gain on my overdrive pedal while playing. It therefore had to be done with my foot. This proved a bit hard, though, since I not only had to keep in rhythm (of course), but playing required some extra attention since the tempo of the song was also slowing down. In the end, if I remember correctly, I had to have Per to lower the gain for me while I concentrated on my playing. Yeah, just like The Beatles, we used studio tricks that couldn't be replicated on stage, and that's, of course, why we never played live...

I had, and still have, one regret, however, which is a result of the way we worked towards finalising a song. Once a melody was created for it, this song should've had a different structure. More precisely, I would've liked to have another verse of singing before launching into the second theme. We had, of course, the opportunity to cut and paste, and by that re-structure the song, and we did discuss that, but eventually decided against it.

Although the basic tracks were recorded in December 2000, just days before PG moved away, the recording process continued until May 2001 (it was released in June 2001). Rewriting songs of course take its time. And all the changes to some of the songs also required new bass tracks, which had to wait until PG had an opportunity to come by the Pop-eye studios in his old home town.

This year it is also the 10 year anniversary for our plans to release the two EPs as one LP, on vinyl (I even designed its sleeve). These days vinyl is all the rage again, so maybe now would've been a good time to realize those plans?

VEP - Breeze

It's ballad time! Well, maybe not a proper ballad, but a slower song anyway. More in line with Codeine than any soul or power ballad.

This was once again an "oldie" that I picked up and finalized for VEP, having found no outlet for it in previous bands and constellations. The song was made around 95-96, under the name Karen (for a while I made a lot of songs with women's name - an idea sparked by Carolyn by The Wedding Present).

When I presented the song to the band, it turned out that a lot of changes had to be done. Both guitar and bass came to play quite different parts from my demo. Usually I arrange songs with two guitars in mind, in VEP we only had one, so some drastic measures had to be made.

On the verse, I stripped a rather busy guitarline down to its bare essentials. Also, the bass was transformed into something quite minimalist. Then I took out a guitar voice on the refrain that I thought to be very important for the song ("kill your darlings" as they say). And, there was actually a kind of guitar solo after the first refrain, now there is just a new theme that extends into the second verse.

Actually, this "trick" - replacing the guitar from the first verse with something totally different on the second, I had done before, on an equally mellow Fastened Bulbous song. In both cases this was done primarily because I could not decide on which of the lines I liked the better... But I also like it because it brings in a new element to the second round of verse (instead of, say, adding a keyboard), and makes the transition from chorus back to verse again more fluid.

The original demo also had quite different, more elaborate drums. On rehearsals we stuck to that drum pattern, but in recording I realised that it needed to be changed. Ståle, our drummer, it should be added, prefers the previous pattern. However, since it stays in line with the song's minimalist arrangement, I prefer this one. Perhaps one day I will reconstruct a version with the previous pattern.

In the end, though, perhaps partly because of all that was stripped away, I found the song to be missing something. I therefore asked PG Fostad (bassplayer in Fastened Bulbous, but proficient keyboard player too) whether he could come up with some suitable keyboard. And he sure did! In fact, I think his sparse keyboard lines makes the song.

Polkaninene - Bente (+ bonus)

I want to use this space to celebrate the birth of Ella, the first baby girl of Tor from 4K. She is said to be named after Captain Beefheart's song Ella Guru (and coincidentally the song legendary radio voice and Beefheart-fan Harald Are Lund, in a programme commemorating the sad death of Don van Vliet recently proclaimed to be his favorite Beefheart tune). I congratulate Tor, Ella, and Bente, the woman not only giving birth to Ella, but also being the inspiration behind the lyrics of today's song.

For followers of this blog, the success of 4K should be well known. The whole 4K-phenomenon happened in 1989, and when the 20 year anniversary of this event was approaching, Tor and I talked about marking the occasion somehow. A completely improvised liveshow at the same venue as the original recordings took place was mentioned. However, we decided on trying to recreate the exciting and explosive atmosphere from those recordings in a new recording session.

For a number of reasons, we knew it would be difficult to get the exact same batch of people together, but me, Tor and Geir were eager and ready, and we invited Pål from P-Productions recording act Polkadottene along to play bass. Thereby the name of the new project (which, also in line with the spirit of 4K, was ready long before we played as much as a note): Polkadottene + KaminKaninKanelKamelene. The initial plan was to do it at the same place as the 4K sessions, but it proved difficult to get all the involved people to Levanger at the same time. So, in the end we decided on doing it in Oslo. Unfortunately, it turned out that Geir was unable to participate, but rest of us met in an overcrowded rehearsal space on September 11 2009 (no jokes, please), and had that evening and the afternoon+evening of the following Saturday available before I had to head back.

The set up was identical to 4K: Tor had some lyrics and had thought about some accompanying melodies. Now we just needed to come up with arrangements on the spot, rehearse the songs a couple of times, record, and move on to the next song. The first night proved to be a bit of a let down, though; the good ideas were few and far between. Everything seemed too sparse and naked; we really suffered from the lack of drums. After a few hours, we left the place slightly disillusioned. For the session the day after, we decided on inviting drummer Håvard (from Softcocks) along. This proved to be very fruitful, and the Saturday was much better in terms of coming up with listenable ideas.

In the end, in more or less 20 hours all in all, we recorded material for about 30 songs. However, probably because we've grown a tad more critical over the last 20 years, none of us seemed to be very eager to release what we had done. That is not to say that there weren't any songs that were usable, just that we saw that the songs needed some more work. Which we've never gotten around to be doing; perhaps the amount of material is too overwhelming?

For my own sake, I must say that I am quite unhappy with my performances. When this occurred, I hadn't played the guitar for a long time, and playing for 8 hours straight on Friday, meant that my fingers were hurting real bad on Saturday. This severly limited my playing that day, something that unfortuntaly can be clearly heard on today's song, Bente. The bad playing on 4K could for most part be traced to the amount of alcohol having been consumed, but this time around I have to plead sore fingertips...

This song is, I guess, Tor's love poem to his girlfriend, now the mother of Ella. The lyrics more or less recreates the story of how they met. As far as I remember, Tor did not have a melody for this song, but improvised one over an equally improvised guitarline of mine that Pål tried to play some appropriate basslines to (which I think he managed splendidly). I don't think we even rehearsed it properly because at this point my fingers really hurt. Alas, this take is the first real run-through of the entire song, and we couldn't play it again because of my fingers. Therefore, it was also one of the last things we did. In the end, though, I think the song came out quite OK. It should of course have been re-recorded under better circumstances, but it is just a small ditty, and should be taken for that.

Bonus-song!

That is also the case for today's bonus song. This is an excerpt from a longer song, called (I think) Pokker ta. What we hear is only the verse and chorus. There is an entire third theme that we never really got right, so I leave it out for now. Had we had time to work on this song I think we could have had a hit on our hands! Although this song was recorded much earlier in the day, I remember (and can hear) that the finger problem was already bothering me.

I might post some more excerpts from these sessions. Btw, rumours have it that there is a new band in Oslo playing some of these songs.

VEP - Too Much Too Often

These days it is more or less exactly 10 years since I joined the then almost one year old band Vep. As told before, most of that time was spent without a guitarist.

At the time I joined, the band had no songs of their own, but played assorted coversongs. I wanted us to play our own material, so I brought some songs into the band, and rest of the band also started to write songs. Aud Sissel's second, and last, song to be introduced to the band was Too Much Too Often. Written on top of her bassline, she had the title ready (and thereby also the lyrics for the chorus), but left the writing of the lyrics of the verses to Karine (who also contributed to the band's repertoire of original songs with Delete as Required, which I'll return to in a later post).

The song being fairly bouncy, I figured I should do something different with the guitar than I usually did on my own "post-rock" like songs. Inspired by Jesus Lizard's fantastic Nub, I therefore tried, for the first and last time, to play with a slide (made of glass, not metal as JL's, which gives a bit softer effect). At rehearsals we usually started with half a minute of guitar feedback before the rest of the band kicked in - kind of like the noise heard at the end of this version. This song was one the funniest to play, and also one of those that sounded OK at rehearsals (unlike, say, No Offence).

The title is taken from a film by one of the most idiosyncratic movie-directors of the b-film circuit of the 1960s, Doris Wishman. Too Much Too Often is one of the "roughies" she made after the market for nudist camp movies and nudie-cuties had dried up. As usual with Wishman's movies, the title was much better than the actual film. It also makes a great song title (and song!). Perhaps somebody should make an album consisting entirely of songtitles from Wishman's oeuvre? The danger, of course, is that people would say that the song titles are much better than the songs...

Like the other VEP songs already posted here, the drums are programmed samples and the bass was meant to be preliminary (see why here). As time goes (now it is more than 7 years since work started on the demos), I guess it is more and more unlikely that the recordings will be finalized with proper bass and drums. Too bad, really.

Softcocks - Demo 90

These days, it is more or less 20 years since Softcocks started to behave like a real band. Although we started our first, drumless, rehearsals in November the year before, regular rehearsals didn't start until we found rehearsal space in August 1990. We had had less than 10 rehearsals altogether prior to renting this room at the first floor of a building in the Buran/Lademoen area of Trondheim. This building already brimmed with bands (among them Motorpsycho, Israelvis and Monster Blomster), but most of them rehearsed in the basement (where we ourselves had to move to two years later when they made the first floor into apartments). The rooms in the basement were rather stuffed; dark and airless. Our room, on the other hand, which we rented together with a band of shifting names (Whiplashtruppen is the one that comes to mind right now), had been an office of some sorts so it had windows, which meant that lots of air and light could come in. But, of course, it also meant severe outward sound leakage: half the population of Buran/Lademoen could therefore follow our rapid development, from the insecure, shaky sounding guys who started in August 1990 to the through-and-through professionals that had their proper debut concert a mere 6 months later.

By the time we started rehearsing regularly, we already had a few songs under our belt and we soon decided to record a demo. However, prior to starting the recording sessions, we invited a few friends over for a "performance" in an adjoining room to our reharsal room. Joining us for this event, which happened on November 17 1990, was co-renters Whiplashtruppen, who played after us and thus must be seen as the headlining act. For some reason, though, they didn't invite any friends along, which led to the rather bizarre situation where the audience (our friends!) shouted for a Softcocks encore AFTER Whiplashtruppens set. Adding to the strangeness was 10-15 local teenagers that had heard the concert from outside and entered the room while Whiplashtruppen played. These kids joined in on the shouting for an encore from us, making the ply for more music from Softcocks both funny and embarrassing for us and, of course, rather annoying for Whiplashtruppen. Both "concerts" (and our belated encore) was recorded, and we, shamelessly enough, released our performance on cassette in a thankfully small edition of approx. 10. Don't expect to hear excerpts from that particular cassette...

What you will be able to hear here, though, in its entirety, is the demo-tape that we started to record a short time after that "concert". We picked the songs we regarded to be the most finalized at that stage (many other songs were still being bent into shape, for instance one of the first own composition we played, a song by Per F. called Feaces From Brain, which we never really managed to finalize in a saticfactory manner).
The first song on the cassette was what we saw as our signature song. Cock Song is written by Per F. (music) and Håvard O. (lyrics). Great lyrics that becomes our great name.
Hangovers is Håvard K.'s, and - I believe - the second song he submitted to the band. His first, Legenden, a song about cross country skier and true Norwegian legend Oddvar Brå, was in Norwegian, which made it unsuitable for this release (but we did release it later, using the nome-de-plum Oddvar Bros, in an ironic nod to awful 80's band Bros).
The third song is Ignition, by Per F. In the pressrelease to the Demo 90, as we called the resulting cassette, we described our style to be 'popcore', and this song is perhaps the prime example of whatever that might be.
Per F. is also the writer of Crashlanding, and it is also he who sings it. Oddly enough, since this song is our one "ballad", we used three guitars when the song was played live. The reason was that Per T. could have something to do while Per F. sang.
The last song, Electrocute, was written by Per T. When we tried to persuade Per T. to sing for the band, we wanted him to use a David Thomas-like vocal (a style we had heard him use on some late late nights over a glass of wine or two). Except for the aforementioned Feaces From Brain, this song is the only one in the band's repertoire where this voice actually comes through. Still, he is more restrained compared to rehearsals and live performances. Before we recorded this song, it was called Records. Not sure why the title was changed.

For the recordings, which were done in our rehearsal space, we used a Tascam 4-track recorder that we had borrowed from Fotogjengen at Studentersamfundet in Trondheim. All the tracks were recorded live, with overdubs for vocals and some guitar, and possibly percussion. The cassette received some favourable reviews, for instance in Rock Furore and the Swedish popmagazine Sound Affects, which gave us 3 out of 5 stars and concluded the review by saying: "Change your name, guys, and we might even talk of a fourth star". We were very proud, of course, but didn't understand that part with the name change? Strange.

Demo 90 also landed us our first proper gigs. Actually, our first three concerts were given within two weeks. At the first, at Cafe 3B on February 2 1991, we played to an audience of around 150 - even a few that we didn't know...., while for the next, a week later at the sorely-missed bar Skansen, we only had 7... we did not take the difference personally (this was as a "cool-down" concert after a fantastic acoustic set by Robyn Hitchcock who himself only drew about 30 people). Another week later, we had our first (and only) out-of-town concert, as a warm-up act to Transiberian Hijackers at Fenka in Levanger. Approximately 40 people saw us play, and , actually, less people saw headliners TH (which might have had to do with the fact that most of Softcocks hail from Levanger...).

Starting up, two cassettes, three (and a half) concerts in only 6 months... things were moving fast for Softcocks! After this string of concerts, we went back into the "studio" once again, recording songs for cassette compilation 365 Riff. But that, as they say, is a story for later...

VEP - Femina Ridens

Continuing with coversongs from the previous post...

One of the many coversongs that VEP played was an oddity from a little known and rather bizarre Italian movie from 1969, called Femina Ridens (aka The Frightend Woman aka The Laughing Woman), written by Stelvio Cipriani. A wonderful popsong, played by a typical italian-movie orchestra from that era, the original features complex drumming, strings and brass, and the thickest accent heard in any language outside a Banana Airlines song. We had a hard time trying to decipher the lyrics, which grammatically are very offbeat - probably a result of word-by-word translation, and we ended up guessing wildly a couple of places. After having played the song a while, I was able to secure it on CD. This version had a different mix, with the vocal mixed louder than the version featured in the movie itself, which we had used. The CD-version enabled us to fill out some of the missing parts, but not all, the accent and grammar were still just too weird. (Also, the "scrappala"-guitar in the intro/outro was mixed quieter, but as you can hear in our version, we didn't care to follow that...) . Although the song was quite hard to play, we played it rather well at rehearsals, and it was a fun song to play.

I spent many hours programming the drums for this recording, and although still not quite satisfactory, they do the job. The goal was to mimic the original, just as much to test the programming abilities of both me and the gear as for musical reasons. The bouncy bass is also very close to the original, and Aud Sissel spent a great deal of time finding out how to play it. There is very little guitar on the original, though, so I wrote new parts for the verse and chorus, trying to compensate for the the lack of strings and brass.

In contrast to the other recorded songs by VEP, the bass on this recording is played by Aud Sissel. However, she only played the first verse and chorus before aborting the recording session. For the rest of the song, I have cut-and-pasteed basslines from the parts she played (and added the odd note myself). The song features a couple of guests, Per F. from Softcocks / Fastened Bulbous is buried deep in the intro/outro chorus, and PG, also from Fastened, plays organ.

This movie, btw, is recommended wholeheartedly to those that are curious about late 60s/early 70s European cinema in the intersection of art and sleaze. It is available on DVD. The opening credits might wet your appetite (note, the youtube-clip is taken from a VHS-source, the DVD looks much better). We also tried to cover another tune from a 70s Italian movie (also written by Cipriani). I think we played it only a couple of times at rehearsals; not having keyboard made it difficult to get it sound right, though, so we abandoned it pretty quickly.

Oddvar Bros - Wedding Presents

One of the first things Softcocks did after acquiring the 8-track tapemachine and mixer was to record a song for a friend's wedding. One day while being in our rehearsal space we just started to discuss how we could mark this occassion (this was one of the first friends of ours to get married). I can't remember who, but someone proposed to record a cover-version of a song by The Wedding Present (geddit?), and since Ole B. was marrying what we thought to be a blue eyed girl (no, not in the metaphorical sense), called Irene, we decided to go for the then fairly recent Blue Eyes (from their one-7"-a-month scheme). We also decided that the song needed written-for-the-occassion lyrics... in Norwegian. So, over the next couple of hours, we tried to remember how the song went chordwise and structurewise (we did not have the record available), rehearsed it, wrote new lyrics (all chipped in, but as I remember it, Håvard O did most of the writing), and recorded it. Per Terje was away most of the time that autumn, so Håvard K. did the singing, which led us to use another name for the project. Oddvar Bros was a name we had discussed before settling on Softcocks, and was related to our early song in Norwegian Legenden, a flat out praise of cross country skier Oddvar Brå. Since the wedding song also was to be in Norwegian we decided to resuscitate that name.

A few months later, another friend, Erlend E. married Sissel, and we were so happy with the results of the previous gift, that we decided to repeat our success. Only this time, preparing for it. We therefore, prior to the actual writing and recording process, discussed which song would be suitable, and went for Dare from TWP's absolute masterpiece, Seamonsters. This provided an opportunity to decipher the chords and the structure of the song before meeting to record our version. Although we came in better prepared, the recording process did not go as smooth as the previous one. The writing of the lyrics was harder, rehearsing the song was harder - not least because we decided to record it as a waltz (at least the first half of it), and in general I think we were not as happy with the result this time around. In hindsight, though, I must say that we made a more interesting cover-version with this one. But I'm not sure if the others agree. Per Terje was once again prevented from participating, so Håvard K. did the singing this time as well.

The lyrics, for both songs, are quite hilarious actually, but they mostly contain in-jokes, so if anybody have any questions concerning their meaning, just PM me.

Now, please, nobody say anything about this post to Gedge.

Softcocks - Meltdown

This song is available on WiMP and Spotify.

Another song from those 8-track sessions. This one's written by Per Terje and features me on an acoustic guitar (that's a first! and a last too, I think...). Meltdown was recorded in February 1993, in the same recording session that also spawned the previous Softcocks' post on this blog. This version was remixed in 2001 by Per F. for a still-in-the-works release of the 8-track recordings. On the original mix, Per Terje's voice was processed to sound as if it was coming through a telephone, but that effect is missing here, unfortunately.

Although not having counted the songs, I think Per Terje was the most prolific songwriter in the band (all five of us wrote songs), and Meltdown is one of my favourite songs of his. In contrast with the rest of us (at least Per F. and myself), his songs came primarily in the form of a melody and some chords, leaving the arrangement to the collective efforts of the band. Consequently, in hindsight, his songs feel the most band-like of our songs. The rest of us usually had, and drove through, quite specific ideas for how the songs should be structured, and how the bass and guitars were supposed to do and sound.

Meltdown was one of the last 4-5 songs we worked on. After having recorded the session this one's taken from, we only had one more recording session, comprising the three very last songs we worked on. Ironically perhaps, these late songs (including Meltdown) ranks among our very best, in my opinion. I will, most likely, post more of them later.

Ironically also because between the two last recording sessions we gave the best concert we ever did, with the best batch of songs and, because of it, much more reassured on the stage than earlier. Even persons usually measured to our music responded positively and gave us good feedback. The concert was held at a one-day "pop-festival" we co-arranged at the sorely missed bar/concert place Skansen (also known as Ritz and other names) in Trondheim. Named, in yet another play of words, "Popstock", the festival comprised us, fellow Trondheimband Epinastic Movements and the Oslobased The Time Lodgers. The festival was a modest success, arrangementwise, and for us as a band (and with a post-party still talked about in reverence). Nontheless, as a band we called it a day a couple of months later. This was one of the reasons that a planned follow-up to the festival, the "Popstock 2", to be held in Oslo and arranged by guys in The Time Lodgers, never saw the light of day. It could have been our national breakthrough (yeah, right!).

VEP - No Offence

This song stems originally from July 1995. It is something I composed mainly to preserve the main idea (that is, the guitarriff), and then filed away. As mentioned in earlier posts, at this time, I was not really interested in pursuing songs that seemed to be too "pop-like", and for me back then, this one fell into that category. Upon joining VEP a few years later, however, I picked up some of these songs/sketches and worked them into something that could fit into the VEP-catalogue. This was also how No Offence came about.

Although being one of the first songs I presented to the band, and therefore one of those that we played the most, it never really gelled at rehearsals. It was something with the sudden change of pace when we went from verse to chorus that we never got right. Usually, the chorus just fell apart because we (and especially our poor unexperienced drummer) had a hard time adjusting from the mellow-paced verse to the more demanding and loud chorus. Furthermore, while the chorus has, and need, two guitarparts and me being able to play only one of them at a time made us miss a vital "voice" in the arrangement. Alas, in rehearsal, it was one of our more chaotic songs. I therefore think I speak for all of us when saying that we never thought this song had much potential.

After recording it, however, the song came into its own, and emerged as something that actually had real drive and energy to it. And, to our slight surprise, the verse and the chorus fit together nicely. All-in-all, I think it turned out to be one of the most extrovert songs of ours. And, it's not really that "pop" after all, is it?

How to write a song...

Or, at least, how I have made some songs. Of course, most of my songs have been made from fiddling around on the guitar, coming up with interesting guitarthemes and lines, finding a suitable melody and then finding the arrangement. But every once in a while a different approach happens. Having a computer available makes it possible to relate to recorded music differently, and this might lead to ideas for how to compose and record differently as well. Cut and paste, sampling and looping, although not impossible in other media, is at least facilitated by the use of a computer. These three songs are interconnected in this respect, in as much as the last two would never have happened hadn't the first one been available to me track-for-track.

Fastened Bulbous - Holes.
(This song is available on WiMP and Spotify)

This song was made in the traditional way, albeit the traditional Fastened Bulbous way, which means that when the drums was recorded, the bass, guitars and melody were quite different from the finished song. This song even had a different name, Ah-oh!. As Holes, it is found on the second Fastened Bulbous record, the EP sometimes called [20:09] . This record was made a couple of years after the band in reality had ceased to exist. Being unable to find enough time for rehearsals made it impossible to keep the band going, so we disbanded in late 1996. I can't remember who came up with the idea, but sometime in early 2000 we decided to meet for an afternoon or two to rehearse and record a few songs without any intention of starting again like "a proper band". The main idea was to borrow rehearsal space from Skrømt, lay down the drum tracks, and continue the recording process in Per's more-or-less sound proof living room (mostly less, I think - poor neighbours). As it turned out, we could only rehearse and record one of those days, but we managed to record drums for a handful of songs, among them Holes. Apart from turning out considerably different from how it started out, what I remember best from recording this song is that Per had a bucket over his head while doing the vocals.

HelgeA - No. 13 (sketch).

A couple of months later I tried to find materials from that recording session that would make good drum loops. One of the snippets I found was from towards the end of Holes (recognize it? I think maybe I sped it up a notch). I first used it for this ditty called No. 13. Why this title? Frankly, I can't remember... Titles, at least of the more experimental and instrumental things I make, is usually whatever pops into my head when I'm about to save the changes to a track or a session. Anyway, this still-unfinished song was made for an unrealized collaboration that Lasse Marhaug and I had talked about. The idea was that Lasse should make some additional noise to it, but this never happened (we were probably too busy watching old Jess Franco and Doris Wishman movies). Another sample to be found here is from renowned tapeloop-artist Samuel B. Johnson's song Et rop på veien. So, that's not me playing accordion and shouting. In fact, behind the name SBJ we find Tor Arne from 4K.

Fastned Bulbous - Kreta Kano.
(This song is available on WiMP and Spotify)

In late 2000, Fastened Bulbous' eminent bassplayer, PG, decided to move away from Trondheim. Before that occurred, though, we decided to repeat what we had done so successfully earlier that year; to meet for an afternoon to lay down some tracks, continue work on them later, and release another batch of songs. This resulted in the yet another unnamed EP, which, to differentiate it from the earlier one, can be called [21:38]. In preparation for this project, I picked up the unfinished No. 13 and came up with some bass- and guitarparts. This then became Kreta Kano, named after a character in the novel The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (around the same time I also made a song named after Kreta's sister, Malta Kano). Besides the loop from Holes, I added another sample from a different Fastened-song, a hihat loop, for the middle part of the song. This loop was in a different tempo, and I remember, as a non-expert in using the software for this kind of process, struggling quite much to find the (more-or-less) correct tempo. Edit: In fact, it is a sample from a song by Brise-Glace (shhh, don't tell anyone or we might have to pay compensation for the use of the sample), but the tempo had to be adjusted nonetheless.

I am not sure if this song was meant to be a demo, with the intention of recording a "proper" version, or not. Anyway, we decided to use it as I made it. Btw, this song is supposed to be PLAYED LOUD, as it used to say on old heavy metal records...

HelgeA - Below

I am very unhappy with my voice. One thing is that I just don't like it, the sound of it, another thing is that I'm "tone-mute" - I simply cannot hit the right note most of the time. I'm not tone-deaf, the trouble with hitting the right note is not because I can't hear what's right and not; it is just not possible for me to find it without scaling the voice up and down and deciding through listening if I'm correct or not. This, of course, sounds quite silly in a song (some of the same effect is found on some early Motorpsycho-songs, although Bent's scaling might just be a melodic trick, or maybe not...). It is mostly my unlucky bandmates that have had the dubious pleasure of hearing my singing voice when I have presented demoes for them. Consequently, when it came to HelgeA songs on this blog, I thought I'd stick to instrumental/experimental stuff.

However, in looking through my archieve for usable solo-stuff I came across this little song, which feature the voice of yours truly. Below is in fact an unused demo for the third Fastened Bulbous record (it was probably deemed "too commercial"...). Its origin is older though than this digitally recorded demo. The main guitar-themes and "solo" were more or less recreated tone-by-tone, if I'm not mistaken, from a 4-track recording made in 95/96. The ending is basically the same idea also, while the feedback-track is actually carried over from the early version.

Since the song does not feature much "singing", or melody as such, and because the vocal-track is fairly distorted and thankfully short, it is possible for me to evade the "no-ahk-voice" policy of this blog. I like the ideas in the song, and I'm very much fond of the chords that I use here, and which I also use in a number of other songs of mine from the same period, among them Hard to Shine. (What chords are those, Per S? I have no idea.)

Actually, come to think of it, my voice can briefly be heard on one of the other songs already published here...

Trust - Onion

For a few months in 2001/2002, I was in a band with Håvard Kløften, who I had played with in Softcocks, and Dag Freider Fløan from Monsterblomster. This was their band, and they were the songwriters, so the intention was that I should only be a guitarist. After having rehearsed (albeit only infrequently) with VEP, I had rediscovered the fun in playing together with people - a quite different way of making music from the studiobased project that Fastened Bulbous had turned into. Espen, who I also knew from the latter project, stepped in on drums for a few rehearsals, but mostly we rehearsed as a drummerless trio.

After a fairly short while, plans emerged for the band to record the handful of songs that was ready (Håvard and Dag had made songs and played together long before I joined). This turned out to be a long and winding road, starting in december 2001 and not ending until 2005, at a time when I had long since left the band. The basic tracks, i.e. drums, were recorded early on, but the tinkering with guitars, vocals and other tracks were done, redone and probably redone again over the years. The last thing done, to my knowledge, was to overdub the vocals at a proper studio, Trondheim Lydstudio, in 2005. At this point, the plan was to release the songs on CD. At an earlier point, a 10" vinyledition was the plan. None of these plans came to fruition and I'm not really sure why... (Håvard, Dag, can you shed a little light on the mystery?)

My stint with Trust (at one point called Besides, or was that just the working title of the recordings?) was relatively short. Sometime in late 2002 a concert was scheduled, and presenting the music to other people in a concert is a different kettle altogether from merely goofing around at rehearsals. Consequently, I had to rethink my role within the band. I think it was obvious quite early that my limited guitarskills did not align well with the musical direction of the band. Not being versatile enough, my style of playing might suit the "postrock" of Fastened Bulbous and the strumming of VEP, but not the country-tinged pop of Trust, which demanded fills and "licks" quite foreign to me. The other guys probably realised this at the same time as myself, and having an upcoming concert was a good opportunity to take this realisation seriously. Therefore, my leaving the band was amicable.

Over the next years, the band only gave a couple of concerts, and is now, I believe, on a permanent hiatus. In my opinion, it's a shame that these songs haven't been more widely heard. I will do my best to rectify that by offering at least one song here. Onion, made and sung by Dag, is the only song left from those recordings where I still can be heard (and then only on the chorus). Initially, I had put down guitar on several of the songs, but over the years my lines were gradually replaced. Unless I dig out some early-early mixes, that still features my guitar, this song will be the only one I can post here, if I'm to stick to the ego-focus of this blog.

Although I had quit the band, I still designed the sleeves for the various unreleased records, both for the 2004 10" and the 2005 CD. The sharp-eyed will probably recognize both picures and design-touches from some unreleased Fastened Bulbous items (which I will talk about later).

VEP - I Know You Now - new version

I have uploaded a new version of I Know You Now. It only has a few minor changes: shorter drum intro, ride instead of hihat on the chorus, and, rather more drastic perhaps, I have followed up on Per's remark that the song was too slow and made it faster...

4K - Satt i en tuba

Another song from the 26 hour session mentioned in the previous post. This one's recorded the day after. I do not think that we already had recorded it during the night, but I can be wrong. Not much to said about it. Like the others, the lyrics, and probably the melody, was ready beforehand, and then it was up to the rest of us to find something that resembled a proper backing. I think we succeeded, but I can be wrong again.

If enough people request it, we might re-release the 4K recordings, remastered and with bonus songs. Of course, they would have to recorded first... Rumours have it that a reunion is imminent, but I can be wrong once more.

4K - Bygd for å rives

I once played in a band for 26 hours. I was not kicked out because of my poor guitar playing (although that would be perfectly understandable) or any annoying antics. The reason I played with this band for only 26 hours was that the band only existed for 26 hours. From the time we met until we parted the day after, we composed and recorded one hour of music (inbetween eating, sleeping and, not least, drinking). We released the music (on cassette) to what can only be called less than critical acclaim. According to the critic in Rock Furore, we would be better off finding ourselves some new hobbies because playing and making music was not something we knew how to do. Needless to add, he did not tell us anything new.

Despite its short lifespan, the band was not a spur of the moment thing. We had started discussing it a few weeks prior to meeting. Tor Arne, the vocalist had written lyrics for a few songs, thought about some melodies, and even made drawings for the planned booklet. Geir, the poet/percussionist, had also written some stuff, although I'm not sure if we used it or not. The rest of us, Knut Eirik - bass, Kjell Roald - drums, and myself - one-chord guitar, met a couple of days before the others to rig the equipment and to "jam". Kjell Roald, who provided us with most of the gear we used for playing and recording, was a late addition to the band, and is therefore found missing from the jacket of the booklet that had been drawn weeks before (press arrows to see the rest of the 15 page booklet).

We were joined by Geir and Tor Arne in the afternoon of August 18 1989. Our first collective chore was to buy beer. Lots of beer. And some liquor. Afterwards, we headed out to "the studio", which was the living room of the house where I grew up in Levanger. What we started on first, making music or drink beer, I can't remember now, but within a few hours we already had a few tunes ready. Having access to a 4-track tape recorder but no decent microphones, we decided, after testing the available recording equipment, that recording the songs live to 2-track cassette would leave us with the best results.

This was how we spent the evening and night. We started working on the lyrics and melody sketches of Tor Arne, crafting them into "songs", and once a song was deemed "ready", we recorded it. Of course, consuming all the alcohol while working probably dulled any critical judgment we had towards our own creations, and it certainly influenced our already limited instrumental abilities negatively. A case in point is this song, Bygd for å rives, which was the last song to be recorded before going to bed the first night (or morning). I remember being so heavily "under the influence" that I staggered around, being unable to stand up straight when playing guitar. Judging from the recorded evidence, the others weren't feeling much better either. I also remember that at this point, Geir had collapsed on the sofa, sleeping tight despite all the noise we made around him.

Waking up the day after was both a pleasant surprise and something of a let-down. Although feeling pleased about all the songs we had managed to make the night before, the tape we had used to record the songs was damaged, necessitating a re-recording of some of them (not Bygd for å rives fortunately, because I would not have been able to decipher what I had played). This turned out to be a not so easy task, both in regards to the reconstruction of what we had done the night before and in regards to being able to mobilize enthusiasm to do them all over again. Consequently, the new versions came out much more restrained than those recorded the night before. Even though we were tired and a bit fed up from doing that, we nevertheless decided to make one more song, and, to boot, to improvise it. The result turned out to be a 30-minute suite, encompassing the entire second side of the cassette that subsequently was released. Some people claim that only highly proficient musicians can improvise music, but we proved them wrong. Or did we? The jury's still out.

A month or so later, the cassette Buddha-avdelingen, named after one of the more structured songs, was released. Our name, decided long before the recording session, was KaminKaninKanelKamelene, or 4K for short. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of us. How you'll feel after hearing it, though, I can't say.

Fastened Bulbous - Hey (released version)

This song is available on WiMP and Spotify.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that Fastened Bulbous had a prior name, but couldn't recall what it was. I have since then looked through my archive of old cover- and poster sketches, and I found the sleeve we used for the democassette that was mentioned in that post. As it turns out, the first name was Thirty Seconds. Like the name Fastened Bulbous, this is a reference to a mutual favorite musician/band, namely Pere Ubu, who's debutsingle from 1976 had a song called 30 Seconds Over Tokyo (also, a film made in 1944 is named that). Evidently, there was also a skate-/hardcorepunk band around in the mid-90s using the same reference ..

I suppose everybody know the reference of the name Fastened Bulbous?

We tried to find a logo for Thirty Seconds. First, we coaxed bassist PG into coming up with suggestions for a hand designed logo. The last of these attempts , which is only a few of the many that he made, was actually used for the cassette. Later, friend and artist Asle Nyborg suggested a few logoes (one of which can be seen here), but by the time we were ready to release some new music, we had changed our name...

Although we recorded five songs for our demo, the released version only had three songs, and Hey was not one of them. Part of the reason for this was probably that we had not yet decided to drop the rather strenuous and quite frankly annoying extra guitar inbetween the verses. At least as I recall it, we all thought that the song became much better without it. But who were we to judge? Listen to the song(s), and judge for yourself - which is the better version? (there's also a few other minor differences)

Fastened Bulbous - Hard to Shine

This song is available on WiMP and Spotify.

I started this blog with the intention of uploading songs that for most part have been released (with the exception of the songs by VEP, who never released anything) and in the version they were released. So far this only goes for one. This time, though, I provide the first song from the first album by Fastened Bulbous. The last of my songs to be written for that album, I still consider it to be one my best songwriting efforts. But, it must be noted, without the splendid basslines of PG, and the wonderful interaction between him and drummer Espen, this would have been a much lesser song. Or is it, more pretensiously, a piece? There are no choruses here, and therefore neither any verses, just a few themes sewn together.

I remember making this song on a Saturday in August 1995. Somehow I came up with the main riff (the "verse") that morning. It seemed so urgent to finish that song asap that I wrote the other themes and came up with their sequence within a couple of hours. I think this flow in working out the song is reflected in the song itself. At least to my math-rock ears, the various themes come and go as a fairly natural flow (unlike most math-rock, where the various themes are attached in a more - deliberately - contrived manner). Few of my songs have been so little altered in its way from demo to final version. Most other songs display band-efforts, either in rehearsals or in the recording studio.

I have never hidden the fact that this song is inspired by the complex post-hardcore of Rodan. In fact, the working title of the song was "Kentucky" (Rodan hailed from Louisville, Kentucky), and the final title is a line from their song Shiner. Of course, there are attempts as having a melody here, unlike the shouting and whispering of Rodan.

I have done a slight remastering to each track/instrument here, and therefore also remixed it. However, I have tried to stay as close to the released version as possible (or at least, the intentions of the released version).

HelgeA - None Of That

I first got into noise in the mid 90s, through the first Rachels' album and Gastr del Sol. Mixed with classical instruments, the noise on The Rachels' record is mostly atmospheric and analogue. I even sampled some of this noise for one of the songs on the first Fastened Bulbous album. Gastr del Sol's noise is also for most part analogue and mixed with instruments. Later, because of a mutual interest in all films weird, I struck a friendship with Lasse Marhaug, which expanded my noise-interest into the digital domain, and into music that consists entirely of noise. This interest can, for instance, be heard on the second and third Fastened Bulbous releases, and on this song, made in June 2000. I seldom make things without any instruments though, and the source of the processed noise is almost always the guitar or a drumloop.

Like the first solo-song posted, this song was born through sheer experimentation, in trying out my computer's capabilities for sampling, looping and general noise-making. Actually, the song started by watching Cedric Klapisch' film Chacun Cherche son Chat on VHS. In one scene, some distant drumming is heard. I liked the sound of those drums and decided to sample them. If I'm not mistaken, I stopped the movie right there and then, hooked the VCR to the computer, and captured the drums, before proceeding to watch the movie (this does not indicate that the movie is boring, in fact is is highly recommended, just that the drum sound was so captivating).

Because of the surrounding sounds belonging to the movie (street noise, dialogue etc) that I did not want to grab, the drum sample was fairly small. The rhythmic figure therefore turned out quite strange (5, or even 5 1/2, over 4, or something), but I liked that, and rather than cutting it down to 4/4, I kept it like it was, and built some guitar and bass around the loop. Both instruments are themselves looped (once I got them fairly right in terms of rhythm, not that easy!).

I have made other pieces with much more digital noise (and some of them might turn up here eventually), which in almost all cases is made from manipulating sounds stemming from the guitar. Apart from some synth-noise, all the processed noise in this song, however, is generated from the drum track. There's also some good old-fashioned non-manipulated guitar clinks and noise.

VEP - I Know You Now

I close the week with another unreleased song by VEP. Again from those hurried sessions mentioned in the previous post. When I joined the band, I listened to some tapes from the early to mid-90s filled with sketches and small ideas for songs. After all, VEP was quite different from Fastened Bulbous, which meant that most of my then recent ideas for songs did not suit VEP very well. I found this little idea that I had taped using Håvard Oppøyen's acoustic guitar. This dates the sketch to sometime in '93, as I borrowed his guitar for a few months back then. Thinking that the sketch was quite catchy, I developed it into a "proper" song (i.e., I added another sequence of verse/chorus and wrote lyrics).

This is, in a sense, my New Zealand song, with the strumming and all; no acoustic guitars left now, but its acoustic origin comes through in the strumming. Although I never intended it to, and despite the differences of melodic type, the song reminds me of The Bats, my 5th or 6th favorite New Zealand band from the 1980s (Softcocks used to cover Made Up In Blue). The influence is perhaps exhibited clearest in the minimalist guitar solo.

It is not only the solo that is minimalist. The verse and the chorus is built around the same three chords, played in the same sequence and in the same manner. Only the small bridge before each chorus breaks this pattern for a slight moment. The melody, likewise, is built around repetitions, with only small variations, and a chorus that echoes part of the verse. I'm not even sure it should be called a chorus.

I was about to post the song earlier, but discovered that the guitars were out of tune! Consequently, I have re-recorded them. So, this song is "fresh from the pressing plant", sort of.

We never managed to get this song as catchy as it had sounded on the original sketch, not in rehearsals and not in this recording. But it's a nice little song, in its inconspicious manner. In any way, it is the purest POP-song I've ever written, I believe.

Edit: A slightly different version has been posted, Per's comment relates to the earlier version. Description of the differences can be found here.

Softcocks - She, Me & He

This song is available on WiMP and Spotify.

I start this week with a follow-up from last week's last post. This song was my contribution to those 8-track recordings. Except from one song (Nasal Sex), my songs were brought into the band at a stage where they still were quite unfinished. For most part, they needed finalizing of both arrangement / chord-progression and melody. Usually, we never got around to finish them. Partly because I was very undecided about how I wanted them to sound like (new ideas every week) and partly because the sketches didn't show much promise (even after weeks of new ideas).

Unlike the song posted last week, this is not a favorite from those sessions, and maybe it should have been left behind like so many of the other songs of mine. Although we had worked on it to some degree in rehearsals, it was finalized through the recording process (quite similar to how my songs on the last two Fastened Bulbous EPs was created, something that I'll return to in a later post). Of course, once the drums were recorded the overall arrangement was more or less set, but we experimented a lot with guitar lines and guitar sounds / noise, and also the melody before we settled on what can be heard here. From what it sounded like when we started recording it, it turned out quite OK.

The lyrics are really quite silly, and were carried over from one of those discarded songs (maybe a snippet of the "melody" on the verse also). I never put much effort into the lyrics and consider them a necessary evil when wanting to have vocals in a song. Except for Robyn Hitchcock, nobody should try to write funny lyrics. Least of all I. This song's proof of that.

This version is taken from a cassette downmix, so the sound quality is a bit muddier than the previous song, which was digitalized directly from the 8-track source, and then remixed.

Softcocks - Not To See

This song is available on WiMP and Spotify.

I once was in a band called Softcocks. No one else thought much of the name. We were quite happy with it ourselves, but then again, up until we came up with that name, we were called Lazy Sperms. 'Softcocks' was a contraction of the names of two of our mutual favorite bands, Soft Boys and Buzzcocks. I guess we would have made things easier for ourselves had we named our band Buzzboys instead.

Anyway, Softcocks was the first proper band I played in. When we started up, in november 1989, I still only knew how to play two barre chords; the 'E' and the 'A' variant (and I hardly ever got the 'A' right, still can't). We started out with a mix of originals and cover songs (of such rock notabilities as Painters and Dockers, for instance).

Our first months were drumless. Not drummERless, mind you, we had a drummer, Håvard Oppøyen, but he had no drums. The rest of us, Håvard Kløften - bass, Per Fikse - guitar, and Per Terje Smiseth - vocal, weren't that much better equipped either (no pun intended, considering our name). The first rehearsals went along with only two amplifiers: vocals and guitar through one and guitar and bass through the other. Formidablè. Unfortunately, no recordings exists from that period. Actually, we did record our first rehearsals, but cassettes were so expensive back then (you'd get one 60-minute tape for the price of 20-30 CD-Rs today!) that we taped over these recordings once Håvard O half a year later got himself a drumkit and joined us for rehearsals. What a shame!

Over the next couple of years, we steadily got more and better equipment and finally, in the autumn of 1992, we bought an used 8-track tape recorder and a mixing unit (actually, we bought them from Mikkel Eriksen from Grammy-winning songwriting/production team Stargate). Before we broke up the summer afterwards, we had managed to record a handful of songs. In my mind, these songs should have fared better than they did - probably less than 10 people have heard these songs. Well, time to rectify that.

Not To See is a personal favorite from those recordings. It is not written by me, but by Per F. Somehow I think it points forward to Per Fs and my band Fastened Bulbous rather than backwards to Softcocks' admittedly eclectic 10", Popped Out. It was certainly one of those songs that, when I was playing it, made me realize that my pop-days was nearing an end. I wanted heavier and noisier guitars and more non-pop arrangements than what seemed natural to fit into the Softcocks catalogue.

Don't be surprised if more songs from these 8-track sessions turn up later.

Fastened Bulbous - Hey (FixdMix) (+ bonus)

A double "treat" this time. First out is Hey, a song by Fastened Bulbous, a band that never has offically disbanded. For those who know our records (...), you will recognize the song, but not the version. It's the same take that can be found on our first record Strange Interlude, but with an additional guitardub on the verses that - fortunately - disappeared before the record was released. Also, the mix is slightly different. This song was made in a transitional phase for me, as a songwriter; wanting to make something else than fairly short popish songs, but hadn't yet started making looong, mostly instrumental songs, which dominated my "songwriting ouevre" the next few years.

Fastened Bulbous grew out of a feedback combo sometimes called The Moron Twins, consiting of Per Fikse and myself. We recorded a 3-song demo in the summer of '94, using a very basic drummachine (with the exception of one song which featured the drumming of Softcock Håvard Oppøyen), and on the basis of the demo we lured drummer Espen Mindrebø into the band and persuaded guitarist Odd Johansen to try out the bass. Odd soon left and was replaced by another guitarist, now mostly pianist, PG Fostad (agreeing to join while being drunk, regretting it ever since). Like VEP, rehearsals were infrequent, but we did manage to record a 5-song demo in the spring of '95. This song is from that session. If I'm not mistaken, we had yet to come up with the name, so we called ourselves something else on the few cassettes distributed, but if this indeed is the case I can't remember what. (edit: see this post)

Bonus-song!

Today's bonus is from yours truly, recorded under my ongoing solo-guise HelgeA. So, What Else Is New? is from the summer of 1990, when I lived only a four-lane road from the rehearsal space of Softcocks. That summer I lent my father's 2-track tape recorder, and fiddled around with it a lot. Purely experimental, the "song" was recorded in the sole purpose of testing what the equipment offered (not much, it turned out, apart from sound-on-sound and delay). This song is - believe it or not - previously released, on a cassette that commemorated the 6th anniversary of fanzine publisher/record company P-Productions.

I had, of course, no idea that J Mascis was making a (much longer and better) song by the same name at the same time.

VEP - Sleeping It Off

First band out was last band in. VEP lasted about three years, but only managed to pull off 20-or-so rehearsals. The band was started in the summer of 2000 by Aud Sissel Hoel (bass) and Karine Kristiansen (vocal), primarily so that the former could learn how to play the bassguitar. To ensure a rock solid beat she could lean against, they enlisted Ståle Solvang to play the drums. However, he had never played his instrument before either, so it was off to a shaky start.

A repertoire of a few coversongs dominated the first few, guitarless, months. Roe Fremstedal stepped in for some guitarplaying at one point, but it didn't gel. I came in after that, probably towards the end of 2000, and for awhile there, we mangaged to rehearse as often as once a month. Over the next two years, the repertoire expanded: more coversongs (Pylon, The Alley Cats, Throwing Muses, Popguns, Siouxie and the Banshees, Peter and Gordon, and more), and finally, also some original numbers. For the last two or three rehearsals, Aage Asphaug did the drumming.

In the autumn of 2003, Karine announced that she was moving to Oslo. A hurried recording session was set up to immortalize the 8-9 songs that we had composed. Karine sang over a backing consisting of sampled drums (we had no time or space to record real drums) and some rudimentary bass and guitar, both instruments played by me. The demoes was never finalized, so this recording, like the rest, is marred by my "preliminary" basslines. Also, the sampled drums are still there.

This short song was brought in by me, meant as an instrumental (and with a different title, which I can't remember now), but Karine came up with some lyrics and a melody. Don't be surprised if more songs from this recording session turn up.


Edit: I have uploaded a slightly different mix - guitars are turned down a bit compared to the first upload. Must have been the MP3-conversion that cranked up the guitars in the first one...

A highly personal blog

I mean to use this space to sample some of the music that I've participated in making and recording over the years. Not a large selection, just a few tasters from various bands and constellations.

For most part, I will only post things that I've written myself (this way, I don't have to ask for - and probably not get - anyone's permission...)

More (that is to say, something) to come...