In 2010 Pica Disk ventures on its most ambitious project yet: to release one Jazkamer CD-album every month of the year.
The Jazkamer 2010-series will be 12 proper new albums. The idea is to keep things exciting all the way, so in keeping with Jazkamer’s eclectic tradition of making very different sounding records, each monthly album will cover the wide (non)musical range Jazkamer has become known for since they started in 1998. This includes:
• First studio recordings of the metal line-up since ”Metal Music Machine” album
• New ”Art Breaker”-style grindcore recordings
• New ”Panic”-style broken-blues material
• Collaborations with John Wiese, Putrefier, Government Alpha and others
• Material with regular four-piece line-up of Hegre, Marhaug, Gross and Drønen
• And much more. Expect some surprises along the way also.
The CD’s will be packaged in proper digipak covers, and each will feature artwork by a different visual artist, like Savage Pencil, Martín Escalante, Jose de Diego, Justin Bartlett, Yasutoshi Yoshida and others.
Subscription in Europe: 156 US $ (= 13$ per CD, including postage)
Subscription rest of the World: 180 US $ (= 15$ per CD, including postage)
Make payment to Paypal-account: mail@lassemarhaug.no
For this price you will receive one Jazkamer album in the mail every month. The price includes postage. The CD’s will also be available separately, but then at regular prices.
Jazkamer: http://jazkamer.blogspot.com/
Pica Disk: http://picadisk.com/
mandag 30. november 2009
torsdag 15. oktober 2009
onsdag 14. oktober 2009
Jazkamer 2010 Monthly Series
In 2010 Jazkamer will release one CD every month on Pica Disk. A subscription service will be available. Complete info on this series with prices will be posted in a few days. Send an email to mail (at) lassemarhaug (dot) no if you wish to be emailed the information.
lørdag 15. august 2009
LOS BASTARDOS out on DVD
LOS BASTARDOS in now out on DVD in the US. Available from Amazon or DVDPacific.
A multiple award winner and 2008 Cannes Film Festival selection, Amat Escalante's Los Bastardos "looks and sounds very impressive" (Variety), and makes an indelibly disturbing impact.
Like the rest of the day-laboring migrant workers who gather together each morning on a southwestern American strip mall sidewalk, Jesus (Jesus Moises Rodriguez) and Fausto (Rubén Sosa) struggle to get ahead in El Norte. But when a callous gringo boss strands them in the middle of a community that exploits them one minute and insults them the next, the two young men cock their sawed off shotgun and calmly take a troubled housewife hostage in her own home. "Why are you doing this?," asks Karen (Nina Zavarin), a strung- out and paranoid divorcee with little left to lose. "Por la dinero," replies Jesus. Before Los Bastardos reaches its shockingly violent climax, Jesus, Fausto, and Karen will have mapped out a contemporary North American wasteland of affectless, benumbed amorality far surpassing mere greed.
Co-produced by Carlos Reygadas (Silent Light, Battle in Heaven), Los Bastardos plumbs the depths of human brutality with the same cool cinematic certitude as the work of Michael Haneke and Bruno Dumont.
A multiple award winner and 2008 Cannes Film Festival selection, Amat Escalante's Los Bastardos "looks and sounds very impressive" (Variety), and makes an indelibly disturbing impact.
Like the rest of the day-laboring migrant workers who gather together each morning on a southwestern American strip mall sidewalk, Jesus (Jesus Moises Rodriguez) and Fausto (Rubén Sosa) struggle to get ahead in El Norte. But when a callous gringo boss strands them in the middle of a community that exploits them one minute and insults them the next, the two young men cock their sawed off shotgun and calmly take a troubled housewife hostage in her own home. "Why are you doing this?," asks Karen (Nina Zavarin), a strung- out and paranoid divorcee with little left to lose. "Por la dinero," replies Jesus. Before Los Bastardos reaches its shockingly violent climax, Jesus, Fausto, and Karen will have mapped out a contemporary North American wasteland of affectless, benumbed amorality far surpassing mere greed.
Co-produced by Carlos Reygadas (Silent Light, Battle in Heaven), Los Bastardos plumbs the depths of human brutality with the same cool cinematic certitude as the work of Michael Haneke and Bruno Dumont.
fredag 17. juli 2009
tirsdag 14. juli 2009
New York 2006
The final duo by Jazkamer (Lasse Marhaug and John Hegre) produced a set lacking in any focus or direction, an aimless, energy fuelled heap of wildly twisted dials and runaway power electronics. It was loud enough to clear half of the exhausted room to the lobby, but the volume was not the problem. I have no idea how much control Marhaug and Hegre had over the resulting music – they barely looked at their equipment as they wrenched it about – but it suffered from a complete lack of depth and substance, consisting of little more than a scrambled screeching mess of sound. As it came to an end my escape from the hall was rapid.
lørdag 11. juli 2009
torsdag 18. juni 2009
Merzbow/Jazzkammer: Live At Molde International Jazz Festival
Jazz classic for download:
http://staticcollaborative.blogspot.com/search/label/Jazkamer
What the press said back in 2001:
I can't imagine this being in heavy rotation in your CD player. There are a lot better discs of electronic noise improv out there, including by the artists' themselves. (Nate Smith, brainwashed.com)
Really irritatingly good. (Johnson Cummins, Montreal Mirror)
Platen fremstår mer som en bulldoser som sakte, men sikkert bygger seg opp mot et iskaldt klimaks. Men du bør legge tradisjonelle forestillinger om rytme og melodi bak deg før du våger deg ut på dette. (Øyvind Holen, Aftenposten)
En blanding av field recordings, frijazzbeats, piano, death metal gitar og elektronisk genererte støystrukturer presentert via laptops, gjør dette til en spesielt spennende lydopplevelse som bør inspirere til et dypere dykk i både Merzbows og Jazzkammers katalog.
(Carl Kristian Johansen, Groove.no)
http://staticcollaborative.blogspot.com/search/label/Jazkamer
What the press said back in 2001:
I can't imagine this being in heavy rotation in your CD player. There are a lot better discs of electronic noise improv out there, including by the artists' themselves. (Nate Smith, brainwashed.com)
Really irritatingly good. (Johnson Cummins, Montreal Mirror)
Platen fremstår mer som en bulldoser som sakte, men sikkert bygger seg opp mot et iskaldt klimaks. Men du bør legge tradisjonelle forestillinger om rytme og melodi bak deg før du våger deg ut på dette. (Øyvind Holen, Aftenposten)
En blanding av field recordings, frijazzbeats, piano, death metal gitar og elektronisk genererte støystrukturer presentert via laptops, gjør dette til en spesielt spennende lydopplevelse som bør inspirere til et dypere dykk i både Merzbows og Jazzkammers katalog.
(Carl Kristian Johansen, Groove.no)
fredag 12. juni 2009
The Art of Smashing Guitars
By THOR CHRISTENSEN
The Dallas Morning News
The rules of romance say if you love something, set it free. But the rules of rock tell you to smash it to smithereens.
"Taking a guitar you love and wrecking it is incredibly exciting. It's the ultimate statement of anarchy," says Joe Perry of Aerosmith.
"You're trying to shatter the audience's mind, so why not start with the tangible: the guitar?" says ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons.
Guitar smashing is a time-honored sacrament in rock 'n' roll used by everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Kurt Cobain to today's bands like the Vines. It's easy to see why. For the smasher, it's pure catharsis. For the fan, it's the vicarious thrill of watching stuff get destroyed - a demolition derby with power chords.
But 40 years after Pete Townshend of the Who annihilated his first electric guitar, the ritual still polarizes the rock world.
"To me, it's show biz. I don't see much value to it, to be honest," says Eric Clapton.
"I once smashed a guitar onstage in pure rage because I got an electric shock that scared the living daylights out of me. But as soon as I did it, I regretted it. It was my favorite guitar, and even after I repaired it, it was never the same."
"I've never even tried it," says Carlos Santana. "I'll sacrifice other things, but not my guitar."
Like so many inventions, guitar demolition began as an accident. In 1964, during a show at London's Railway Station nightclub, Townshend began waving and jerking his electric Rickenbacker to try to make it stop whistling. He banged it on the club's low ceiling, impressing one fan so much he asked the guitarist to do it again in the second set.
When he did, the guitar snapped in half, stunning both the crowd and Townshend.
"I had no recourse but to look as though I meant to do it, so I smashed the guitar and jumped all over the bits ... it gave me a fantastic buzz," he said in the Who biography "Before I Get Old."
The London press got wind of the smash-up and dispatched photographers. Thrilled by the notoriety, Townshend began obliterating guitars regularly, telling reporters it was his statement of antimaterialism and comparing himself to German autodestruct artists who built sculptures designed to collapse.
"To me, it wasn't violence or random destruction," Townshend said. "It was art."
The idea spread, and in the 1966 drama "Blowup," director Michelangelo Antonioni captured Jeff Beck of the Yardbirds smashing his ax and hurling the pieces to the crowd, which fought over them like jackals.
Soon after "Blowup" premiered, a rising young guitar hero named Jimi Hendrix also started bashing his instrument onstage. An angry Townshend confronted him backstage at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and demanded he stop stealing his act.
But Jimi wisely refused to budge. Today, pictures of Hendrix setting his Strat on fire and breaking it to shards are some of the most famous images in rock history.
"When I saw Hendrix do that at Monterey, it was like a supreme sacrifice from out of the Bible," says Santana. "It was very spiritual and voodoo-like, and I think he was taking music all the way back to Africa ... I didn't get the same feeling from Peter Townshend. He was more like a brat throwing a television."
By the time both acts got to Woodstock in '69, hordes of young guitarists were already emulating them, including a Dallas teenager named Jimmie Vaughan.
"It was so cool because it was so wrong," says Vaughan, whose band, the Chessmen, opened for Jimi Hendrix at SMU in 1968. "We couldn't afford to break our own guitars, so we'd get a lousy one and break it onstage just to see if we could do it."
Other fledgling smashers made the mistake of using expensive guitars, which didn't splinter so easily.
"Have you ever tried smashing a baseball bat against a cement wall?" asks Aerosmith's Perry. "That's what it's like trying to smash a Stratocaster - it doesn't give. But you're so loaded with adrenaline, you just keep doing it, even though it hurts."
The novelty wore off in the early '70s, but the act blossomed again during the punk era.
Paul Simonon of the Clash is seen crushing a bass guitar on the cover of "London Calling" (1979). And in the '90s, alternative rockers such as Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam fractured their guitars for audiences too young to remember Hendrix.
The Dallas Morning News
The rules of romance say if you love something, set it free. But the rules of rock tell you to smash it to smithereens.
"Taking a guitar you love and wrecking it is incredibly exciting. It's the ultimate statement of anarchy," says Joe Perry of Aerosmith.
"You're trying to shatter the audience's mind, so why not start with the tangible: the guitar?" says ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons.
Guitar smashing is a time-honored sacrament in rock 'n' roll used by everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Kurt Cobain to today's bands like the Vines. It's easy to see why. For the smasher, it's pure catharsis. For the fan, it's the vicarious thrill of watching stuff get destroyed - a demolition derby with power chords.
But 40 years after Pete Townshend of the Who annihilated his first electric guitar, the ritual still polarizes the rock world.
"To me, it's show biz. I don't see much value to it, to be honest," says Eric Clapton.
"I once smashed a guitar onstage in pure rage because I got an electric shock that scared the living daylights out of me. But as soon as I did it, I regretted it. It was my favorite guitar, and even after I repaired it, it was never the same."
"I've never even tried it," says Carlos Santana. "I'll sacrifice other things, but not my guitar."
Like so many inventions, guitar demolition began as an accident. In 1964, during a show at London's Railway Station nightclub, Townshend began waving and jerking his electric Rickenbacker to try to make it stop whistling. He banged it on the club's low ceiling, impressing one fan so much he asked the guitarist to do it again in the second set.
When he did, the guitar snapped in half, stunning both the crowd and Townshend.
"I had no recourse but to look as though I meant to do it, so I smashed the guitar and jumped all over the bits ... it gave me a fantastic buzz," he said in the Who biography "Before I Get Old."
The London press got wind of the smash-up and dispatched photographers. Thrilled by the notoriety, Townshend began obliterating guitars regularly, telling reporters it was his statement of antimaterialism and comparing himself to German autodestruct artists who built sculptures designed to collapse.
"To me, it wasn't violence or random destruction," Townshend said. "It was art."
The idea spread, and in the 1966 drama "Blowup," director Michelangelo Antonioni captured Jeff Beck of the Yardbirds smashing his ax and hurling the pieces to the crowd, which fought over them like jackals.
Soon after "Blowup" premiered, a rising young guitar hero named Jimi Hendrix also started bashing his instrument onstage. An angry Townshend confronted him backstage at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and demanded he stop stealing his act.
But Jimi wisely refused to budge. Today, pictures of Hendrix setting his Strat on fire and breaking it to shards are some of the most famous images in rock history.
"When I saw Hendrix do that at Monterey, it was like a supreme sacrifice from out of the Bible," says Santana. "It was very spiritual and voodoo-like, and I think he was taking music all the way back to Africa ... I didn't get the same feeling from Peter Townshend. He was more like a brat throwing a television."
By the time both acts got to Woodstock in '69, hordes of young guitarists were already emulating them, including a Dallas teenager named Jimmie Vaughan.
"It was so cool because it was so wrong," says Vaughan, whose band, the Chessmen, opened for Jimi Hendrix at SMU in 1968. "We couldn't afford to break our own guitars, so we'd get a lousy one and break it onstage just to see if we could do it."
Other fledgling smashers made the mistake of using expensive guitars, which didn't splinter so easily.
"Have you ever tried smashing a baseball bat against a cement wall?" asks Aerosmith's Perry. "That's what it's like trying to smash a Stratocaster - it doesn't give. But you're so loaded with adrenaline, you just keep doing it, even though it hurts."
The novelty wore off in the early '70s, but the act blossomed again during the punk era.
Paul Simonon of the Clash is seen crushing a bass guitar on the cover of "London Calling" (1979). And in the '90s, alternative rockers such as Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam fractured their guitars for audiences too young to remember Hendrix.
Jazkamer cover Brainbombs
Japanese cult-noise label Xerxes have started a compilation CD/mini-zine called Frequency of Decomposition. Volume one has a Jazkamer interview and on the CD a coversong of Brainbombs' "Ass Fucking Murder", recorded back in 2002. Like everyone else Jazkamer loves Brainbombs.
Jazkamer at Musica Genera
Jazkamer will be performing at Musica Genera in Warszawa, Poland on june 28th. Lasse will also be doing a duo with John Wiese on june 27th. Full program for this excellent festival at http://www.musicagenera.net/
lørdag 6. juni 2009
søndag 17. mai 2009
2006 interview
Though Lasse Marhaug has been pushing abrasive, midnight tones for over a decade, he’s keen to disassociate himself with the church burning arm of the Norwegian Black Metal scene that torched their way to prominence in the mid-90s.
“I can appreciate the energy of the music and its aim at deconstructing taboos, but essentially the scene was just a group of teenagers who started believing their own hype,” says the stocky musician. “Anybody who lets the media affect what they do like they did doesn’t deserve respect.”
Marhaug’s penchant for experimentation and refusal to conform can be linked to his remote upbringing in the glacial northern expanses of Norway, where his only connection with music was through his own unique work. “I put out fanzines and released tapes without ever meeting anybody related to the music I was involved with,” he admits. “I hadn’t even seen any of that type of music live. The first noise concert I experienced was one I performed myself.”
After years spent pummelling Scandinavia’s nightspots alone, Marhaug found a co-conspirator in fellow sonic saboteur John Hegre and in 1998 Jazkamer was born. “I performed a really intense gig and John was one of very few people not to flee the room,” laughs Marhaug recalling the chance meeting. “After corresponding for a while we decided to work together on a permanent basis.”
Since then the duo’s genre-hopping sonics have taken them around the world, collaborating on stage with a range of heavyweights including Sunn0))) and Merzbow, and releasing over 40 albums and EPs. Latest long player ‘Balls the size of Texas, Liver the size of Brazil’ is arguably their most innovative work to date, with subtle touches of distortion and ENO-like ambience yoked to dense washes of reverb and amplified feedback. It’s an album that triumphs in size and scope. This weekend sees the pair sharing a stage with Tinnitus inducing taskmaster Mark Durgan, with whom they’re releasing a split 7” single on Newcastle based noise label No-Fi. Always improvised, live Jazkamer are a clamorous force, with Marhaug and Hegre yelling into microphones whilst whacking their instruments off every hard surface in sight. “We never learnt how to play conventionally,” says Marhaug of their intense stage shows. “We just make music to the best of our limited abilities and try to get away with it.”
Download METAL MUSIC MACHINE
Download Jazkamer's 2006 album METAL MUSIC MACHINE from this blog:
http://bravojuju.blogspot.com/2008/12/jazkamer-metal-music-machine-2006.html
Because free music is good music.
First post
For various reason the Jazzkammer.com site is down. Maybe it will be back later. Maybe not.
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