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The sound of water filtered through a ring modulator.
Harmonics on a cello mixed with the sound of wind.
Squeeks and noise from outer space.
A recording of my grandfather singing an old swedish song.
A bass flute playing a melody.
A symphony orchestra playing long notes that creates a texture of slowly changing harmonies.
Birds, especially sea birds.
A distant sawmill.
Footsteps on a wooden bridge.
A viola da gamba with it’s old sound quality.
pink noise from a radio.
A philicorda organ recorded with a microphone and then digitally processed through filters and effects.
A trumpet pitched down 2 octaves.
Whispering voices.
Prepared piano.
Prepared Kantele played with a bow.
My idea is to create a musical soundscape. The music is there not as songs or tracks but as a soundscape along with all the other sounds. You should enter the installation as you enter a room where you will stay for a while to contemplate over the idea of north. The sounds has no narrative line to follow, they are just there juxtaposed to each others. Sometimes with a meaning, sometimes by coincidence, but all the time as a never ending wave or flood of details that creates a stillness that goes beyond the world we are used to live in. I am thinking of a quadrophonic sound system, or 5.1 but it’s not important. For me it can be 7 speakers playing individually. Or 3. The important thing is to create a room where the audience will stay for 10, 15 or 25 minutes to think or just be there. (Leif)
What is typical for a northern soul? Is it the fact that we live in a country so far up in the north? Is it the temperature or the weather that creates our personality? Or maybe we are not so unique, maybe it’s not the fact that we live in the north that creates this character.
We say that we live in the north but even more we live in a country that is close to the wide open, to the big eternity, to oblivion. All northern countries have big areas with mountains or forests, far from civilization and without human beings, and everytime I visit these places I get this special feeling that I am so small in the world. It’s scary but also comforting and it leaves a huge emptiness inside that follows me wherever I go. I have met people from places like Ireland, Portugal and Cape Verde who lives close to the wide open sea and I can see the same kind of personality as we have up here in the north and I think that it is living close to the wild, wide open that creates this charactheristic souls compared to people who lives in the middle of civilization with no wild nature close. All this countries have words, music or expressions to explain their own sadness or melancholy. Saudade in Portugal, the music style Morna in Cape Verde, the Irish verbal tradition of telling sad stories in the pub and the nordic melancholy expressed in our souls and knowned worldwide. I remember the first time I came to Berlin, it was before -89 and the opening of the wall. Most of the people I met never went out of the city. The closest they got to nature was visiting a park on Sunday afternoon. Or living in Holland or Belgium where wild nature doesn’t exist at all. I believe it must be so different to grow up in the middle of Europe from being raised in one of the corners of the world. It must be different to grow up in a place where you learn, as a child, to be street smart than to grow up in a place where you have to walk alone 20 minutes through a big forest to get the bus to the nearest village.
So maybe it’s not a northern thing at all. Maybe it has to do with living close to something that is so much bigger than ourselves, so much bigger than we can imagine.
In the 80’s the experimental group The Residents did a project called “Eskimo”. The record was like a fake anthropological research of the life amongst the eskimos lives. Or not fake - All the sounds are produced electronically and in the style of what they have been doing in other records with odd versions of pop songs. But this time they’ve created an ambient soundscape that is congenial with the stories about walrus hunting, tales about Nanook and daily life. Strange choirs - electronically processed - takes you to a land far from civilization. This is a part of a film that they made with the material.
And they haven’t been The Residents if they haven’t released a maxi single a couple of months later with the title “Discomo”. The same ambient sounds but with a drum machine playing disco on top of it.
Music for n.waves. This is a recording of a Philicorda organ where I used different materials to hold different keys for a long time - matches, stickers and more. Then I’ve edited the music with a filter in my computer. I like the mix of analogue and digital and during the process of making this music I experimented a lot with acoustic instruments or analogue recordings filtered through a digital program. Then I added field recordings from the surroundings of Höga Kusten and an arrangement for three cellos.
Jag sitter i den södra delen av Portugal, ett av Europas sydligaste länder, och funderar på begreppet Nordlighet. Jag och videokonstnären Peter Norrman har nämligen blivit inbjudna av en teater i Newcastle, Northern Stage, att medverka i ett årslångt projekt där 40 olika konstnärer har bjudits in för att förhålla sig till begreppet ”Northernness”. Kanske ett försök att skapa en stolthet uppe i norra England, ett land där det mesta kretsar kring vad som händer i London. Video/Musik/Ljud-installationen använder sig av filmat material inspelat i Höga Kusten med ljud som bygger på fältinspelningar blandat med elektroniska klanger och en symfoniorkester. Vad som slår mig när jag tittar på Peters filmade material och vad jag vill komma åt i mitt ljudarbete är hur det lilla speglas i det stora och vice versa. Tusen små virvlar i vattnet eller snön bildar tillsammans en större virvel som är en kopia av de små och bilder som spegelvänds och läggs mot varandra bildar nya landskap som med sin stillhet strömmar mot oss likt resan in i det svarta hålet i filmen ”2001, en rymdodyssé”. På tal om rymden så hittade jag ljud från Saturnus inspelade av NASA. Det är sfärernas musik som sprakar och piper och jag har lagt de som solister ovanpå Västerås Sinfonietta som spelar oändligt långa stråkklanger. Installationen blir en plats för meditation över vad som är nordlighet – den stora stillheten och långsamheten som så stolt breder ut sig. Allt detta blir så extra tydligt här i vårt hus alldeles intill vägen mellan Faro och S. Bras där en ständigt pågående ström av hetsig trafik hörs utanför fönstret.
Vi pratar om nordlighet, Peter och jag. Han, som sedan 20 år, bor i New York men som har familjerötter i norra Sverige och jag som gift mig med en portugisiska och hela tiden ställs inför skillnader (och likheter) mellan våra karaktärsdrag i norra och södra Europa. Vi pratar mycket och lyssnar på Glenn Goulds radioföreställning ”The idea of north”, en röstkomposition för kanadensisk radio där rösterna glider in i varandra som en fuga. I en flod av information och snabbhet behöver vi definiera oss i vår nordlighet. Vi borde vara stolta för att vi tänker innan vi talar och för att vi lyssnar när någon pratar och vi borde vara medvetna om att den stora stillheten och långsamheten innehåller en oändlig mängd små virvlar och forsar som berättar sina egna historier.
Du kan läsa mer om projektet Northern stages och vad som händer där på följande sida: http://www.northernstages.co.uk/
