(Experimental, Avant-Garde, Jazz, Ambient, Free improvisation) Supersilent - 1-8 (Дискография) - 1997-2007, MP3 (tracks), 192-320 kbps

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Supersilent : 1-3
Over 3 hours totally improvised deathjazzambientavantrock from new limitstretching quartet featuring members and ex-members from Terje Rypdal Skywards, Farmers Market, Motorpsycho, Deathprod and Veslefrekk. Essential if you are looking for a musical challenge.
If the music lacks in subtlety and depth of interplay compared to later albums, it features a vivacity, excitement and sense of danger unheard of. In the course of these long improvisations (each disc contains a track at least 25 minutes long, many others reach 15 minutes), the group moves through countless moods, drawing from ecstatic jazz, avant-rock, noise and electroacoustics to produce captivating music that pushes far into experimentation and yet remains immediate, even at times accessible. Henriksen's finely chiselled lines evoke Miles Davis' fusion period, while Sten's electronics occasionally bring to mind Merzbow's harsh constructions. In between, we get the full avant-jam treatment without the psychedelic leanings of Jackie-O Motherfucker or the No-Neck Blues Band, and something in the cold warmth of the music (oxymoron, I know) that will become almost a trademark of Scandinavian experimentalism at the turn of the millennium. Highly recommended, although if you are looking for just a taste of Supersilent, you better start with a single-disc release. Alternative Music Guide (US)
Allegedly only meeting to play live and record, the four Supersilent members never rehearse nor discuss their music. Mixing hardcore noise processing, free jazz, avant-rock and electro-acoustic, Supersilent's first outburst was definitely a unique record. Containing thirteen tracks spread over the three parts of this album, some lasting over twenty five minutes, with the majority stretching between ten and fifteen minutes, this first album is an impressive if somehow daunting, piece of work. Refusing to induce any preconception about their music, Supersilent identify their compositions with numbers. Resulting of over ten hours of total improvisation, having be edited down to a mere three hours, eight minutes and thirty seconds exactly, 1-3 presents a variety of tones and ambiences, from the rough concussed soundscapes of 1.3 to the soft, airy atmospherics of 2.1, which give Arve Henriksen's incredible trumpet playing its most prominent space here. For a first release, 1-3 is definitely an impressive piece of recording. The essence of Supersilent already fuels these thirteen tracks unequivocally, constantly challenging the listener with unsettling concepts. Even for the more experienced listener, 1-3 remains an uneasy album, constantly offering different angles and shades as the band meticulously rejects all preconceived ideas of improvised music to set their own rules. Typical of the unashamedly diverse approach adopted by the majority of contemporary Scandinavian musicians, Supersilent set with this album the foundations for their later work.
Milkfactory (UK)
A daring and challenging release, free jazz meets avant rock. Granslost (SE)
This music is merciless and I love it. Klassekampen (NO)
Supersilent have created their own musical universe...a work that unfolds an untamed beast of incredible and far-out structures where sound and anti-sound (?) are combined with grooves and anti-grooves. Audio (NO)

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First release of the excellent Rune Grammofon label, 1-3 was a challenging record in more than one way. As Veslefrekk, trumpeter Arve Henriksen, keyboard player Stale Storlokken and drummer Jarle Vesepstad, three already established jazz musicians in there own right, had only released one album back in 1994. Yet, when they invited their sound engineer, Helge Sten, better known as Deathprod, to take part in a live improvisation during the 1997 Bergen Jazz Festival, it rapidly become obvious that the band was destined for greater things. The fruit of hours of improvisation in the studio, 1-3 was instantly hailed as a landmark record by a section of the Norwegian press, while others were left bewildered; one journalist even claiming it was the sickest record he’d ever heard. Now re-released in brand new packaging, characteristic of the minimal approach adopted by Kim Hiorthoy on the 3 consequent albums released by the band since, 1-3 is made available in the UK for the first time.
Allegedly only meeting to play live and record, the four Supersilent members never rehearse nor discuss their music. Mixing hardcore noise processing, free jazz, avant-rock and electro-acoustic, Supersilent’s first outburst was definitely a unique record. Containing thirteen tracks spread over the three parts of this album, some lasting over twenty five minutes, with the majority stretching between ten and fifteen minutes, this first album is an impressive, if somehow daunting, piece of work. Refusing to induce any preconception about their music, Supersilent identify their compositions with numbers. Resulting of over ten hours of total improvisation, having be edited down to a mere three hours, eight minutes and thirty seconds exactly, 1-3 presents a variety of tones and ambiences, from the rough concussed soundscapes of 1.3 to the soft, airy atmospherics of 2.1, which give Arve Henriksen's incredible trumpet playing its most prominent space here, or 2.4. Subdued moments however don’t last very long. At times perceptibly regimented and at others entirely chaotic, this album frustrates as much as it exhilarates. Nothing is obvious or straightforward here. Moments of relative calm often pre-empt more abrupt and ferocious constructions. Far for the more introvert improvisations heard on 5 or to a certain extend on 6, the tracks presented here all derive from a same vein. Developing musical themes from deep atmospheric to incendiary structures, Supersilent capture here the intensity of their live performances. A relative new formation at the time, they hadn’t yet entirely achieve the level of musical coherence and personal symbiosis witnessed on their later recordings and on the recent Midnight Sun tour.
For a first release, 1-3 is definitely an impressive piece of recording. The essence of Supersilent already fuels these thirteen tracks unequivocally, constantly challenging the listener with unsettling concepts. Even for the more experienced listener, 1-3 remains an uneasy album, constantly offering different angles and shades as the band meticulously rejects all preconceived ideas of improvised music to set their own rules. Typical of the unashamedly diverse approach adopted by the majority of contemporary Scandinavian musicians, Supersilent set with this album the foundations for their later work.

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Release Details
Label Rune Grammofon
Release Date Jan 12 1998
Country Norway
Format CD
Catalogue No. RCD 2001

Supersilent - 4 (00:49:34)
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
4.7

All Music Guide Review
The follow-up to the introductory package 1-3, 4 is the album that established the Norwegian quartet Supersilent as an up-and-coming free improv artist, drawing much attention from the magazine The Wire, especially. When all young artists were either drawn to lowercase or atmospheric experimental electro, the quartet dived into burning-hot free improvisation, blending jazz, rock, and electronica idioms with a distinctive Scandinavian touch -- something in the use of space and the field recordings that evokes the mountains, snow, and fjords of Norway. As usual, the tracks are numbered instead of titled as to obliterate any preconceptions. "4.1" begins atmospherically before the drummer starts rolling and pounding. But this introduction comes to an abrupt end and almost feels like a false start, a warm-up. "4.2" is also mostly atmospheric, but now the E-Bowed electric guitar is more prominently featured, along with treated voice samples. Drums escalate, synthesizers build tension, and the sonic battle has begun. An intentionally sloppier incarnation of Steamboat Switzerland could have recorded "4.3." The album's highlight resides in "4.6," a long improvisation with many twists, turns, and shifts in dynamics and moods. 4 shows Supersilent exploring an unheard-of fusion of free styles, sculpting their own niche. Recommended.
~Francois Couture

Supersilent - 5 (01:10:54)
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5

All Music Guide Review
The follow-up to the introductory package 1-3, 4 is the album that established the Norwegian quartet Supersilent as an up-and-coming free improv artist, drawing much attention from the magazine The Wire, especially. When all young artists were either drawn to lowercase or atmospheric experimental electro, the quartet dived into burning-hot free improvisation, blending jazz, rock, and electronica idioms with a distinctive Scandinavian touch -- something in the use of space and the field recordings that evokes the mountains, snow, and fjords of Norway. As usual, the tracks are numbered instead of titled as to obliterate any preconceptions. "4.1" begins atmospherically before the drummer starts rolling and pounding. But this introduction comes to an abrupt end and almost feels like a false start, a warm-up. "4.2" is also mostly atmospheric, but now the E-Bowed electric guitar is more prominently featured, along with treated voice samples. Drums escalate, synthesizers build tension, and the sonic battle has begun. An intentionally sloppier incarnation of Steamboat Switzerland could have recorded "4.3." The album's highlight resides in "4.6," a long improvisation with many twists, turns, and shifts in dynamics and moods. 4 shows Supersilent exploring an unheard-of fusion of free styles, sculpting their own niche. Recommended.
~Francois Couture

Supersilent - 6 (00:57:50)
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
6.6

All Music Guide Review
The follow-up to the introductory package 1-3, 4 is the album that established the Norwegian quartet Supersilent as an up-and-coming free improv artist, drawing much attention from the magazine The Wire, especially. When all young artists were either drawn to lowercase or atmospheric experimental electro, the quartet dived into burning-hot free improvisation, blending jazz, rock, and electronica idioms with a distinctive Scandinavian touch -- something in the use of space and the field recordings that evokes the mountains, snow, and fjords of Norway. As usual, the tracks are numbered instead of titled as to obliterate any preconceptions. "4.1" begins atmospherically before the drummer starts rolling and pounding. But this introduction comes to an abrupt end and almost feels like a false start, a warm-up. "4.2" is also mostly atmospheric, but now the E-Bowed electric guitar is more prominently featured, along with treated voice samples. Drums escalate, synthesizers build tension, and the sonic battle has begun. An intentionally sloppier incarnation of Steamboat Switzerland could have recorded "4.3." The album's highlight resides in "4.6," a long improvisation with many twists, turns, and shifts in dynamics and moods. 4 shows Supersilent exploring an unheard-of fusion of free styles, sculpting their own niche. Recommended.
~Francois Couture

Supersilent - 7 (01:48:38)
7.1
7.2
7.3
7.4
7.5
7.6
7. bonus

Supersilent - 8 (01:08:21)
8.1
8.2
8.3
8.4
8.5
8.6
8.7
8.8
Reviews
Helge Sten, Stale Storlokken, Arve Henriksen and Jarle Vespestad celebrate 10 years as a groundbreaking quartet with their first studio album in almost 5 years. Their music lives in a no-man's-land between the genres, somewhere between rock, electronica, jazz and modern composition. Yes, we say composition because when listening it?s not far fetched to think it could have been, although everything here is improvised, as it has always been with Supersilent. With ”8” they have yet again re-invented themselves, exploring more abstract and mysterious pathways and ending up even further away from traditional categories.
Rune Grammofone
The shadow of "Dark Magus" hangs heavy over the house of Supersilent. But this groundbreaking "jazz" group?s strenght has always been in extrapolating and exaggerating Miles Davis?pioneering themes and twisting them into ever more abstract, icy and alien vistas. On this, their first album in five years, the Norwegian quartet pushes the mode even further, while inadvertently scripting an imaginary soundtrack for an Argento gore fest. Their opening salvo, a billowing beast of thunderous drums and doom bells tolling, is like a Hermann Nitsch aktion captured in time-lapse playback, while Arve Henriksen?s voice filters in like a temperamental cherub amid spluttering electronic geysers and whinnying synths, gradually morphing into a fearsome, hyperventilating, Tourettes-ridden cyborg. But it?s when they are at their most sedate that Supersilent pack the biggest punch. Henriksen?s circular trumpet playing forges an organic foundation with Helge Sten?s sine software textures, creating the kind of captivating ambient soundscapes that made "4" such a pleasure.
Plan B (UK)
There?s something reassuring in Supersilent?s dogged refusal to compromise, their absolute, almost mechanistic, commitment to pure spontaneous creation, uncluttered by extraneous conceptual distractions: no rehearsals, no discussions, no track titles, just an intense devotion to sound and all its unsettling possibilities. In their 10 years together, they?ve already hewn a reputation as one of the world?s most intense musical units but their eight numerically titled release - their first full-lenght album in nearly five years - finds the Norwegian noise-improv ambassadors taking their brooding, post-industrial doom-jazz to even darker depths. As ever, it?s a sound that defies easy labelling, drawing on equal measures of free-jazz, electronica and modern composition, and the eight improvisations collected here resound with a demonic foreboding only usually found in the most eldritch backwaters of heavy rock. Taken together, in one sobering dose, it?s a lonely, lost sound, a desolate voice crying out to be found in the endless reaches of empty space, proclaiming its existence in the face of nothingness. And it?s that persistence that makes it so very human.
Jazzwise (UK)
This marks a triumphant return to the studio for Norway?s icily impressive electro-jazz improvisers in their 10th year of existence. Kicking off proceedings with the foreboding clarity of "8.1" with its dark Moog squelches, tolling bell and scuzzed bass, by track two the mood soon mutates into what sounds like lunar distress signals from some forgotten galaxy. Jarle Vespestad?s fractured drumming dominates throughout, interplaying cleverly with Helge "Deathprod" Sten?s ochre electronics, while Arve Henriksen?s muted trumpet seems at times to be seeping through an air lock. Rounded off by Stale Storlokken?s eerie synth blasts, this somnabulant collection of threatening and otherwordly soundscapes confirms Supersilent as masters at the top of their game.
Rocksound (UK)
This might be this group of Norwegian improviser?s finest work yet. With so few acts even considering the breadth of sounds at their fingertips it?s good to see someone utilising a room full of instruments for more than somewhere to stash their hash block. The concealed threat of "8.1" starts the album, en extended piece of inimical Fugazi-style art rock, buffed with a bit of electro. Taking up a rise and fall pace, internally thrashing bruisers lying next to quieter experimental pieces, "8" refuses tp accept a signature style. While the album?s finest peaks are the quieter textures of the more electronic material, they still manage to out the noise. The pile drive of "8.7" leaves buckled guitars to run by themselves, pulling the song close to the edge of splitting apart. The glitchy percussion of "8.6" develops a sense of tension, things gelling slowly like a deconstructed Autechre.
Rock-A-Rolla (UK)
Supersilent specialize in intense improvised music, whose effect creeps up on you: you awake from for minutes of quiet drum tapping and find yourself amids crsahing guitar churn. It?s oddly cleansing. And though "8" touches on post rock, jazz, electronics, ambient and drone, there?s a nicely malevolent singularity of purpose here: it?s impressive, dark and invigorating.
Buzz (UK)
The album starts off in a very dark place indeed. “8.1” is a morass of rumbling and droning synths, a drumbeat like a whale’s heart heard from inside its stomach, and guitar that skronks periodically in the corner like a sulky child. The total effect is somewhere between Tangerine Dream and Black Sabbath: ominous and fearsomely loud. Much of the music comes from this creepy mindspace. “8.5” features distorted vocals and gentle, choir-of-haunted-angels synths hovering in the right speaker like something from a John Carpenter movie soundtrack. Given the general desolation and creepiness of the goings-on, it’s no surprise that trumpeter Henriksen, the gentlest spirit, is largely absent. He first shows up toward the end of “8.5,” blowing gentle, almost flute-like lines and shadowed by delicate synths. This is in large part a forbidding, cryptic album, occasionally almost metallic in its loudness but also disconcertingly beautiful.
Jazziz (US)
Mehrheitlich sind Supersilent zwar wahnsinnig ruhig, klingen als wurden sie den Soundtrack zu einem Arktis-Naturfilm einspielen...kein Wunder, dass den Horern nur zwei Optionen bleiben: Entweder driften die auch ab in diesen exaltierten Soundscapes oder sie stehen etwas fassungslos davor und wundern sich....
Ox-Fanzine (DE)
Auf ihrem neuen Album, das erste in funf Jahren, erfinden sich Supersilent wieder neu. Keine Musikernamen stehen auf der CD-Hulle, kollektives Improvisieren als Gruppe ist die Sache hier. Da gibt's keine Proben, es wird entweder bei Konzerten gespielt oder gleich aufgenommen. Klarerweise gibt's keine Overdubs, die Musiker verstehen sich anscheinend telepathisch. Im Grenzbereich zwischen Rock, Electronica, Jazz und Zeitgenossischer Musikk angesiedelt muss man sich auf diese Klange einlassen. Dann wird man aber reich belohnt. Faszinierende Sache.
Skug (AU)

Supersilent — это четыре норвежских человека; люди, к слову, отнюдь не последние: электронщик Хельге Стен записывает мрачнейший эмбиент под именем Deathprod, трубач Арве Хенриксен играет с Дэвидом Сильвианом. Они собираются вместе только в студии (или на концерте) и не обсуждают друг с другом свою музыку. Они называют альбомы порядковыми номерами и оставляют композиции безымянными. Подобные выходные данные сулят продукцию странную и дремучую — и, в общем-то, правильно делают. Злокозненный металлический скрежет сменяется таинственными клавишными пассажами в духе саундтреков к второсортным хоррорам; скрупулезная полиритмия переходит в тоталитарный нойз а-ля ранние Throbbing Gristle; пустынный джаз прерывается воплями; кредо этой пластинки можно было бы вкратце обозначить словосочетанием «непокой и воля». Такими аттестациями сейчас легче спугнуть, чем заинтересовать, поэтому здесь следует сделать одну существенную оговорку. Термины вроде «экспериментальный» или «импровизационный» за последнее время подверглись просто-таки чудовищной инфляции — так вот, к Supersilent это не относится. Они понимают импровизацию не как возможность легализовать дурдом на выезде, но как колоссальную ответственность; шум для них — тем более заманчивый рабочий материал, что он оказывает сопротивление; в их музыке нет ни натужного разгильдяйства, ни избыточного мракобесия — зато в ней чувствуется пытливый ум исследователя. Ясно, что Supersilent идут от свободного джаза, который во многом и есть попытка совместить условные правила игры с безусловной свободой; слышно, что им не чужды шальные идеи разнообразных маргинальных новаторов: слоистый гул AMM, фабричные мотивы ранних Nurse with Wound, расхристанный футуристический краутрок (в варианте, скажем, Amon Duul). Разумеется, подобного рода предприятия не всегда одинаково успешны, вот и на «8» есть свои пиковые моменты (четвертая вещь — изумительная зарисовка зимнего пейзажа — и седьмая, где Supersilent лютуют почти как Sunn 0)))) и свои недоразумения (номер шесть — безынтересные девятиминутные манипуляции с электронной перкуссией). Так или иначе, чего у Supersilent не отнимешь — так это умения превратить хаос в космос как бы помимо своей воли; выражение Алексея Хвостенко «опыт постороннего творческого процесса» подошло бы к этой музыке как нельзя лучше.
~ Александр Горбачев