Wendra Hill: Ungdomskilden
Playdate Records
Oslo-based musicians Jo David Meyer Lysne (guitar, sampler, turntable, synthesizer, pedal steel) and Joel Ring (electric bass, cello, sampler) initiated their Wendra Hill project in 2017, the idea being to uninhibitedly explore acoustic and electric spaces through collective improvisation and collage-styled construction. Fundamental to the group concept is a sensibility rooted in openness and adventure, with little concern for genre labels or satisfying anyone's expectations but their own. In that spirit, the two also welcome additional players into the fold for a given project, which in this case means Bergen drummer/percussionist Øyvind Hegg-Lunde, known for his playing in outfits such as Building Instrument and Strings & Timpani.
The two might want to consider making Hegg-Lunde a permanent member, given how pivotal his playing is to Ungdomskilden. His drumming typically acts as a stabilizing ground that brings clarity and shape to the multi-directional flow of sounds produced by the others. The tracks aren't conventional songs by any stretch of the imagination, but Hegg-Lunde's playing helps impose shape where there might otherwise be sprawl.
Don't even try to slot the tracks into a particular category as such a move will prove fruitless. Trippy smatterings of synth-smeared tribal-dub (“Bergsjøstølen”) collide with sparkling minimalism-inflected settings (“Tøm lungene”) that suggest musicians wilfully following wherever their muses lead. After a salesperson makes a product pitch (“But the beauty of laminate is, you can get laminate in any colour you want …”), “Det Vakre Ved Laminat” moves into a cello- and acoustic guitar-powered hoedown; jump to “Historien om Brian,” on the other hand, to hear someone waxing fondly about snakes as music churns convulsively behind him. As wild and unpredictable as the recording is, it also makes room for a setting of languorous beauty in the form of the pedal steel-enhanced “Slidelien.”
Echoes of post-rock and electroacoustic emerge, but the tracks ultimately define themselves as weird sci-fi experiments densely packed with samples (voices and otherwise), acoustic and electronic noises, percussive accents, and muscular beats. Ideas stream without pause when each piece segues into the next, some of them thirteen miniatures and others elaborately fleshed-out creations. More than anything, Ungdomskilden plays like the soundtrack to its creators' thought processes. It's wholly appropriate that the title translates as “the source of youth” when ideas combust throughout the release, their abundance reflective of fertile minds teeming with creativity.January 2021