JOHN HEGRE

A nice place to leave

3“-CD, dekorder

Using a computer, a guitar and some “small electronic devices” John Hegre proves once again that there are ultimately no lines between music and art, extreme noise and trancelike drones, composition and improvisation. Sure, you can discuss these polarities but when track #1 suddenly switches from its beautiful, low humming sound to a harsh burst of big-range white noise, anyone unprepaired will forget his point and jump up to reach his stereo in time as a completely bodily reaction to sound.

Somehow I lost track of John Hegre in the last years, but this little release is a welcome reminder, showing that the man is still out there doing his thing: and the thing is sound in its purest form. Together with Lasse Marhaug and the Origami-Posse he cemented my interest in noise-music from Scandinavia (remember the “Scandinavian Noise Manifesto” wow, that is some time ago) when everyone else was following noise-paths to Japan. And this might just rekindle my interest, because these are big sounds. Interestingly, though, Hegre’s output is far from enormous. A track on a compilation here and there, various bands and projects he involved himself in, even some remixes for friends. Nevertheless, to me Hegre always seemed to be a focal point in the Scandinavian noise and experimental music scene.

Silent, humming noises with almost rhythmical glitches lull you into a emotional drone, then suddenly harsh bursts of white noise jump at you. The changes are so abrupt and fast that they sound a lot like an accident. Show me the listener who will not glance a fast eye to his stereo to check if it isn’t broken. Yes, art hast to rattle and startle. And “a nice place to leave” is much more a piece of art than music. Due to its nature I’d even call it concrete art (not art concréte), completely ignoring the fact that music develops in time and can’t be stopped at one certain point like a painting, where at one point the artist declares the object to be finished. Which is the magic of music in a lot of ways.

But let’s not idle the moment with academic talk and hypothetical theorizing. “a nice place to leave” blows all these thoughts out the window. At the point when the ultra-high frequencies set in, scare your cat of the amplifier and make your girlfriend nauseous, you’ll know that here is a piece of something that is worth a lot. Only one regret – at 18 minutes of length you don’t get much time to fall into this one-dimensional universe of humming, that is broken by bursts of two-dimensional noise from time to time.

Well, John Hegre, your music is still so extreme and far out – if conceived as music – that you can’t say much more, than that it really stands for itself as what it is. Taken as art, it is also hard to swallow, but you stop looking for harmonies and melodies, which will help you to listen to music in your further life. Beauty and beastliness are just a flicker apart.

www.dekorder.com

07/2003