JOHN HEGRE – colours don’t clash

(CD, Dekorder)

Even though there are bassist Jorgen Traen and drummer David Aasheim helping out, don’t expect this Hegre album to be close to any kind of band-context that you might remember from, well, other bands. After the metal maniac rush together with Lasse Marhaug under their worn Jazkamer moniker, this album is more in reminiscence of Lou Reed’s version of “Metal Machine Music”. Well, in some parts at least. Jazkamer’s stab at metal music might have been the reason or initiation that led Hegre back to the guitar as his basic instrument. And in quite different circumstances and means as on the fine collaboration with Maja Ratkje. He drags and picks the guitar with unique originality, finally even coming down to (almost) regular strumming, which also where the band comes in. In parts of track two the plucked chords remember of Marc Ribot’s solo albums (especially the 1995 “Don’t blame me”, which I re-discovered in my CD stacks some days ago and listened to with rising enlightment and joy. Isn’t life wonderful if it hides masterpieces like this from you only to offer them as a present in time of need?) Most of the album is superbly crafted electronic noise, and you might add abbreviations like “avant” and “impro” and “free” at your own will. This of course brings us to another spirited guitarist, Oren Ambarchi, and if you ever wondered what it would sound like if somebody took it upon himself to bridge these two poles, then here it is.

During the course of the record, Hegre takes up all kinds of other up to date schools of guitar playing. The layers of distorted two-note slo-mo riffs at the beginning of track four are amongst my favorites, but then also the good old power noise of track three really tickled my fanzy. But there are crazy banjo loops as well and some stuff that could be called glitches if I knew where they came from exactly. Note, that this is the second scandinavian noise-music album (as a very loose definition) that uses banjos somewhere in its course. The other one being the latest Huntsville release. The connections to other artists stretch out all over the world and the release, as would be approbriate with Hegre’s lifestyle as a very busy avantgarde noise musician. The title is taken from the first line of a quote from Philip Charles Lithman aka Snakefinger and the tracks are named after the single words of the second line of the same quote: “Colours don’t clash. Don’t worry, the never do.” The signifying tower of Babel set into modern rush hour deconstruction collage has been done by Yasutoshi Yoshida, better known as Government Alpha, which means old school Japan noise. And then old friend Tore H. Boe (and family) add vocals somewhere around the record.