WHEN

His second album "Death In The Blue Lake" under the moniker of WHEN could open my eyes again for one of surrealistic "avantgarde rock" world. The titled track on Side A is kinda killer one ... The extreme horrible opening squeezes synthesizer-based windwood-y negative drone into our minds, soon followed by a plaintive orchestrated sound forest. Weird shouts, fuzzy sound effects, frozen wind blowing, and so on. Yes all sounds / noises constructed in Lars' instruments with Lars' strong intention would seem to be a dramatic theatre on a vinyl. Like a lady shouting on the sleeve, every sound seasoning may build a really strict dreammare deeply in our brain I guess. If anything, this long suite can be a well-calculated beauty mixture with some jerky shockwave knocks. Exactly suitable to call the suite as a tragedy of sound. The last can be heard as the end of our life ... sad, vain, tense (like clock running), but graceful, magnificent. Addictive stuff always heads me up actually.

Short tracks on Side B would be something unified with Lars' short ideas. There are not only madness, loudness, dirtiness, but also beauty, fancy, wealthy, fantasy. Sometimes we can feel vacant like in "Loosing Figures", sometimes comfortable in the beginning of "Paint The Dance" (LOL), urgent like in "Frozen Atlantic", and depressive / froggy in "Followed By Water". Of all on the rear, "Fragments", created by sound / tune fragments dealt with (reverse) tape effects, is one of my favourites. Into this track, Lars might stuff various components grabbed in his deep lake mind, I imagine. The last "Under X-mas Tree Of Medusa" can be felt as a tiny version of the suite mentioned above for me, but on the contrary, it's quite impressive that such a Norwegian genius would come across his first turning point in the next creation, due to a fateful encounter with a RIO vanguard Chris CUTLER. Amazing indeed.

In a different sense from typical RIO / Avant-Prog scene, this album should be highly recommended.

The first track is the 20 minute monster "Grey (Part One)". It goes through several movements, but the overriding mood is of stormy chaos and violence. Huge thunderous explosions and machine gun fire with long disquieting interludes of quasi-orchestral music, spoken word fragments, noise, and occasional moments of gentle beauty. It's very colorful stuff, not rock at all, but sure to please fans of the avant garde side of prog.

The album continues with a few shorter tracks, a bit lighter in mood and more homogenous in construction. The seven minute "Heart of Rage" begins with piano and dulcimer, introducing an almost folky melody and lead vocal. The song gets progressively darker as it goes, including a long interlude led by macabre church bells and eerie echoed singing. Dramatic strings (or string sounds, anyway. They do sound quite authentic for what is probably sampled). But then the song just kind of ends. Unless the next track offers more clues -- "From White to White" focuses on distant Gregorian chanting, with some spoken word on top and stately orchestral background, for just under three minutes. "Fellini's Hat" takes us suddenly into more carnival-like territory, a booming rhythm with cacophanous horn-like sounds trumpeting over the top. Finally, there is "Grey (Part Two)", which closes the original album with a nine-minute continuation of the doomy madness of the first part, and it's just as good.

The CD version contains yet another piece, and a 22 minute long one at that. "Death in the Blue Lake" is another multi-headed beast of a piece, similar in mood to "Grey" but a bit less interested in the sound effects and shock aspect of the latter. It reminds me quite a bit of some of the more moody moments on Henry Cow's albums at first. But it doesn't stop there -- more full-on scary orchestral moments pass, building and releasing tension for the remainder of the piece. But in general, this is a more pensive track.

Overall, an excellent work that should please the Avant/RIO contingent to no end. I shy away from five stars only because after about 5 full listens I still don't really feel a whole lot of coherence in these pieces -- there's a bunch of cool weird sections followed by another bunch of cool weird sections, but I'm not convinced it's really going anywhere, if you catch my drift. Still, this one should do just nicely if you want to scare your mom. A strong four.