WHEN

"Bye Puppy Bye" is a good example of a song changing completely half way through as it does here before 2 minutes. "Life Is Shit, Sometimes it's Beautiful" is surprisingly uplifting and sounds like it could have been a single. "Sin The Sailor" is a top two. It's the depth of sounds and beats along with the atmosphere. Check out the mellotron after 2 minutes. "The King" is silly while the second track of the "Two Distant Calls" suite is my other top two called "Serpent Rain". Opening with strings but it's when the xylophone arrives around 1 1/2 minutes in that I'm smiling as drums and more support followed by vocals. Mellotron too. "Filthy John" is like a 90's pop song, vocal led with strummed guitar. More silliness on "Toy Party" but I do like not love the two part title track.

3 stars is all I got.

So Lars decided to make a 40 minute album with 26 songs. It's like we get these small chunks of soundscape music and while we get some inventive stuff here this is very hit and miss. From strange collages of sound to a cow mooing and a lot of nature sounds, we also get electronics with beeps and spacey synths. Twisted melodies and talk about a lot of atmosphere, tons. Samples of people talking and footsteps along with a baby crying to alien-like voices, snoring and well you get the idea. Manipulated tapes as well. Interesting I suppose but I have no desire to play this again after spending all week with it.

Still a 3 star album for sure but I'm partial to his first two albums released in the second half of the 80's "Drowning But Learning" and "Death In A Blue Lake".

'(Theme From) the Lobster Boys' is short, very cheerful piece. There is feeling as you have come into middle of some sixties hippie folk camp. For some reason in Spotify there is 15 minutes version that has in the end same music as in original CD. Maybe the piece was originally that long, but Lars decided to cut down 13 minutes to it in original CD-version. 'Cut' has from the begin very Indian music -feeling. Soon starts very melodic vocals. Really I can think the Beatles would have made something like this in 2001! But piece ends into very chaotic jam. There is same structure also in 'Flower Jam', but song is not as interesting as previous one. 'Z 33' is short, misty instrumental. 'Sunshine Superhead' is very sixties style good-natured pop ballad without any noise, so it's not wonder why it had heavy rotation in Norwegian radio.

In 'Instant Flute' direction goes little bit more experimental, but still it's very melodic. Greatest song after 'Cut' this far! 'The Greatest Sorrow On Earth' uses samples for example from Mulatu Astetke's song, it's very eastern sounding instrumental piece. Same continues in 'Puff Pipe', but it's more hypnotic and changes in the end quite noisy. 'Ruin Yourself' is really great song mixing garagerock and melodic psychedelic elements. It repeats verse 'All Together Now' - straight from the Beatles! It ends into cosmic sounds and weird human voices. 'Ruin Mix' is short continuum to the previous one. In 'Too Much Hello Goodbye Again' album goes back to the sixties pop. I wonder when there is question mark, does Lars ask his fans is he too much in the sixties music? The last, over 16 minutes long 'When' is more some kind of bonus piece. In it's collage structure it reminds the earlier When albums, although has also very psychedelic feeling. In the end there is long rave with guitar noise.

All the way this album is much more psychedelic than 'Psychedelic Wunderbaum'. But although there are really great moments, I think as a whole the album is just good. Maybe the reason is just in me, I haven't ever been a big fan of music using lots of samples. I believe I will listen next 'Pearl-Harvest'-album, if that will be just good to me as every other this bands albums have been, I believe my When-journey is over.

When I start to listen this album after those first really gloomy industrial albums, there comes a big surprise! First: Lars is singing! He has quite soft voice reminding sixties pop bands singers. "Time Ago" is mixture of sixties garage pop and nineties industrial synths, but the latter ones are not in the top. Very sympathetic piece! In "Extremist Cow" direction goes back into earlier When albums, but this noisy song still got very catchy, pop structure! It has very tight, distorted vocals. End of the song has same kind of noisy collage style as in earlier albums. "Snowfish" is some kind of retro rave instrumental piece including violin playing together all kind of synth noises. Not bad, but liked more two first tracks. Instrumental & experimental mood continues in "As-Speak-You-Are", but it´s softer and more melodic than "Snowfish". Sixties garage pop comes back in "Young Feet Flush", although it´s structure is much more experimental than two first pieces. "Kali" is totally sung, really sixties sounding psychedelic pop ballad, that even has sitar! "Channel 7" is short industrial synth piece. So it´s much longer "Footsteps". "The Interpid Traveller" is funny and catchy piece mixing again industrial and pop garage. The last "Track 10" is fully earlier When-style experimental sound collage piece.

I am not sure why I have been interested at When. I am really not nineties electro music fan at all, also I am interested at experimental music in a very narrow part. But this album woke up my interest little bit more when it has influences from sixties psychedelia and garage, so I guess I will listen Lars´s next albums and maybe make reviews here just because they haven´t reviewed here. Really I don´t believe When would have taken into progarchives at all these days, when it seems only "real" prog artists get in here (whatever the real prog is). When really has got nothing to do for example RIO artists like Henry Cow or Samla Mammas Manna. But if you like for example Pram, I believe specially this album is for you!

"Death In The Blue Lake" opens with a bass horn and a solemn mood before orchestral sounds kick in reminding me at times during this epic track of ART ZOYD. It's dark and melancholic when suddenly we can hear birds chirping and other nature sounds around 1 1/2 minutes. After 3 minutes you can hear the wind blowing and that's all we hear at first until faint sounds arrive including a dog barking. A door opens and there's plenty of suspense here. Some brief singing then some mellotron flute joins in. A ticking clock follows along with spoken words and orchestral sounds. Someone is walking in deep grass then we get a sudden outburst before 7 minutes that continues for a minute and it's jarring to say the least. It's haunting again then we get this mechanical-like rhythm with plenty of suspense. All you can hear is a ticking sound before 11 minutes then church bells. It's dark again before 12 minutes as sounds rise and collapse. The orchestral sounds before 13 minutes sound random and avant. It's getting creepy again after 17 minutes right to the end. What an amazing suite of music and the highlight of the album for me.

"Loosing Figures" really makes me laugh early on as we hear some old guy coughing so bad you think he's going to hurt himself. People are hacking away like they are about to die. It then turns instrumental with accordion, a beat and more. Vocals and an experimental soundscape before 2 minutes. Some crazy "out there" vocals follow. "Afterzone" is my second favourite tune on here. Deep sounds, percussion and a military or Remembrance Day vibe follows until just before a minute when it all brightens. I like this as vocals join in this uplifting section. Guitar replaces the vocals briefly before 2 minutes playing in an experimental manner. A surprisingly catchy yet far from normal piece of music. "Paint The Dance" opens with the sound of someone pouring a drink then we can hear the fizz. Then it sounds like a bunch of natives chanting around the fire smoking their pipes into the late hours.

"Fragments" opens with someone yodeling believe it or not. I wish it wasn't true myself. Some strange sounds then come and go. "Frozen Atlantic" has a catchy sound with accordion as the vocals come and go. "Followed By Water" starts with water sounds surprisingly as other sounds start to come and go. Experimental stuff. "Under X-Mass Tree Of Medusa" has these loud sounds that sweep in and out. It's dark and experimental then it starts to really get intense and frantic. Crazy is the word, in fact insanity best describes the sound before 3 minutes in. Organ ends it. By the way the cover art has a picture of Medusa over top of another picture.

I was so glad to read Damo's glowing review of this album. It's one of those rare albums from 1988 that I would highly recommend. A solid 4 stars for this experimental work.

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.