Description
BA-ISS – ARBEID (1989)
It sometimes happens that creative people deal with more than one single form of creative creation. One of these was Stig Sæterbakken, who throughout much of the 80s worked as a musician and sound artist in addition to his work as a writer. Ba-Iss was a duo consisting of Stig Sæterbakken and Robin Andrew le Normand. The former was from Lillehammer, and had been in various synth groups from the beginning of the 80s. Gray was the first notable; the group played cool synth music and got a lot of attention in the local press. In 1984, aged just 18, he made his debut as a writer, and the following year he moved to Oslo. Here, Ba-Iss was started, and the music took a turn from youthful synth provocation to a darker soundscape. Sæterbakken's love for Andrej Nebb was a stated issue, which can be heard in the industrial wastelands of Ba-Iss. The duo released the one-sided LP Work in 1989, followed by a cassette of music for a performance, the cassette single Hellig Stank in 1990, and finally the LP (The Book of) Theft in 1991. After this, the duo disbanded, and Sæterbakken put the music on the shelf in favor of writing. In the time leading up to his death, he gradually became one of Norway's most important writers, also a strong organizer and lecturer at the Nansen School in Lillehammer. Arbeid is a one-sided LP, and functions as a holistic work in eight parts, slowly flowing from dark to darker; Inoculation opens with distorted voices' brass of unknown words, before a fixed rhythm is introduced, hovering in a menacing nothingness, punctuated by sharp bangs and interrupted by a German opera singer. "Søvn Uten Drømmer" is faster, pulsing electric and tribal, a whiff of smoke and growing storm clouds, ironically in the direction of a very vivid dream. "Mann Av Leire (Voodoo)" is the only song with vocals, performed by Tristan Christ (from White Lord Jesus); it sounds like a dying machine, with Christ's lugubrious portrait of human decay and religious allusions as a final judgment. The record's highlight, however, is the song "Ba-Iss", where a sample of a male choir forms the basis for music of religious proportions; the dark merges with the beautiful, the hard rhythms are pushed away in favor of a flowing eternity of sacred brass.
1 Inokulasjon
2 Søvn Uten Drømmer
3 Mann Av Leire (Voodoo)
4 Foster
5 Innovator
6 Ba-Iss
7 Gjennom Himmelen
8 Ejakulasjon