Sindre Bjerga – Voice Studies 09

“Someday in the future, people will excavate the ground to find out what we were like in the old days. They will dig it up and slowly unearth a buried society. Some of us will end up in a museum, in a glass case, while people will be over-evolved in a new kind of agony, holding the sides of their faces and shouting in some language we don’t know.”
Bethania Dick

Best known as the founder of Norway’s Gold Soundz label, Sindre Bjerga is put through his personal paces on Voice Studies. At various time he sounds like a child talking through a balloon while being manipulated by evil adults. He breaks some plates in an industrial kitchen accident, then we take a ride through his digestive system (à la Roger Waters/Ron Geesin) until we emerge worm-like through his bottom to listen to what other people have to say about the process. Byron Coley in The Wire

On Sindre Bjerga’s site this text heads the page in the top right corner, “…cassette player drones and kitchen sink psychedelia, sound ghosts hidden deep in the molten magnetic tapes.. always aiming for that mind-altering head trip…” That statement of purpose pretty much sums up his “Voice Studies” tape as well. The tape features three live performances two in Norway (A side and half of B) and one in Russia (other half of B). Side A is called “The Demise of Personal Hygiene” and I laughed and laughed and laughed some more upon first reading that. How fun! The music is not exactly funny however. A series of gurgles, blonks, boings, and thuds, represent the demise I reckon. The second side has two performances, “Procrastination is the Square Root” and “A Possible Outbreak of Clinical Hysteria.” Both continue the contact mic clashing crashing guttural rumble of the A side’s piece (with “Outbreak” being an extremely short cut). This makes for a demanding listen. As pure sound, I love it, but for a stroll or vacation drive, I wouldn’t listen to this particular experimental tape. The mood just has to strike YOU. Jeff Daily / Cassette Gods

“And then, wondering some more: does Sindre Bjerga use voice or voice material in his cassette? That’s not easy to tell. If it is, it’s recorded on a battered dictaphone and played back into a cafe and picked up by the same battered dictaphone. Three live pieces, around eight or nine minutes but one is an intermezzo lasting only one minute. Voices that only arise very occasionally are from the radio it seems, but otherwise this seems to be a more regular Bjerga live recording. And not a bad one either, but then, I should think hard to know that he ever did a bad live recording. Or maybe he just doesn’t release that? Here’s another fine mixture of lo-fi electro-acoustics and more lo-fi electronics, rubbed, scratched, strum and stuck together. Nice stuff, but that you already knew.” Frans De Waard / Vital Weekly