‘Scandinavian Parts (Immersive Live Salvage Supplement)’ is not so much a live album in the conventional sense as a document of the way Russell Haswell spent the Spring of 2010 on tour supporting Autechre and perpetrating acts of sonic violence against audiences around Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
In the liner notes, he provides a detailed account of the technical specifications of his live setup, and states that the motivation for the set he developed for this tour was borne out of a desire to challenge himself and the listeners, while doing something different having grown weary of endless laptop performers ‘using the space-bar as a “play” button and pretending to do something’.
The 15 tracks, taken from four of the nights on the thirty date tour span 74-minutes, and it’s certainly a challenge alright.
The first track - ‘Copenhagen, April 2, 2010, Part 1’ is an example of grating power electronics worthy of Whitehouse, with cavernous bass circulating in an immense vortex howling amidst a squall of shrieking feedback. There’s no rhythm, beyond those discernible in the ebbs and flows of the tearing electronic aural assault, and no vocals, simply a wall of noise that sounds – and feels – like hell itself being torn apart by an atomic bomb.
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Parts 2 and 3 from the same set really squeal, with the latter in particular replicating nails down a blackboard while a thunderous nuclear wind barrels out at the bottom end, and concludes with a rude blast of mains hum.
The Oslo set the following night captures Haswell replicating the sound of a 747 taking off, and the intensity of the volume is palpable. Haswell dispatches similarly agonising face-shredding sets to those present in Gothenburg and Aarhus, the latter of which is the most well-represented of all of the shows on the disc. It begins with the sound of audience chatter and the clunk of a mic being plugged in, before a bass-heavy tidal wave obliterates everything in its path. Even mastered down to CD and played at a relatively low volume, the vibrations and frequencies drag at every nerve in the listener’s body.
It’s not pretty, but it’s certainly effective, and ‘ Scandinavian Parts’ is nothing short of utterly devastating.
Russell Haswell Online
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