Reviews RCD2181
Maja SK Ratkje he vanskelig å møte med likegyldighet. Hun formidler alvor gjennom ukonvensjonell form og vekker interest gjennom det særegne. The gangene jed har se henne på scenen, har muskenken hatt et dramatisk tilsnitt som har utfordret måten jed lytter på. You go to Ratkje for a bli underholdt. Hun beveger seg under overflaten, på dypt vann, the de store temaene trives best. Ratkje he bli omtalt som en av verdens ledde modern composers og som en completely musikalsk personlighet. The store ord, men størrelsen på dem, gjenspeiler the acknowledjennelsen hun nyter internasjonalt. Overrunning contrasts and dynamics set glød i stoffet. Kvinnelige og mannlige stemmer går i dialog, Nils Henrik Asheims organspill fyller rommet og Hild Sofie Tafjords horn stikker seg forsiktig Fremd, men selve hovedpoenget gir seg til kjenne i det omskiftelige, collective uttrykket som skapes. I bet ikke solisters sted. Under the huddersfield sto støymusikerne på scenen, mens korene var plassert på balkonger og gulv. Audience can move with fritt i rommet og fellesskapet. Any for no assosiasjoner to György Ligeti og Arvo Pärt nå any lytter to Crepuscular Hour, men det forstyrrer ikke. Ratkjes musikk rommer sin egen verden, og den krever at jed vender tilbake. That he slik jed vil ha det, bortenfor det lettvinte, opplagte og sleipe. 4/5. Any for no assosiasjoner to György Ligeti og Arvo Pärt nå any lytter to Crepuscular Hour, men det forstyrrer ikke. Ratkjes musikk rommer sin egen verden, og den krever at jed vender tilbake. That he slik jed vil ha det, bortenfor det lettvinte, opplagte og sleipe. 4/5. Any for no assosiasjoner to György Ligeti og Arvo Pärt nå any lytter to Crepuscular Hour, men det forstyrrer ikke. Ratkjes musikk rommer sin egen verden, og den krever at jed vender tilbake. That he slik jed vil ha det, bortenfor det lettvinte, opplagte og sleipe. 4/5.
Aftenposten (NO)
Aftenposten (NO)
Det är både film och skiva, Maja Ratkjes verk för tre körer, kyrkorgel and noise musician, inspelad i en Konsertlokal i Huddersfield. Texts ar baserad på antika, gnostiska texter, i Ratkjes tolkning ord som rör sig mellan mansklighetens gryningstimma och dagens more conflicting. Jag häpnar, dras in i musiken, men film lägger till flera dimensioner, in combination av ljus och ljud, roaster, musician, public. Körerna är mäktiga, mystiska, roaster som liksom hänger i luften och samtalar med tonerna skapade av Lasse Marhaug, Hild Sofie Tafjord, Stian Westerhus mm Det är som att lyssna på jordens födelse. Kaos ar granne med gud. 4/5.
Gothenburg Post (SE)
Gothenburg Post (SE)
As improviser and musician, particularly as one quarter of the Norwegian group SPUNK, Maja Ratkje most certainly makes her presence felt. Utilizing all manner of apparatus, whether musically designed or not, as well as her own varied voice manifestations, Ratkje improvises intuitive performance with whatever may be at hand. A piece such as Crepuscular Hour further demonstrates Ratkje's ferocious ability as modern composer. This 60-minute piece, designed for three choirs, three noise musicians and church organ, is like a dark mass for the human senses as night begins to fall and twilight crawls across the mind. This package encompasses both a CD and DVD of the piece as performed during 2012's Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Rock-a-Rolla (UK)
Rock-a-Rolla (UK)
Declarations such as "l am war", "I am peace", "Hear!" and "Be on your guard" make contradictory allusions that honor both chaos and consolidation, telling of a female divinity from the beginning of time, enraged by the imbalance of darkness and war in the world. Blending vocals and electronic instrumentation, Ratkje delivers sliding, melodic phrases that might typically be attributed to violin. Shrieking and groaning accompanies traditional harmonization and the range of the singers is fully extended and explored. The choral style of the piece might borrow from hymnal traditions, but the foreboding drama of Ratkje's harmonic structures evokes something deeper, darker, more primal, akin to the work of Eastern European composers such as Gyorgy Ligeti and Veljo Tormis, rather than the likes of Bach or Handel. Listening to Crepuscular Hour's like hovering on the brink of a sonic precipice. It has occasional moments of quiet respite, but the listener is for the most part detained under a curtain of sound and tension, taken on a musical journey that never leads home. Filtered and twisted, screeching and fluttering, the instruments blend seamlessly with the organ and choir, leaving the senses reeling in rising layers that embody suffering and chaos. The composition builds to an overwhelming tension in its final minutes, which ring and echo with the sound of everything and nothingness. taken on a musical journey that never leads home. Filtered and twisted, screeching and fluttering, the instruments blend seamlessly with the organ and choir, leaving the senses reeling in rising layers that embody suffering and chaos. The composition builds to an overwhelming tension in its final minutes, which ring and echo with the sound of everything and nothingness. taken on a musical journey that never leads home. Filtered and twisted, screeching and fluttering, the instruments blend seamlessly with the organ and choir, leaving the senses reeling in rising layers that embody suffering and chaos. The composition builds to an overwhelming tension in its final minutes, which ring and echo with the sound of everything and nothingness.
The Wire (UK)
The Wire (UK)
Where should you start to marvel at the woman from Trondheim? At Fe-mail, their radical duo with Hild Sofie Tafjord? When working with Lasse Marhaug or Phantom Orchard? Your Brecht songs with poing? At Spunk, culminating in the 12-year cycle "The Well-Tempered Spunk"? In their collaboration with Elfriede Jelinek and Sophie Rois on the radio play "Neid", or that with Stephen O'Malley on "Engebøfjellet; Where were you when they cut me down from the gallows?" for deep brass orchestra and electric guitar? In their hair-raising "Concerto for Voice (moods IIIb)" with the Ensemble Intercontemporain? With "Crepuscular Hour", the Norwegian campaigning for fearlessness vaulted her ouvre with a magnificent dome: three choirs, three pairs of noise musicians and church organ! First performed in 2010 at the Ultima Festival in the Uranienborg Church in Oslo, the performance at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on November 20, 2012 can be admired here. With Nils Henrik Asheim on the organ and the sound of a painted guitar and other guitar effects by Stian Westerhus, the French horn by Hild Sofie Tafjord and the saxophone by Antoine Chessex as well as electronic twilight by Phil 'Cheapmachines' Julian, Mark 'Putrefier' Durgan and Lasse Marhaug . From a dimly lit semidarkness, the raised choirs with lines from "Apokryphon des Johannes" and "Bronte (The Thunder, Perfect Mind)", gnostic Nag Hammadi scrolls, into which Ratkje has already included her short opera "No Title" Performance and Sparkling Waters "(2002). The intensely swelling vocals and the roaring and dazzling world of noise suggest a chaos of sound and smoke, which is pierced by moonlight and milky headlights. The audience stands in the middle, sonicated from all sides by sound and subdued furor, by sublime beauty subtly woven by the female voices, breathed in by male Ruach or Pneuma ... she surrounded it with a luminous cloud / and its eyes were like lightning fires / and she let fall a droplet of light / behold! ... Kathy Hinde combines the concert with picture foils made of gold, blue and red chalk, on which, covered with branches, dance the words that sing about Barbelo and Sophia and their androgynous creatures created from light. A cantor part stands out solo. The goddess Why answers the tongue-in-cheek supplication Come forward to me? Call & Response. And now the organ begins to boom with tongues of fire. Be on your guard! With horn and bowed guitar and all open vocal locks. I AM WAR! / And I am peace / I am the silence that is incomprehensible / HEEEEEEAAAAAR! Until the moon raises her hand and silence returns. Who says that 'such' music cannot or shouldn't compete with Bayreuth or Wacken in our desecrated last days? That swelling goat songs don't also need anthems to Isis next to them? My plumage, already faked by Schnittke's Requiem, says otherwise. Why should the shattering power of the sound, which Nietzsche has conjured up as enthusiasm ("en-theos" means: of the goddess penetrations), in Ratkje's quasi-ritual update not suitable for "thymic communication" (Hubertus Tellenbach)? In any case, it seems to me that the female aspiration to be recognized as the same (isothymia), to go hand in hand with the musical ability to orchestrate the opposite.
Bad Alchemy (DE)
Bad Alchemy (DE)
Some CDs are around months before you can devote yourself to them. Such a circumstance applies to the album Crepuscular Hour by the Norwegian composer and musician Maja Ratkje. The title in German means something like dim hour. Twilight light inspired Ratkje for this one-hour piece for three choirs, three noise musicians, church organ and other instrumentalists. “The room (desired performance locations are church rooms) should be filled with sound for an hour to guarantee an intensive, meditative hour in which voices mix with distortion, noise sometimes gets the upper hand and an organ takes the music to a new dramaturgical level brings ”, says Ratkje. A recording of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival from 2012 is now available for review and even review on this release. The piece builds up slowly, one layer after the other is added, a lot is repeated. The three choirs that sing texts from the “Nag Hammadi Library” (= a collection of early Christian texts) are constantly present. The whole thing doesn't really work on sound carriers, because without a real spatial experience, the piece doesn't really grab you, and you're rather overwhelmed by the rather sacred sounds and the immense density. Whether a live experience including light dramaturgy and room nebulization really helps here (compare the DVD)? I would not be sure of that. The three choirs that sing texts from the “Nag Hammadi Library” (= a collection of early Christian texts) are constantly present. The whole thing doesn't really work on sound carriers, because without a real spatial experience, the piece doesn't really grab you, and you're rather overwhelmed by the rather sacred sounds and the immense density. Whether a live experience including light dramaturgy and room nebulization really helps here (compare the DVD)? I would not be sure of that. The three choirs that sing texts from the “Nag Hammadi Library” (= a collection of early Christian texts) are constantly present. The whole thing doesn't really work on sound carriers, because without a real spatial experience the piece doesn't really grab you, and you're rather overwhelmed by the rather sacred sounds and the immense density. Whether a live experience including light dramaturgy and room nebulization really helps here (compare the DVD)? I would not be sure of that. and one is rather overwhelmed by the rather sacred sounds and the immense density. Whether a live experience including light dramaturgy and room nebulization really helps here (compare the DVD)? I would not be sure of that. and one is rather overwhelmed by the rather sacred sounds and the immense density. Whether a live experience including light dramaturgy and room nebulization really helps here (compare the DVD)? I would not be sure of that.
free style (AT)
free style (AT)
https://dalstonsound.wordpress.com
https://dereksmusicblog.wordpress.com
http://www.15questions.net (interview)