Håvard Volden – electric guitar, tape machines. Henrik Olsson – objects, friction and piezo. Martin Taxt – microtonal tuba and electronics.
Muddersten was established as a trio in 2015, and released their first album, Karpatklokke, on SOFA in January 2017. Their highly unique trio have been presented at festivals like Le Guess Who? and All Ears. While the music from their first album was developed during a tour in Russia in February 2016, the music on Playmates was recorded during four intense days at the SOFA studio in Oslo in September 2017.
The front cover of the Scandinavian trio Mudderstens new release “Playmates” give associations to the Flanders and the Netherlands tradition of still life motifs from the 16th and 17th centuries referred to as vanitas paintings. Vanitas paintings deals with vanity. The doings in everyday life that make us stray from what´s important. The chasing after the wind. On the cover of Playmates we see a bodybuilder sculpturing his body in a spotless perfectly organized kitchen, hanging from the lampshade doing pull-ups. The cover pictures vanity, it tells us to get real. So what is not chasing the wind in a secular age? Maybe the paradoxical answer is simply: seize the day. Sure, every breath is transient but the very essence of life is still breathing. This relation between vanitas and carpe diem is somewhat embodied also in the music of these recordings. The ambition was to create a musical constant, a simmering pot of “sound-porridge”. By playing the piece Private Pleasure over and over again, trying to recollect the previous version, we thought the music would compose itself. A Theme and variation-piece with a score only existing in our memory, constantly changing, retold just like traditional folk music. Later we end up with four completely different takes of Private Pleasure; whimsical and contradictory takes that are very far from being repetitions or even variations of each other. We simply got too inspired to stick to the plan. In our failed attempt to catch something long lasting we seized the moment instead. But then again; the concept of letting something go doesn´t really make any sense before you actually try to hold on to it first, does it? When these private pleasures turned into a sound-game on microtonal tuba, electric guitar, objects, piezzo elements and friction it was simply a musical ambition that got lost in itself. Even the sense of real time is lost as we are all interconnected with eachother via an old Tandberg tape machine. A collage of seemingly diverse ideas started to join forces, alive and present. They seem cut-up and put together again, incoherent and interacting, constantly changing in relation to each other. And in relation to these recordings maybe the cover is not only a vanitas motif but also a momento moro motif; a painting that aims to remind us all of our own mortality. One day we’re all going to die. And all other days we will not. Yolo.