Supersilent

Motorpsycho's keyboardist Helge "Deathprod" Sten recorded also with improvisers Supersilent (keyboardist Stale Storlokken, trumpet player Arve Henriksen and percussionist Jarle Vespestad). They debuted with the triple-CD 1-3 (september 1997 - Rune Grammofon, 1998), the massive manifesto of their violent and cacophonous jazz-rock. Their aesthetic was more reminiscent of Borbetomagus and the Mnemonists than of free jazz. 1.1 is a ten-minute collage of vocal samples, dissonant instruments, electronic noise and tribal drums, followed by a 12-minute wall of noise (with varying degree of impetus), followed by seven minutes of drums-driven jazz-rock jamming. The cacophony turns dramatic in the 14-minute 1.3, a stunning example of dynamic soundsculpting. 1.4 is the exact opposite: a relatively calm and rational jam grounded in a thick tapestry of percussive sounds. The second album opens with an unusually slow and subdued piece, 2.1, with sparse drumming, a confused synthesizer and a distorted horn attempting a melody. The virulent and chaotic 2.2 restores their reputation, but overall the second disc is less apocalyptic than the first. 2.5 has 16 minutes of spastic drumming and violent noise, followed by a divine five-minute solo for electronic drilling sound, and then a seven-minute coda of more extreme "drum and noise". The highlight of the third disc is the 25-minute 3.3 that has subtler approach to mixing wild dissonance with wild dissonance, extreme noise with extreme noise. There is a more careful juxtaposition of timbers, and less reliance on drumming. When the drums appear, after eight minutes, the tone has been set for a hyper-kinetic jam of acoustic and electronic noise. Then Supersilent's gift for ignoring all musical laws is set loose, and the cacophony reaches the levels of the first disc. The 20-minute 3.4 is its alter-ego, relying on simpler constructs and milder sounds with more drumming presence and less electronics.

4 (Rune Grammofon, 1998) veered towards a oneiric fusion of doom-metal and Miles Davis. 4.1 is a mini-concerto for microtones until it awakens in a sort of castrated jazz jam. The nine-minute 4.2 is a blurred nebula of exotic rhythms, chirping instruments, droning organs, more reminiscent of Jon Hassell than of avant-noise ensembles, despite the crescendo that leads to a tribal bacchanal. The first hint of Supersilent's deranged aesthetic comes with ten-minute 4.3, but even this piece is unusually restrained chaos, with emphasis on percussion. Even the orgiastic 18-minute 4.6 exudes a jovial atmosphere that evokes Latin-American beaches rather than hell.

5 (november 2000 - Rune Grammofon, 2001), recorded live, further solidified their status as founders of a new form of music, at the border between free-jazz and post-rock. The 20-minute free-form jam that opens the album begins as a dialogue between evil subsonic hisses and theremin-like ethereal squeals, barely disturbed by sparse random percussion. As the furnace-like noise increases, fueled by pointless wailing horns, a mega-distorted guitar intones its terrible "om" to the skies. The following eleven-minute track plays mostly at very low volume, sculpting a soundscape of wavering keyboards and minimal instrumental sounds. That liquid, shapeless format mutates into the noir chamber jazz of 3 (14 minutes): fragments of melody surface from the moaning, whining, groaning mass of slow-motion sounds (even though the five-minute coda is a crescendo of frenzied cacophony). 4 seems to toy with even more minimal sounds, barely "sounding" anything at all. Harmony disappears in the asymmetrical vortex of the closing, 17-minute 5, another essay in infinitesimal music made of scant tones and feeble percussion.

Building on the emotive strength of its predecessor, and surrendering part of its stubborn looseness, 6 (december 2001 - Rune Grammofon, 2003) achieved an otherworldly balance of moods and sounds in six compositions (not only improvisations) of subtle counterpoint. Supersilent's fusion of electronica, jazz, noise and rock secretes the harsh, dissonant merry-go-round of 1 (eleven minutes), whose multiple "lead" instruments careen blindly together and blend into an organic stream, sounding like the tune of a music box being warped as it travels through massive black holes; the frenzied chatting among digital metallic devices of 3 (13 minutes) that degrades to a mostly silent ambience and then grows to an explosive finale; digestive robot soundtrack
More than in any of the previous albums, moments of simple pathos abound: the Jon Hassell-ian trumpet that moans alone in a raga-like space (vaguely reminiscent of Pink Floyd's Set The Controls For the Heart Of The Sun) throughout 2; the intense organ lines that sets 4 on fire, again straddling the line between psychedelic and dissonant music; the stoned "chanting" over out-of-tune piano and funereal synths of 6, that ends the album on an angelic note.

Supersilent's trumpet player Arve Henriksen released the solo albums Sakuteiki (Rune Grammofon, 2003), a parade of ambient-jazz pieces for trumpet, harmonium and percussion (all played by him), and Chiaroscuro (Rune Grammofon, 2004), recorded with percussionist Audun Kleive and digital/electronic musician Jan Bang, that adds his voice to the mix. Strjon (Rune Grammofon, 2007), mainly scored for trumpet, electronic keyboards and wordless singing, struck a balance between Supersilent's death-jazz and Henriksen's original ambient-jazz.

Supersilent's fifth album of "death-jazz", 8 (august 2005 - Rune Grammofon, 2007), following a dvd titled 7 (august 2004), collected shorter performances and was the most ethereal yet of the series. The first five pieces embraced a "gentler" form of ambient cacophony, although 1 and 5 slowly built up to monumental noise, The overall feeling was that Supersilent was returning to a more "humane" form of chamber music, a suspicion confirmed by the most original piece, 6, that sculpted an eerie atmosphere with shrill vocals and jarring glitches. 7, instead, erupted into the usual pummeling chaos, although throwing vocals into the mix.

Deathprod is the solo project from Supersilent's and Motorpsycho's keyboardist Helge Sten, mostly devoted to chamber electroacoustic music. Treetop Drive 1-3/ Towboat (Metal Art Disco, 1994) contains the three-movement 33-minute Treetop Drive and the 18-minute Towboat, two works of abstract electronic soundsculpting. Treetop Drive is a terrifying horror-industrial poem: the first movement contrasts a slow undulating orchestral pattern with a saw-like noise which slowly morphs into something more like a scream. That "duet" is transformed in the second movement, where the undulating pattern becomes the clangor of an industrial machine and the "saw-screan" becomes the breath of a factory smokestack; and this movement is nothing more than a loop. The third movement, unrelated, consists of a dense buzz intersected by cosmic hisses. Three great ideas but not quite cohesive as a whole. Towboat feels more like the continuation of the first two movements because the repetitive call of a distant foghorn collides with shrill distorted noise that sounds like a screaming machine. Imaginary Songs From Tristan Da Cunha (1996, Rune Arkiv, 2012), with Tristan Da Cunha being a remote island in the middle of the ocean, mainly collects a live 30-minute performance of The Contraceptive Briefcase II for choir, musical glasses, a musical saw, theremin and electronics. At times it sounds like Diamanda Galas performing on a cliff swept by a glacial wind, and at times as the choir of a Greek tragedy mourning the death of civilization. Morals and Dogma (Rune Grammofon, 2004) pushed his sordid manipulations into the digital age. It is masterful how the gloomy Tron (11:07), recorded in 2000 with Ole Henrik Moe on violin, transitions from a murmur from hell to the rumble of an approaching storm. The overlong Dead People's Things (18:35), recorded in 1994, is an early attempt at dark ambient music. Orgone Donor (8:05) was composed by Hans Magnus Ryan and Ole Henrik Moe (who plays the harmonium) and recorded in 1996. Cloudchamber (11:02), recorded in 2000 with Ole Henrik Moe on musical saw, is based on another menacing and echoing rumble. Using low-tech home-made recording devices, and emphasizing the very limitations of those devices (the hiss of an old tape recorder, or the distortion of a defective sampler, or the deteriorating sound of a digital-to-analog transfer), and then mixing them with live instruments, Deathprod de facto ventured into digital chamber music. The four-disc box-set Deathprod (Rune Grammofon, 2004) collects all his recordings since 1991.

Humcrush, the duo of Food's drummer Thomas Stronen and Supersilent's keyboardist Stale Storlokken, released Humcrush (2005) and Hornswoggle (Rune Grammofon, 2006)

On's Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night (Les Disques Du Soleil Et De L'Acier, 2004 - Type, 2009) was a collaboration between French composer Sylvain Chauveau and Pan American's percussionist Steven Hess, remixed by Helge Sten of Deathprod.

Deathprod's ideology dominated 9 (march 2008 - Rune Grammofon, 2009), that disposed of drummer Jarle Vespestad and featured the other three (Arve Henriksen, Stale Storlokken and Helge Sten, aka Deathprod) alternating on keyboards. The result was glitchy rhythm-less ambient music.

10 (2010), Supersilent's second album as a trio (Arve Henriksen on trumpet and laptop, Ståle Storløkken on piano and keyboards, Helge Sten on guitar, keyboards and laptop), contains unreleased tracks from 8's sessions and some mediocre new material. More material from 8's sessions surfaced on 11 (2010).

Supersilent's trumpetist Arve Henriksen reunited his three Norwegian albums, Sakuteiki (2001), Chiaroscuro (2004) and Strjon (2007), on the seven-LP boxset Solidification as well as new album Chron. In between was Cartography (2008), scored for a large ensemble, notably Jan Bang (live sampling, samples, programming and arrangement), David Sylvian (voice, samples, programming), Eivind Aarset (guitars), Lars Danielsson (double-bass), Erik Honor‚ (synthesizer, samples, field recordings, choir samples), and probably his best work so far.

Supersilent's trumpetist Arve Henriksen collaborated with Belgian drummer Teun Verbruggen for Black Swan (september 2010). He led sextet on Places Of Worship (Rune Grammofon, 2013): Jan Bang (samples, programming), Erik Honore (samples, synth bass, synthesizer), Lars Danielsson (double bass), Eivind Aarset (guitars), Jon Balke (piano) and Ingar Zach (percussion). His Cosmic Creation (Rune Grammofon, 2014) is an eight-movement suite.

Supersilent's 12 (Rune Grammofon, 2014), their first album in four years, but recorded in 2011, was performed by Helge Sten, Stale Storlokken and Arve Henriksen.

Supersilent's Helge Sten released Monochromes (Bolt, 2015), containing three compositions by pianist Tomasz Sikorski: the 4-movement 14-minute Quads, the 16-minute title-track and the 22-minute Solitude Of Sounds,

Supersilent's 13 (2016) seems to contain leftovers from previous sessions as well as new material. There are several moments that could lead to a major album, although mostly not developed deftly enough. The relatively quiet 13.1 sounds like clowns playing/mocking folk shanties. The funny keyboard sounds that open 13.5 turn into a stormy conflation of a broken Bach record and a drum'n'bass record. The twelve-minute 13.7 unleashes screaming distortions and gloomy chords that sculpt a noir/horror atmosphere (unfortunately cartoonish vocals ruin the last three minutes). The 13-minute 13.9 is the most free-form bacchanal of the album but the noise has a direction, like a soaring emotion that cannot find words to express itself, so much so that the effect is similar to an Ennio Morricone soundtrack, albeit with melodies replaced by braids of roaring distortions. It is one of their best compositions/improvisations in a while,

Alas, 14 (2018) was another disappointing album: 12 brief vignettes in a facile pseudo-ambient style.

Deathprod, who had also collaborated with Biosphere on Nordheim Transformed (1998), which remixed the works of composer Nordheim, and Stator (2015), released Occulting Disk (2019), which contains the eight-movement Occulatation, the twelve-minute Black Transit Of Jupiter's Third Satellite and the eight-minute Disappearance / Reappearance. Sow Your Gold In The White Foliated Earth (2022) is devoted to a chamber piece for one of Harry Parch's custom-made instruments. Compositions (2023) contains 17 nameless compositions. Let Me Be Forever Animal (2024) contains two compositions: Tired Light and Fugue.