(winner for most grossly inaccurate press so far - ok, so i have 'played' in Navratilova:)
"If rock musicians are the sum of the bands they've played with, Lars RO must be a superstar. The guitarist, vocalist, and bassist, who makes his home in the South of France, has lent his indie-style talents to such bands as Tremolo Beer Gut, God Speed You! Black Emperor, Truman's Water, Navratilova, and many, many more."
- Kelly VANCE, December 2004, East Bay Express, http://www.eastbayexpress.com
a very flattering review (assuming you can read Danish) in Geiger. here's a loose translation for jer som ikke forstaar Dansk:
With a steady stream of art exhibits, political actions, and record releases, Lars RO, who stands behind the CD-R label Purderous Magina, has carved out a sizeable but also unfortunately overlooked path through the past decade of the Danish alternative scene. He has also only resided in the country for certain periods, since the hermit-like culture personality's curiousity about the world around him seems to drive him from place to place. This fact has naturally also resulted in his primary band, Sfu·ma·to, having an especially fluid line-up over the years, incorporating members from more than one continent. The concept behind the band seems to be that RO comes with songs, which are recorded raw and spontaneously and preferably in one take - with whomever of his musical friends happen to be nearby.
Here in this country it's bassist Andreas KOCH, drummer Asger HVID, and singer Marie HANSEN (the last two both of Traening) who make up the circle around Sfu·ma·to. It is also these three whom who collaborated in the recording of this EP last year, before RO set sail for the South of France. The EP - it's title means "foreplay" - is meant to be a taste-whetter for a future album of outtakes, B sides, and other obscure material. In terms of content, we're predominantly talking about new recordings of old material.
Where Sfu·ma·to's earlier releases have been very clattering and lo-fi, The Las Zadan ep actually presents a band which seems extremely tight and "listener friendly." One can still tell that the creative fruits have been plucked directly from the tree - the sound is still raw and demo-like, as it should be, when we're talking about Sfu·ma·to - yet compared with earlier releases, there isn't vey much (toeven?) or very many (boeffer?). The way the songs are presented is so 'right smack in your eye' that one wouldn't wish it any differently. In other words, they flash!
For instance, the 2003 version of Shards of Ancient Suns' icy "Solitude" has become an ironic and spellbinding pop-rock song full of merry, choppy beat-guitar and handclaps, which I guarantee you would make you want to dance on a table (if you were drunk enough). In its new version, "Spandex Treetops" from the 1997 EP Come Good Home smoulders calmly along that road in a low-voiced and quite disciplined play only to end as a downplayed discharge of noise-rock. And the 2003 version of the previously unreleased "Wave of Murmurings" (the original recording will be re-released on the compilation of outtakes) is a slightly sombre lo-fi experiment, which laces its way forward with marching-band snare drum, menacing bass tones, and moonsick guitar offerings. If it's this kind of thing which awaits us, the future looks bright indeed.
That's also the case when one lends an ear to the opening ballad, "What Keeps You Up at Night?" - the quartet arrangement's only track in common and the Ep's only exclusive number - where Marie HANSEN gets the starring role on the microphone, and lends her vocal chords to a country-influenced lullaby which smells of falling dew and moonlight. Sfu·ma·to has hereby succeeded in writing one of those songs which sounds like it has always existed - virtually a psalm arranged for clattering guitars, unpolished drums, and dreamy, whistling vocals. For this reason, it's somehat of a shame that this line-up of the band is already history.
Summa summarum: If you want an introduction to Sfu·ma·to, The Las Zadan ep is almost a perfect little greatest hits compilation to start out with. For that purpose, it depicts a group who has never played better regardless of the composition. May it hold the banner high for many years yet - regardless of where in the world it ends up settling down.
Steffen B. PEDERSEN, August 2004, Geiger Magazine, http://www.geiger.dk
Dave from godspeed you black emperor! really likes "spinning 2000" and "solitude 1999."
an inspiring (and quite accurate, i must say) review in Danish is available here, courtesy of Geiger. here's a loose translation for you non-Danish speakers:
Soon everything can be classified as 'independent': high-paid managers, astronomical sales figures, multinational major label support, and year-long production schedules are (in any case) no longer an issue. And while a band like Radiohead is independent in spirit, in a business sense they are the kind of band whom the first serious DIY idealogues of the Seventies (who lay the foundation for today's indie scene) would have loved to bombard with Molotov cocktails. For the same reason, it is a joy to be able to say that today's CD-burner technology and flexible production approaches have made it possible for practically anyone to release practically anything themselves - and a whole new generation of DIY labels now take advantage of this, often with mixed results. Caution: it also happens that people screw up completely, and the internal quality control short-circuits. But then again, if it does, it's not as if the whole world will hear it, and if the material is in order, even the most obscure record can open doors for an artist. At the same time, one assures oneself that one can manifest even one's strangest ideas uncompromisingly, which even a typical, so-called 'independent' label would hardly allow. And it goes without saying which dividends this possibility tends to result in as far as innovation and musical diversity go.
One of the most noteworthy Danish DIY labels in recent years is the København-based Purderous Magina Records, which is run by Lars Ro and is actually a small multimedia outfit also involved in book publishing, amongst other things. Ro has personally contributed as author and visual artist, and as musician he gets around a bit, playing in the bands Obstinate Esther, pa'vo yi'JAH, and Navratilova for the time being.
However, Ro's most important musical undertaking in recent years has been the workshop Sfu·ma·to, which has released a decent series of low-budget records with changing line-ups. Here he has concocted an often nearly gritty, no-fi sound, which can never be too scratchy and primitive. The project's first album, The Future Lies In Darkness (1999) was as such a combination of a pile of borrowed recordings for radio, and a series of recordings which the group themselves captured with a handheld dictaphone. But with Shards Of Ancient Suns, which is released by Purderous Magina in cooperation with Christian Kann's B.S.B.T.A. label, the band has actually "sold out": they have used 4-track recording equipment, and what's more, have rounded off the record with two live tracks with enviously good sound quality!
Shards Of Ancient Suns is actually a retrospective release in that it collects material from 1999 and 2000 when Ro was based in California and jammed with a whole bunch of local musicians. True to the group's workshop character. the line-up changes from track to track, so you're never sure who screws up here or shines there. And there are plenty of screw-ups, even though the record, with its slick 4-track technology, is more lo-fi than decidedly no-fi. Once again, Ro has intentionally decided to not fix mistakes, correct the tempo, or record new takes: he leans uncompromisingly to the raw and spontaneous. Since the record is therefore spared of superfluous glitter of any kind, it's first and foremost the quality of the material which makes or breaks each song.
Luckily we can assure you that there's not much missing in this regard. "Spinning," despite the somewhat yelled backing vocals and a tempo which is so loose that it ends up collapsing in on itself, is a little airy, country-inspired pearl which one can well understand that Dave from Godspeed You Black Emperor! (according to PMR's homepage) has had purring from his stereo. The same applies to the well-written, sadcore study "Staring Into A Hole," which ebbs with restrained melancholy. And of the live recordings, "Lamps And Giftshops" is a noteworthy report on a dangerous metropolis, which escalates towards the end into a springy, sparkling interplay.
Shards Of Ancient Suns' Achilles heal is that it's not always the case that the sound quality and spontaneous energy burn brightly, and in these cases, one is left with music which isn't particularly of the highest caliber, recorded in a less than highest caliber way, on what is definitely not high-caliber equipment. To survive the lo-fi trip with integrity intact, the songs have to be built up from a solid foundation. This simply isn't the case for the live track "Arabesque," which ends up as an aimless diversion into pale acid-rock. "Police & Thieves" could have been a brilliant cover version of Lee Perry and Junior Marvin's classic, if the players had only given it more punch. But the magic isn't there as it could have been. As for "Solitude," it's a painstaking task to assess the quality of the underlying melody as it drowns in a drawn-out drone of feedback. Granted, it gives a certain warming, cosmic effect, but first and foremost it seems to strangle something better than itself.
Shards Of Ancient Suns thus ends up being somewhat of a hit and miss affair. Here it's impressive in its unpolished competence, here it falls into a deep hole of its own making. To repeat, the DIY strategy also has its disavdantages. But raw diamonds are still diamonds - and Sfu·ma·to has enough of them to make it worth getting your hands on this understated basement-production.
Steffen B. PEDERSEN, March 2003, Geiger Magazine, http://www.geiger.dk
Rob
VIOLA of HAYWOOD says "those guitars scrape me real good."
"it's good stuff!
it's great. i think it's a really fine production," says Anders
of BABY WOODROSE.
"it's fucking brilliant! and the sound
quality isn't much worse than a TRUMANS WATER 7"!!! ... but it's
lo-fi punk rock, isn't it?" asks Tania from ENSEMBLE ORLANDO / THE NAKED / etc.
Lars is one of the dozens of collaborating musicians featured on the acclaimed Musical Chain Letters CD:
"Skal man fremhæve noget på denne i grunden overraskende homogene og gennemførte udgivelse - der lyder som om, den er indspillet på én gang af ét voldsomt originalt orkester - må det bl.a. blive nummeret "Carpet Goes Jolly Powerpuff", hvor melodilinjen fra The Cures "Boys Don't Cry", i fri flugt hen over et skrabende, dubbet rytmespor, genopstår i en drømmende og psykedelisk form. Tilsvarende fremragende er dog den afsluttende "Bell (Dark)", der minder om et ellers usandsynligt møde mellem Moody Blues, Kraftwerk og Slowdive - komplet med vokaler af en overjordisk støbning, som man ikke glemmer lige med det samme."
- Steffen B. PEDERSEN, June 2002, Geiger Magazine, http://www.geiger.dk
"Herefter en af pladens absolut mest festlige numre: Carpet Goes Jolly Powerpuff - smølfevokaler, beatbox og en ørehængende melodi, man nødvendigvis må gå og nynne resten af dagen... Sådan fortsætter pladen med at stritte i alle retninger for at munde ud i det storslåede nummer Bell (Dark) - engleagtige vokaler hen over et diskret beat pakket ind i støjflader. En sang der bringer tankerne hen på Sigur Rós - men en sang med en uomtvisteligt egen lyd."
- Niels ANDERSEN, 2002, Murmur
"psycho-motorique" (from the compilation CD Hairballs of Hysteria (2001)):
"fantastic... bedroom guitar blues" - Jimmy POSSESSION, July 2001, robots & electronic brains, http://come.to/robots