DEL
Five Dolls For An August Moon
Synesthetic Recordings

DEL is music for creepy nights, but not creepy beings. The press sheet says drone-space-freak-psychedelic-noise-out-rock", which could be taken as a warning. Or at least a suggestion for the fainthearted to steer clear off. DEL used to be a three-piece, but have now permanently (?) expanded. Five Dolls For An August Moon is performed by drummer Kjell Runar "Killer" Jenssen (also of Origami Arktika, Kobi, ex-Motorpsycho), noise-maker/electronics/guitar-thrasher Lasse Marhaug (of Jazzkammer/Jazkamer, Nash Kontroll, Testicle Hazard, several collaborations, plus a number of solo recordings), bassist/guitarist Per Gisle Galåen (of Slowburn, The Birds, collaborations Keiji Haino and others), plus 4th member, guitarist Fredrik Ness Sevendal (of Slowburn, plus various solo recordings). Earlier on we've reviewed two DEL recordings here at Luna Kafé; the half studio, half live record If You've Got To Fight...Fight Dirty!, and the live recorded Projectionist Please Focus. Five Dolls For An August Moon is sort of their debut album. Properly.

Five Dolls For An August Moon (which is named after a movie by Italian horror director and cinematographer Mario Bava, 1914-1980) starts with the spoken-word (by whom?) introduced "Musical Pandemonium", and the mood is set. The noise is more of the ambient type this time (compared to former recordings), as the loose "structure" of the, uh, "pieces" float by through side one of the LP. The more concrete song is the closing track, which is a "cover" of a Black Sabbath song. Here it's called "Sabbath Fucking Sabbath", and it's been stripped from original riffs and melodic lines, and sung in quite some, uh, unusual version of the Norwegian language. This makes it hard, if not impossible, to guess its origin. But it's quite a cool and meditative piece of work. Monotony and repetition can be added as key words (my guess: "Sleeping Village", off Sabbath's debut album, simply called Black Sabbath).

Side 2 starts more organic and lively, not making DEL a full throttle rock band. "Moskito Fever" sounds a bit feverish, while "International Stragglers" use the world famous workers' anthem "L'Internationale". The rest of the album is sort of free-floating stuff, quite hard to hang on to for the narrow minded. Not exactly my cup of tea, sort of. Then again, that said, after going to the release party for the album some month and half ago, the fluid music felt quite pleasant. In portions. Even if it was extremely loud. Something you didn't find out till after the show...

Copyright © 2006 Håvard Oppøyen