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CD
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PFORM 005CD
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Previously issued as a 10", now on CD. "Fe-mail is a electronics/noise duo consisting of Maja Ratkje and Hild Sofie Tafjord, both known from the anarchistic improv quartet SPUNK. Fe-mail's music is electronic music based on improvisation with live sampling as well as recordings of their own generated sounds and field recordings. Their music is characterised by the use of old fashioned, analogue electronic and acoustic sound sources such as pan pipes, harmonica, and other underestimated instruments, side by side with computers and samplers. The new release on PsychForm Records is a rolling thunder of mayhem that combines all of these elements with the spazmaticly beautiful vocal stylings of Maja Ratkje."
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2CD
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ASPH 2033CD
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"Fe-mail, Maja Ratkje and Hild Sofie Tafjord, have crafted a site-specific survey of the chaparrals of noise music. As half of the Scandinavian female improv quartet, Spunk, they began to adapt their mediums of French horn and voice to multiple formats for musical arrangements. In working for film, installation, studio, and performance they began to evolve their musical process to a compulsive physical act, opposing their classically trained standards. Exposure to distorted live sampling and field recordings allowed Maja and Hild to grab the limit and make it their instrument. Through synched communication and developed improvisation, their project further evolved into their newest release for Asphodel, Blixter Toad. This two disc set is best described as the taxonomic designation of feminine conviction through gadgetry and acoustic archaeology. Two embryonic visual studies (videos) by Masako Tinaka are included, featuring shot surveillance from the live sessions for the recording of Blixter Toad. The chromatic genus of the species call is best known by its vocal sac that blows up like a balloon and bellows 'scheweeeeeeeee' riffs. Their cut up crescendos of piercing frequencies appear like rattle snakes you find under the rocks, as you search for a jewel-encrusted music box, unsure if they'll poison you or cure you. A voice screams like an effected guitar in the distance, reminding you to come home from the thicket before the animals become more aggressive. Blixter Toad's final track coalesces into the Sunday morning dew collecting on the surface of Fe-mail's electro-acoustic lily-pads."
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CD
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IMPREC 033CD
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"'Out of Norway comes the most exciting noise LP I've heard to date. These two women romp thru stimulating noise compositions fresh and clean w/ a distinct Scandinavian frost. But there's always an undercurrent of warm embrace, sweet and masterful.' -- Thurston Moore. Already an incontestable figure of the Scandinavian music scene, Maja Ratkje follows the release of her stunning first solo album, Voice (Rune Grammaphone), with Fe-Mail. A compulsive musician who, beside her main activity as part of all-female avant-garde free-improvisation quartet Spunk, is, at only 29, a lecturer in composition at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, a world-renowned contemporary composer, an impressive singer and accomplished musician. Together with fellow Spunk-ette Hild Sofie Tafjord, Ratkje improvises with analogue electronic gear, samplers, voice, harmonica, and miscellaneous acoustic instruments to shape a more defined and delicate, if such a word can in any way define the realm in which Fe-mail evolve, series of soundscapes."
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