A few weeks ago we featured the unique Fleming (Slagger) Lund here and I know he’s got an album coming up in April but for now it’s the turn of his mate, Jacob Faurholt, who in this instance is trading under the name Statisk Støj which means Static Noise.
His (real) name rings a bell with me and I was certain I’d reviewed him before but I can’t locate him for love nor money.
Anyway, Statisk Støj has just released (24th March) the first single from the new project, one called ‘Det knitrede, det støjede’, which translates as ‘It crackles, it makes noise’, which sounds a little ominous. You could say that about an IED.
He isn’t a tribute band but this is a tribute anyway to a band called Low, which is one of his favourites. I assume he’s talking about the indie rock band from Minnesota; I can’t locate any others although there is the Low Anthem out of Rhode Island, but I digress.
It is also the first time he has released music with lyrics in his mother tongue of Danish and the song also includes his wife Nadia on vocals, the Canadian musician Soren Brothers on guitar (he is also an academic at the University of Toronto), and producer/noise guitarist/songwriter Tanja Vesterbye Jessen on nine different guitar tracks.
It’s that academic connection that fascinates me; we’ve had many academics/musicians in these pages over the last 18 months, Scandinavia seems to be a breeding ground for them but this one is across the water and, correct me if I’m wrong, from the same university as Martha Ladly, one of the two Marthas in Martha & the Muffins, who is now a Professor of Design there.
Let’s get down to business. He says that the songs on the album range from fragile folk to noisy pop, to heavy and noisy.
Having prepped on Low I was expecting something noisy but ‘Det knitrede, det støjede’ is more industrial than I could have anticipated and nothing like what I foresaw. I don’t normally travel this heavy but I have been ‘privileged’ to attend gigs by both Swans and Sunn O))) – the latter at the Manchester International Festival a few years ago where staff were handing out earplugs like their life depended on it.
My own hearing took a week to recover from both shows and I’ll wager that when ‘Det knitrede, det støjede’ is played live it will rack up at least 120Db as well.
In short, if you like a repetitive, doom laden mix of noise, drone and ambient music played over an industrial metronome and Kraftwerk-like vocals at 11 on the volume dial then you simply can’t go wrong here.
I didn’t delve deeply into the lyrics but I noticed the most frequently used word is ‘solblomst’ (sunflower). Regular readers will know that one of my favourite artists is Solblomma, which is Swedish for sunflower; an artist as off the wall in her own way as this song is.
Perhaps I should encourage her to make a version of her own.
‘Det knitrede, det støjede’ is out now. A full album will be released in the summer of 2023.
Jacob Faurholt mostly records his albums at home and releases them on limited vinyl through his own imprint Raw Onion Records.
Find him on:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/statiskstoej
Instagram: www.instagram.com/statiskstoej
