Plastic hardly makes any sound. Nevertheless, Bodil Rørtveit and Jørn Lavoll have composed music for instruments made of plastic garbage. Now we release an EP with the music from the concert performance Sustain on digital platforms.
Listen to the EP here.
While a modern trumpet has been shaped through thousands of years to produce its brilliant and agile sound, plastic instruments have little or no resonance. Our five musicians have to work very hard with the instruments. This unpredictability and fragility is almost a metaphor for what Sustain is all about.
The musical expression
In terms of genre, Sustain lies between art pop, world music, jazz and improvised contemporary music.
The instruments include a slide guitar made of plastic tubes, inflated cola bottles, a traffic cone trumpet as well as Lego percussion. The fact that the music does not have lyrics makes room for the listeners to make their own interpretations.
Sustain as EP
The EP's first track stars with a "magic" harp that can not be tuned. We get to hear plastic bag crackling and whale singing through traffic cones. Jørn Lavoll plays the tubulum (a melodic percussion instrument made of PVC pipes of different lengths) while Bodil Rørtveit has made her own musical language of bird sounds. Her vocal range from raw, at times brutal, to beautiful and versatile. Magnus Brandseth plays the plastic didgeridoo of dissonant plastic pipes which, together with Terje Isungset's plastic percussion, make way for a groundbreaking primal scream by Rørtveit. A plastic cup with a fishing line, played by Annlaug Børsheim, has been described as the sound of the earth itself cracking.
Listen to the EP here.
Listen to the EP here.
While a modern trumpet has been shaped through thousands of years to produce its brilliant and agile sound, plastic instruments have little or no resonance. Our five musicians have to work very hard with the instruments. This unpredictability and fragility is almost a metaphor for what Sustain is all about.
The musical expression
In terms of genre, Sustain lies between art pop, world music, jazz and improvised contemporary music.
The instruments include a slide guitar made of plastic tubes, inflated cola bottles, a traffic cone trumpet as well as Lego percussion. The fact that the music does not have lyrics makes room for the listeners to make their own interpretations.
Sustain as EP
The EP's first track stars with a "magic" harp that can not be tuned. We get to hear plastic bag crackling and whale singing through traffic cones. Jørn Lavoll plays the tubulum (a melodic percussion instrument made of PVC pipes of different lengths) while Bodil Rørtveit has made her own musical language of bird sounds. Her vocal range from raw, at times brutal, to beautiful and versatile. Magnus Brandseth plays the plastic didgeridoo of dissonant plastic pipes which, together with Terje Isungset's plastic percussion, make way for a groundbreaking primal scream by Rørtveit. A plastic cup with a fishing line, played by Annlaug Børsheim, has been described as the sound of the earth itself cracking.
Listen to the EP here.
