About a 1PM start writing. I lasted even less time at the Roadburn networking meeting than I expected to. Got my nametag for a souvenir, found Lee, said hi to like two people and split. Not that anyone was unfriendly or anything like that — I wasn’t in the room long enough for something like that to happen — I just couldn’t hack it.

I’ve never been able to conjure a decent performance of self in that kind of setting, and I’m even less able to handle crowds generally than I used to be. To be clear: I’m not saying a bad word about people who work in the same field meeting each other — it both makes sense professionally and can be a way to connect likeminded humans — but I just can’t do it. It’s on me, completely. I’d always been invited but shy about checking it out, said this was the year. Okay.

A quick run — well, mid-paced plod, really — back to the hotel to reorient, take Advil, drink water, have a bit of a cry, etc., and try to call my wife. No answer, and if she’s sleeping past what’s 7AM at home, that’s unquestionably to the benefit of her day. I was at the 013 office before the networking meeting doing a quick blurb or two while pounding espressos, so have been up for a while, but the day doesn’t ‘start’ for another hour, so I’ll breathe a minute, get my head right and head up to Hall of Fame in a few with my even-weird-among-weirdos self. Oof.

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Light rain in Tilburg, off and on. It could be far worse. I bumped into Darsombra on my way to their show. They were on their way to lunch, which is how I knew I was early for their 2:30 start. I went to the Hall of Fame, completely empty. I’ll admit that in my head they were going at 2, but when the dude working the board said the room wasn’t opened yet, I said, “please, I’m just looking for a quiet place to sit. I’m sorry. I have a pass if that helps,” and I guess it helped because when he left the room a minute later he didn’t come back with security to kick my ass out. Thank you to him.

Turned out a few quiet-ish moments would be crucial to getting in the right frame of mind for Darsombra, who exuded joy from the moment they got on stage to explain that this was the first show on their European tour, then left and came back out with the backdrop of the video premiered here Monday for “Shelter in Place” to start their set with “Call the Doctor,” glee abounding in the prog rock vocal melodies and total other-planetary reach of their sound. Sharing vocals with themselves and everyone else in the room who knew the song, Ann Everton shifted from synth to gong to bells and clacky-clackies while Brian Daniloski reveled in tonal presence and shred, the two of them moving in their own kind of dance that was the best argument I’ve seen in a while for a vigorous stretching regimen, not that I needed convincing in that regard. Where’s Roadburn Yoga in the mornings? Completely serious about that, by the way.

Smiles on stage and off, it was a celebration of the noise itself and the ability to find one’s place in it. I dig their records and could easily provide (more) links to prove that, but it had been too long since I last bathed in their live sound. Refreshing, they were. Precisely the redirect I needed, and at just the right time. And speaking of time seeing how full the room got, I was glad to have been early, even with the more laid back Freeburn ethic I’m trying to abide by while I’m here. Once they started, time was irrelevant anyhow.

Most of my day today was at the 013 for the main stage, and that started with Mat McNerney’s commissioned project, ‘Music for Gloaming: A Nocturne by the Hexvessel Folk Assembly.’ Following on from yesterday’s full-album performance, I had been expecting a more folkish offering this time, perhaps in part because it was called a Folk Assembly, but I should’ve known better than to expect any single thing. Blackened tones and push, throaty screams and room-shaking low end pervaded amid doomly nod, quiet, ambient stretches of acoustic guitar, piano, softly intertwining dual vocal arrangements. I don’t know if it was being recorded, but it was expansive in a way that accounted for a lot of what Hexvessel have done as a band, and brought it together thoughtfully and with purpose. I’ll keep my fingers crossed it surfaces at some point as a live release, or that they decide to take it into a studio.

The room cleared a bit when they were done — there was nearly an hour before Blood Incantation were going on with the first of their two sets this weekend, this one focused on their ambient Timewave Zero LP that they’ve never played in Europe and have only done I think one or two other times live. Sounds like something perfect for Roadburn, right? How about that.

The long break post-Nocturne afforded me a chance to pop into Next Stage for a few minutes for Miaux’s standalone cinemascocpic synthery. It was low-key enough to suit my brain but I opted for a refresh of coffee and water downstairs and would not regret it as the afternoon turned to evening. I sat for a bit outside the main stage on one of the benched in the hallway — if I’m talking a lot about sitting, understand that I’m also doing plenty of standing and moving about from here to there, but that not-that is a novelty and something I consider part of finding a place for myself during these days; not actively trying to break myself is new — and ended up chatting with Timothy from Supersonic Blues, who are apparently back to being a trio and have plans to record this summer. Good news.

By the time Blood Incantation actually went on, the main stage was jammed. I’ve seen them in their more pummel-prone death metal form, but was curious to watch them explore this more ambient side. I can’t recall ever seeing a band with salt lamps on stage before, so that ticks the box of another Roadburn first for me, and in the wash of synth, loops and effects, the fog, lasers and mostly dim lights, there was no want for mood. Sitar, acoustic guitar, a gong, quiet-then-not vocals, an Attila Csihar guest spot, sampled birdsong, even a trombone that seemed to feedback a couple times became part of the procession along with a defined, slow beat and more persistent percussiveness that emerged after 40-someodd minutes to give shape later on, but the central drone never left and they never lost track of what they were building on top of as it all oozed out from the stage, not so much overwhelming, but growing into its shape in its own time. World creation, and exploratory to be sure, but even at the peak, never too kitchen-sinked or doing anything to pull you out of the hypnotic state. I was left wondering what the inevitable sequel — maybe Timewave One? — might bring. Keyboards and sonics, likewise sprawling. I watched the full set.

They said a subdued thanks and the lights came up to dissolve that reality and let the crowd make its shuffling way to wherever was next. For me that was Dool — a band I first heard and saw at Roadburn eight years ago — doing their third album, The Shape of Fluidity, in its entirety. It’s release day, so all the more a special occasion, but again there was a long break, so I hopped — note: definitely did not hop, just trying to counteract the sitting narrative above — into the Next Stage to soak in a few minutes of Forest Swords. And soaking was about it, since where I stood — look at me go! — could see little more than the flashing lights and a corner of the video screen on the stage.

I stayed long enough to appreciate what I was hearing, but my trajectory had been a repeat of between Hexvessel and Blood Incantation — water refill and then on to the next main stage set, allowing for whatever socializing between might crop up, as some did — so I left the left Next Stage to what seemed like its post-industrial vibes and did the thing. The endgame of the break was Dool (which I’ve been pronouncing wrong all this time; it’s like “dole”), who were the imperative around which I’d made the loose structure of my Roadburn Friday.

The album was fresh in my mind. I listened to it twice after getting back to the hotel the night before, and it’s been getting regular spins at home. It’s plenty heavy, but produced for more than just that, and hearing a song like “Hermagorgon” or the duly scorching opener “Venus in Flames” come through full blast from the main stage, both while I was up front taking photos and after moving up to the balcony to see the rest, was more affecting than I had anticipated.

I don’t talk about it a lot on this site because of what might happen if the wrong person read it, but as a parent trying to help guide a trans kid growing up in the United States — where it is terrifying to think that someday my child might be beaten to death for nothing more than being who she is, or might be driven to hurt herself by just moving through a world that gets off on the cruelty of its rhetoric and culture — to watch Dool guitarist/vocalist Raven van Dorst, whose experience of gender informs the theme of the lyrics throughout The Shape of Fluidity, who has grappled and maybe continues to grapple with that kind of complexity in their daily life, get on the biggest stage here and absolutely own it, own themselves, own that complexity, was powerful and moving well beyond what raw volume could hope to encompass, though there was plenty of that too. To bask in the triumph of Dool’s moment struck me hard, and it’s something I’m so, so incredibly grateful to have witnessed. To imagine along with all the horror in my mind, that kind of possibility exists, even for just a few minutes, was beautiful. I hope sometime in the future to be able to share with my daughter what it meant to me, if she still talks to me by then.

So yeah, it’s a really good record. They did it justice. Big feelings. I guess that’s what it comes down to. I watched the full set.

I missed Inter Arma’s secret show, but fair enough for them to do one after doing their own new record in full. L.A.’s Health — who are most assuredly not to be confused with Heath, who played the skate park last night and will be at Hall of Fame tomorrow — were next on the main stage. Water and a quick hey to Oeds from Iron Jinn and Timothy from Supersonic Blues as they were chatting on the main stage floor level, then to the front for that part of the thing. Am I shirking the Freeburn ideology with a routine today and similar pattern for tomorrow? Maybe on some level, but if it’s about doing what I want to do and feeling good about it — and it is — then I’ll say I’ve yet to regret any of the choices I’ve made or refused to make thus far into Roadburn. Catching Health, about whom I know precious little being simple genre categorization, would be no different.

Making a visual impact in their light and video show to go with their industrial metal — guitar, bass and drums alongside the digitized aspect — Health were loud the way you think of mountains as big. I’d heard some stuff going into the set but would in no way claim to be an expert, but there wasn’t one song they played the crowd didn’t go off for, and reasonably so with the body-volume, intensity of strobe and the breaks that let you go just long enough before the next pulse of bass frequency slammed you into the ground. The flashing lights got to be a lot after not really all that long, and since I knew I wanted my evening to end with Tusmørke in the Next Stage room following the recommendation of a good friend who’d probably rather not have his name dropped, I hit up the balcony in time to get a spot where I could both see and breathe. Not a luxury to be taken for granted.

The thoroughly Norwegian proggers assured my night finished with a smile no less wide than it started however many centuries ago this afternoon with Darsombra at Hall of Fame. Where guitar might be early on was organ and flute along with the bass and drums, and in addition to being tight enough to pull that off as a take on ’70s prog, their between-song banter was hilarious, making fun of Norway with dry humor and talking about Lord of the Rings, Norwegian children being sacrificed to elk, the proliferation of medieval reading material about how to avoid hornets, and so on. To say the room was on board would be putting it mildly. People danced to the warm groove underscoring all the wilfully-odd quirk, and the lighthearted mood on stage set the tone for their entire set, up to and including when they traded keys for guitar, having already jumped between English and Norwegian lyrics.

I hadn’t planned on staying the whole time — tomorrow is another day — and it wasn’t just the tossoff line about witches wanting to control the means of production that held me in place, but it definitely didn’t hurt the cause. I saw a dude playing air-flute. It was that kind of party.

The guitar/keyboard issue was settled when they moved the synth over to the other side of the stage — took a minute, as that kind of thing would — for the last song, but they were fluid jamming whatever anyone on stage was actually doing as part of that, funky like classic prog always wanted to be and delightfully nerdy, toying with effects and getting fuzzy or a little spacier for it, sneaking a reference to the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack into the first song and ending as a guitar/bass/drums/flute-and-keys four-piece after what felt like a genuine adventure getting there. I was glad to have gotten that recommendation, and yes, I watched the whole set. That’s how I know they finished late, which is something I’ve rarely seen a band do at Roadburn. When they neared 10 minutes over, I thought the house lights would come up, but it didn’t come to that.

Roadburn 2024 continues tomorrow and I’ll have more then. Until then, if you’re here, I hope your Roadburn has been as uplifting as mine has so far, and if not, I hope some sense of that comes through in reading. And thank you for reading.

More pics after the jump.

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Norwegian ultraprogger weirdos Tusmørke release their sixth album, Fjernsyn i Farver, May 4 via Karisma Records. The temptation is going to be to try to keep up with where the Oslo-based five-piece go on the follow-up/companion-piece to 2017’s Hinsides, but I’m not sure that’s either the way to go when it actually comes to listening or what the band intends for the listening experience. With strong currents of flute and various organs and keys, New Wave-style rhythms, bilingual lyrics and enough turns of mood and sound to be legitimately dizzying, I think Tusmørke on these six tracks are happy doing their own thing. They are way, way out there. Way gone.

Mind you, I’m not saying that an attempt to hold pace with Tusmørke on the six-track/43-minute outing isn’t worthwhile, and if you’re the type to keep tabs literally or figuratively on every move a band makes on a given record, then you should at least know that songs like the opening title-track, its proclamation-laced eight-minute compatriot “Kniven i Kurven” — the similar title construction of which to the track preceding and the album itself hardly feels coincidental — will keep you busy for some time to come. There’s a plan at work, and these songs are crafted rather than kitchen-sinked — elements like flute and Wurlitzer aren’t just thrown in. They serve no less purpose to the overall proceedings than vocals, guitar, bass or drums, and as the band careens between genres and a chiaroscuro thematic, they mostly depart the serene and classic progressive feel of Hinsides — the three-minute “Borgerlig Tussmørke” notwithstanding — in favor of a late-’70s, semi-electronic spirit that’s alt-universe danceable on “Kniven i Kurven” and given more to spacey swirl and Magma/Amon Düül II-ish headspinning on “3001,” which arrives ahead of the English-language “Death Czar,” the penultimate inclusion, on which declarations about the cosmic egg from which the universe hatched and other such ideas are laid bare.

The title Fjernsyn i Farver translates to “color television,” and while I’m not entirely sure how that plays into the ideas explored about reflected light — also, my ignorant American ass speaks not a lick of Norwegian beyond a few choice words picked up from repeated exposure in black metal: “skog,” “svart,” etc. — the depths of the arrangements throughout the title-track, “3001” the percussively insistent “Death Czar” and the sense of reconciliation in the prog-boogie of closer “Tøyens Hemmellighet” give the record as a whole a richness of character that the utter hack in me almost can’t stop himself from calling “colorful.” Nonetheless, the sonic variety and diverse personality that Tusmørke adopt for this album and the ease with which they prove malleable to that intent, can only be considered a win on the whole. And while the exploratory complexity of the material is a central factor to the listening experience, neither is Fjernsyn i Farver without a sense of songwriting and craft at work. I alluded to it somewhere above, but this isn’t a happenstance collection, and the chorus of the title-track proves it as much as the obvious consideration put into the flowing instrumental grace and far-away echoes that bring “Tøyens Hemmellighet” to its end.

Rather, opaque though it might be especially for those of limited linguistic skills such as myself, Fjernsyn i Farver brims with purpose in its execution, and each element at work is a part of it. The active nature of their rhythm, the clarity of thought put into each track and the variety they present throughout may be difficult to trace step by step, but taken in its entirety, the sweeping breadth that ensues is both immersive and affecting in any language.

I have the pleasure today of hosting the full premiere of Fjernsyn i Farver below ahead of the release later this week. You’ll find it on the player here, followed by the best band quote I’ve gotten in a while to go with one of these streams, which actually goes a long way toward explaining what Tusmørke are up to conceptually here. There’s also more background from the PR wire, which includes what I assume is a complete list of the instruments used on these tracks.

Please enjoy:

Benediktator on Fjernsyn i Farver:

Fjernsyn i Farver is a companion piece to our last album Hinsides. All the songs came about in roughly the same mindframe and spacetime. We then sorted the songs into two categories, Death and Space. Hinsides was thus the death album (“death” is pronounced “dess” in Norwegian), while this is the space album, both sci-fi-wise and psychedelically.

Don’t expect the sound of ’67, though; we are more inspired by Goblin, Norwegian new wavers Kjøtt, Norwegian hardrockers Høst and bird watching. How come? Well, space is full of horror, hardness, rocks and waves. Also, Benediktator and Krizla are keen ornithologists. The world was hatched from the cosmic egg, laid by the bird of paradise. The yolk of our existence is still surrounded by the white, the blinding light that blocks our true sight. The question isn’t: Where do visions come from? The question is: Where do they go? The answer is, unfortunately, in Norwegian.

“Fjernsyn i farver” (“Colour Television”) is Tusmørke’s sixth full length album, loosely based on two concepts of light, time and reality. How everything we see is a reflection made by light from the sun hitting an object – The reflected light is registered by our eyes, but the reflection is also sent out in all other possible directions, travelling at the speed of light. The unobstructed reflections would travel forever onwards into space. If we could devise a means to move faster than light, we could overtake these reflections and view them again, seeing history backwards.

The second idea is that light is not seen as anything until it hits something and is reflected back, creating an image in colour for the human eye. So if there were no physical objects to reflect the light, there would be an eternal totality, a darkness of sorts, since light would not be seen.

With artwork by Linn Solveig Halvorsrød and design by Tom Korsvold, tracklisting on the album us as follows:

1. Fjernsyn i farver (Colour Television)
2. Kniven i kurven (The Knife in the Basket)
3. Borgerlig tussmørke (Civil Twilight)
4. 3001
5. Death Czar
6. Tøyens hemmelighet (The Secret of Tøyen)

Featuring members of WOBBLER, JORDSJØ and ALWANZATAR, TUSMØRKE’s lineup fields an almost dizzying variety of instruments, and is comprised of Benediktator on Bass, vocals, Glockenspiel and percussion, Krizla on Flute, vocals, electronics and percussion, The Phenomenon Marxo Solinas on Minimoog Model D, Korg CX3, William de Blaise on harpsichord, Steinway & Sons Grand Piano, Hohner Clavinet D6, Mellotron M400, Hammond C3, Wurlitzer 200 and Solina String Ensemble, and HlewagastiR on Drums and percussion.

Tusmørke on Thee Facebooks

Tusmørke on Bandcamp

Karisma Records US webstore

Karisma Records EU webstore

Underjordisk Tusmørke is the debut album from Oslo-based foursome Tusmørke. In English, the album title means “subterranean twilight,” and the name of the opening track, “Fimbul,” refers to the long, multi-year apocalyptic winter that precedes the end of the world in Norse mythology. So if you’re wondering precisely what kind of ground Tusmørke are covering on their first LP, it’s dark, it’s pagan, and cloaked in atmospheres cold enough to warrant the robes the band dons to present their material.

With flute, mellotron, Hammonds and a host of other bizarre flourishes, Underjordisk Tusmørke basks in its own strange otherworldliness. A proggish sense of pomposity bleeds into the arrangements, purposefully reaching toward the melodically grandiose in a way that would make Black Widow or Amon Düül II proud. The dual vocals of bassist Benediktator and floutist Krizla add depth and range to the six tracks of the album proper (three bonus tracks are included on the CD), only periodically touching on Tull-isms before taking darker turns pushed forward by drummer HlewagastiR and lent atmospheric richness by keyboardist Deadly Nightshade (also of noise crushers Årabrot). But always, weirdness prevails.

And chiefly, that’s why I’m interested. One listen to “Fimbul” and you know a goat-legged devil isn’t far off, but as much as classic prog has made itself felt across doom and pagan metals and heavy rock, Tusmørke approach the unabashed sense of strangeness that made the sound standout so much in the first place. Using elements of Scandinavian folk and an apparent affinity for vintage methods, they don’t so much lay claim to authenticity as make you wonder why you care so much about it to begin with.

Tusmørke‘s Underjordisk Tusmørke is due for release on CD/LP Nov. 9 (Nov. 13 in US) on Termo Records. Please enjoy “Fimbul” on the player below, followed by more info about the album, courtesy of the PR wire:

[mp3player width=470 height=150 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=tusmorke.xml]

The band’s history can be traced back to the mid-nineties and the budding, Scandinavian scene of new progressive bands. Back then, the Momrak twins who are the beating heart of Tusmørke called their band Les Fleurs de Mal. The band featured future Wobbler vocalist Andreas Prestmo, and they shared the stage with other up-and-coming bands like White Willow. Via intricate pathways, this evolved into Tusmørke, whose music is darker, more intense and dare we say primeval, than the more delicate Les Fleurs de Mal. The album you are holding in your hands will conjure up images of pagan rites, witches dancing in the firelight serenading the new moon, eldritch wizards conjuring dark spirits… And it’s no gimmick: This band lives and breathes the same air that flows through the magical lands their music describes.

The album has been expertly recorded and produced by that master of retro productions, Lars Fredrik Frøislie (Wobbler, White Willow, In Lingua Mortua), and sounds so authentically analog that you can practically smell the antique equipment that has been used for its making. Lars contributes mellotron, chamberlin, spinet, Hammond organ and a host of esoteric instruments on the album.