Lasse Marhaug Provoke

Lasse Marhaug has put his mark on literally hundreds of albums - working with artists like Jenny Hval,
Merzbow, Jim O’Rourke, Kevin Drumm, Hilary Woods - so many others - yet he still regards himself as a
primarily visual artist who got diverted into an occasionally different path. If his last album ‘Context’ was a
kiss goodbye to decades of life in Oslo, ‘Provoke’ turns a new page, but one that draws heavily from memories
of the distant past, reflecting on the way the topographies of Norway’s frozen north helped shape his creative
worldview. Weaving electronics into environmental recordings captured in the bleak Arctic winter, the album
was mixed during the Polar night season, when, for two straight months, the sun never rose past the horizon.
Somehow, even at its bleakest, Marhaug avoids the usual aesthetic signifiers for this kinda thing, finding
elements of queered beauty in all the severity, juxtaposing elements that shine a bright light on all the odd
spaces in-between.
A consideration of noise music’s place in 2024, and whether it can still be a tool for subversion when its
aesthetics have been so commodified, ‘Provoke’ also refernces an experimental ‘70s Japanese art magazine
that attempted to define a new language for photography. Operating somewhere between these two guiding
poles, Lasse feels his way through a subtly altered mode of expression, a new approach to familiar concepts.
Album opener ‘Plates’, for example, gives it the full Ø treatment, like some exceptional ‘Oleva’-outtake, but ,
eventually, shards of interference start to exhale like horses blowing, creating uncanny sensations that hit
through ambiguous feeling rather than sheer noise terror. Ritualistic, corporeal - hard to know what you’re
listening to and why it makes you feel that certain way - so much more than just machine cycles optimised
for their ultimately hollow brutalist aesthetic.
Marhaug paints vivid pictures from a carefully chosen palette, drawing us into a soundworld that’s rich with
contradictions and contrasts. Even the relatively deafening ‘New Topographics’ offsets its wall of distortion
with a muffled, perforating kick drum, cutting into the noise like a knife through butter. And all of this
preparation makes the album’s lengthy centrepiece ‘Monochrome Head’ even more impactful; hinging on a
Pan Sonic-like alloy of bass and drums, the track snowballs through tempered feedback and improv scrapes
and whistles that pick up into an orchestral din. Marhaug accents the bluster with rhythmic hums that gather
in momentum until they’re almost oppressively heavy, as if everything’s about to collapse.
A masterclass in quietly subversive world-building, ‘Provoke’ invites us to peer at an expansive sonic
landscape and marvel at its intricacies, but this time around there’s a Lovecraftian behemoth lurking
somewhere beneath its icy surface.