The Wire reviews SONAR 2004

“(…)Oslo’s Maja Ratkje, by contrast, performing at the Sonar Complex, cut a much more striking appearance in a lime green top darkly embroidered with the word “DESTROY”. Despite the squalling, intense pitch of her electronic concoctions, however, she didn’t lapse into theatrics. What made her performance one of the most pleasing spectacles of the festival is her concentration and restraint, as if the noises she unleashed had a myriad lives of their own and she had to prevent them from boiling over or burning out, keep them simmering and shrieking. The centrepiece of her set was a sustained avalanche of squabbling birdsong, manipulated radio waves, unabating electronic furies and feral, sampled sound, which with grim satisfaction, she brought slowly to a crescendo. That done, she rather sweetly took a bow. (…)” ‘The Wire’ on SONAR 2004



Scroll to Top