‘The Swamp’ is a get-to-know-you party where furniture is broken, wine glasses are smashed and walls are defaced with graffiti, but the living room remains more beautiful than the night before. The album is the first meeting between vocalist Maja S. K. Ratkje, guitarist Torstein Slåen and electronics artist Sigurd Ytre-Arne. With a fair dose of anti-bullshit inherited from decades of jazz/improv/contemporary music mixed together in the Norwegian stew pot, they improvise new songs across time, aesthetics and genre affiliation. ‘The Swamp’ hovers between elongated drones, eruptive outbursts, romantic harmonies, soft and hard, noise and beauty. The title plays on a swamp that must be regularly drained with life-affirming, fantasy-promoting music to keep down the high population of totalitarian oligarch mosquitoes to stop them from infecting the surrounding population with conformity malaria.
Listen/buy The Swamp on Bandcamp
release date: May 23, 2025
Maja S. K. Ratkje: vocals
Torstein Slåen: guitar, electronics
Sigurd Ytre-Arne: synth, drums, samplers and electronics
Recorded and mixed by Sigurd Ytre-Arne at Just Brochs gate 19, Hamar, Norway, December 2024
Mastering and cover art by Lasse Marhaug