Norwegian composer and vocalist
Maja Ratkje (born in December 1973) co-founded Spunk, an all-female improvisation quartet with
Kristin Andersen on
trumpet, Hild Sofie Tafjord on French horn and Lene Grenager on cello,
documented on
the EP
The Incredible (1997),
the album Det eneste jeg vet er at alt er endret (1999), containing
Tapeunderlaget (13:00) and
Akershus (25:18),
then on Den øverste toppen av en blamalt flaggstang (2002),
En aldeles forferdelig sykdom (2005),
Kantarell (2009),
and on the live DVD Light (2011).
The six-disc box-set
Das Wohltemperierte SPUNK (Rune Grammofon, 2013)
was a 12-year project that started in January 2001 and was completed in December
2012 consisting of 12 performances
in different locations,
one per year,
during which the four musicians
played (ad libitum) one single note of the equal tempered scale (12 notes in total).
Perhaps their best achievement was
the music for choreographer Odd Johan Fritzøe's dance performance
Adventura Botanica (2014),
divided in three parts
(the 22-minute Nymphaea Alba,
the 9-minute Hepatica Nobilis,
the 17-minute Trifolium Montanum).
Spunk also released
the live Still Eating Ginger Bread for Breakfast (2016).
Fe-mail was a noise duo with Hild Sofie Tafjord, first documented on
Syklubb fra Haelvete (TV5, 2002). The ladies forge their own version of
industrial music on steroid, notably in the six-minute Syklubb Fra Haelvete, and their own demented version of
musique concrete, notably in the manic supersonic distorsion of A Merry Day In The Woods.
The pulsating magma of the eight-minute Modogin is a diligent
demonstration of their destructive force.
But even better is perhaps the more concise gallopping insanity of Gossip.
The 2004 reissue adds two more anarchic collages.
Ratkje debuted solo with
Voice (Rune Grammofon, 2002), an album
of heavily manipulated pitch-shifted vocal nightmares
that evoke
Diamanda Galas,
Meredith Monk,
Joan LaBarbara
and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.
Intro drops a petulant childish delirium into
psychedelic electronic vortices.
Joy emits a shrill animal cry with the counterpoint of shamanic howling.
Trio shuffles chaotic fragments of voice into a digital blender, with
a peak of horrific pathos achieved with screams of damned sinners sliding into a burning hell.
If the 12-minute Vacuum is mostly instrumental and a bit too sophisticated,
Dictaphone promptly returns to hysterical and convulsed overlapped mayhem.
The six-minute Voice morphs from galactic siren song to
somnolent lounge ballad.
The ten-minute Insomnia is split into two parts: a
fanfare of alien buzzing that explodes into a
psychotic storm, and a five-minute coda of erratic loops.
The album is dotted with
abstract electronic vignettes like Chipmunk.
Ratkje collaborated with Norwegian noise-maker Lasse Marhaug on the six-song EP
For Shopping (2003),
Music For Loving (2004), perhaps the best, containing
the eight-minute Sliced Minimalist Meets Sheep & Easy, Cool & Dancing Diva
and the nine-minute Music For Loving,
Music for Faking (2005), containing
Nihilist Ace Blues for Time Travel (7:46),
Pop Up in Strange Beds With a Smile (8:08) and
Music for Faking (12:32),
and
the seven-song EP Music For Gardening (2009).
Fe-mail's All Men Are Pigs (2004) contains the lengthy pieces
Oh You Gritty Thing,
In the Slicer With Lasse Neuf and
Fresh From the Flesh on a Bed of Roses.
Fe-mail's mini-album
Voluptuous Vultures (2005) contains
the ten-minute Valkyrie Procession, symphony of dark industrial drones
colliding with infernal voices;
and the 2006 reissue adds the more sophisticated 12-minute electronic collage
Voluptuous Vultures.
She collaborated with Dutch virtuoso vocalist Jaap Blonk on
Majaap (2004) and then the duo went full-force electronic on
Post-Human Identities (Kontrans, 2005), a live improvisation:
Rotary Torso Extension (18:33) is a pummeling hallucinatory experience
of distorted vocals and electronic cacophony,
Of Strange Abductors (8:55) bridges the beastly and the robotic
just like
Queasy Chin Dip (8:44) joins animal voices and industrial noise ending in a catastrophic finale of electric shocks,
and the psycho-futurist fantasia
The Abominable Crunch (10:36) which ends the album in a wimpering whistle.
She also premiered her opera No Title Performance and Sparkling Water (2003) and her Concerto for Voice (2004).
Ballads (2006) documents a collaboration with Norwegian noise-maker John Hegre.
Fe-mail returned with the double album
Blixter Toad (2006), containing
Belonging (11:57),
Navrattan Korma (9:43),
Samba Surore (8:34),
Pretty Song (9:05),
After the Rain (8:10),
Rockabilly (8:36),
and
Ballad (13:29).
Ratkje's solo albums include:
Stalker (Important, 2006), containing a terrifying 35-minute wall of noise,
Adventura Anatomica (Semishigure, 2006),
and
the mini-album Teip (Ambolthue, 2007), containing a 20-minute piece.
River Mouth Echoes (Tzadik, 2008) collects
several lengthy dissonant compositions:
Øx for sax and electronics,
Essential Extensionswork by Poing,
Waves IIB for orchestra,
Sinus Seduction for sax and electronics,
and especially the 20-minute River Mouth Echoeswork for chamber ensemble),
a combination of droning and prickly counterpoint, culminating
four minutes before the end in a frenzy that feels like
a parody of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee".
Cyborgic (Last Record, 2009) contains a
free improvised solo performance of 2008.
The 35-minute piece of
Danse Macabre (Kassettkultur, 2010) documents a live improvisation.
The awful recording quality does not do justice to the psycho-acoustic storm that
begins at about the ten-minute mark of the first half. The second half is quieter
but nonetheless ripped apart by punk-ish tension
She joined the Norwegian music ensemble Poing (featuring Rolf-Erik Nystrøm on saxophones, Frode Haltli on accordion, and Hakon Thelin on double bass) for Wach Auf (2011) and Kapital & Moral (2016).
Scrumptious Sabotage (2013) documents a collaboration with Ikue Mori,
and Janus (2013) documents a collaboration with French sound artist Joachim Montessuis (two untitled improvisations).
In 2014 she began composing
Ekkokammer
for the vocal ensemble Trondheim Voices, first documented on
Ekkokammer 3.0 (2020).
Celadon (2015) captures a live performance with
Jon Wesseltoft (accordion, organ and harmonium),
Camille Norment (glass armonica),
and
Per Gisle Galaen (zither and harmonium).
And Sing (2L, 2016) contains
And Sing While Thou on Pressed Flowers Dost Sleep (20:33), a
mostly instrumental piece that incorporates her vocals in a
relatively harmonious way and that feels like an agonizing stream of consciousness, and her far more interesting
Concerto for Voice (Moods IIIb) (23:24), closer to the
symphonic tradition of classical music and rich of dramatic development,
capable of balancing orchestral pomp and her trademark vocal noise,
and of generating moments of real pathos, all the way to the humble and cryptic finale.
Her solo career continued with Crepuscular Hour (Rune Grammofon, 2016), a 56-minute piece for choir, soloists, and electronics, first premiered in 2010 in an Oslo church.
The male voices and the female voices sing separately in a slowly evolving
and overlapping call-and-response structure, a wave-like dynamics that always
seem on the verge of exploding but instead subdues after 18 minutes.
Far from dying, the music revives as a volley of feeble vocal and electronic drones in endless movement, floating ethereal wordless vocals that at times
sound almost psychedelic but in time grows to a slow-moving cosmic apocalypse.
The last 14 minutes instead evoke some kind of medieval mass but drowned
in an atmosphere of panic.
Sult/ Hunger (Rune Grammofon, 2019) contains the music for a ballet based on Knut Hamsun's novel of 1890. She played the entire score on a custom electronic pump organ.
Vannstand/ Sea Level (Motvind, 2021) is a set of eight vignettes for
field recordings, chamber ensemble and children's voices.
The pieces are mostly chaotic (notably Bergen A), sometimes coalescing
in abstract chamber soundpainting (Bergen B).
The protagonist is the petulant violent string orchestra in Stavanger A.
The nine-minute Stavanger B feels like a colony of melodies that fail to grow.
It's music that rarely sustains interest.
Mara (2020) documents another free live improvisation.
She collaborated on Rokkur (2023) with the Baroque Icelandic ensemble Nordic Affect.
and on
Collage (2023) with the Erlend Apneseth Trio.
All Losses Are Restored (2024) documents a collaboration with
Norwegian guitarist Stian Westerhus.
Avant Joik was a duo with fellow vocalist Katarina Barruk, documented on
Live in Bergen (2021).
The Swamp (2025) was a collaboration with
guitarist
Torstein Slaen and sound artist Sigurd Ytre-Arne.
