Swedish vocals, English vocals, spoken
word
International relevance: **
It's been a five long years since I
wrote about Erik Aschan's third album, ”Så länge ni vägrar
lyssna”. It's an ambivalent review, and my ambivalence towards
Aschan hasn't lessened since. I'm still not sure how to deal with his
music, a kind of music that's intriguingly beguiling and completely
lost at the same time. He was (probably still is) able to get some
good tunes together, but he wasn't necessarily good at performing
them. His sense of timing was at times, well... not necessarily one
he shared with others.
One thing's for sure – a double album
such as ”Mothugg!” is usually way too much to consume in
one sit. And if you do get through it from the beginning to the end,
it's a dizzying experience, a whirpool of weird phrasing, off-key
vocals, drum beats behaving like they belong to a different album,
peculiar sound effects, lyrics that someone with a better
self-perception would never have made public... The list of examples
of how not to make a record is endless but Erik Aschan, or Erik
Aschan Zürcher, or Erik-Gabriel Willand Zürcher, or Eric Asch an
Surcher, or whatever his name was at a certain moment in time, breaks
every rule, probably because he doesn't know there were any rules at
all. Maybe there aren't. Probably not. Who knows. After listening to
any of his albums, I'm not too sure about anything.
The first disc of ”Mothugg!” is
electric, the second acoustic, and while Aschan sounds more like an
artist in the traditional sense once he leaves the drums and electric
guitars behind, it doesn't do enough to pull the listener back into
the world and mind where most of us live, whether we like or not.
”Vi ska alla den vägen vandra!”
(subtitled ”Offrad på politikens altare”) followed in 1982,
self-released just like every Aschan album, and one his most coherent
albums. It still sounds like someone not quite part of the regular
reality, but this time it's usually only Aschan's vocals that are
off. He shrieks in desperate falsetto, as if the he twists his voice
like he twists his ankle, and the lyrics aren't really Nobel Prize
material, but at least the bass realizes what the drums are there for
and the guitars screaming and buzzing with fuzz behave rather well.
This is possibly the Erik Aschan album that 'normal' listeners may
enjoy the most.
But I still can't decide whether
Aschan's albums are good or terrible. Perhaps neither. Perhaps
they're just Aschan, capturing that particular quality that only
applies to him. Erik Aschan is the epitomic outsider making everybody
else feel as if they're on the wrong side without knowing which side
is which. Or maybe not. After listening to three of his discs in a
row, and I really don't know anymore. Do I like them? I've no idea.
”Mothugg!” is subtitled ”Mina
sånger kommer alltid att leva!!!” – ”my songs will live forever!!!”. (Note his absurd overuse of exclamation marks and parenthetical titles.) It could very well be. When they've dropped the final bomb, two things will
remain: the cockroaches, and the ambiguously unsettling voice of Erik
Aschan.
Selections from ”Vi ska alla den vägen vandra!” can be heard at Erik Aschan's website.
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