International relevance: *
Carl Michael von Hausswolf has been a driving force in Swedish underground culture for a long time, being a sound composer, visual artist and founder of one of the most important Swedish record labels in the 80s, Radium 226.05. His first appearance on record was as the bass player and guitarist on Claes Ekenstam & Sista Bandet's ”Sista tåget till Tasjkent” in 1979. His first solo album appeared as ”Bark & is” the following year featuring several Sista Bandet members.
The 'B' side points to his future of ambient tape compositions with the side long ”Is” (=”ice”).
It does create some tension with chilly sounds, the spooky timbre of
a zither, wailing free jazz sax and dead pan recitals of poetry, but
it definitely overstays its welcome at 25 minutes. The first side is
more rock oriented with traces of The Velvet Underground and the late
70s San Francisco scene with Chrome and MX-80 Sound. The noisy
semi-psych tracks ”Forensisk buss” and ”Ljusa lockar” work
fine but the most self-consciously affected bits are pretentious and
pseudo-artistic in the same way that a lot of the period's industrial
music is. Still an interesting historical artefact from a time when
not a lot in this vein were made in Sweden – the closest might be
parts of the much more improvised album by the mysterious Imp.Ink,
also from 1980.
Carl Michael von Hausswolff is father of internationally acclaimed singer Anna von Hausswolff.
No links found
