SCENEPOINTBLANK :

Kaada
Music for Moviebikers
(Ipecac, 2006)

There are few artists from the last few years that I have enjoyed more than John Erik Kaada. Woefully under-informed was I of his band Cloroform that had apparently been rocking the shit out of Norway and other more fortunate countries than ours for years. It was not until the release of his first solo album, Thank You for Giving Me Your Valuable Time, that I first heard the brilliance - not a word I throw around lightly - of the man and his music.

I think it was just the otherworldly quality of his music that appealed to me so much. You listen to songs like “Care” and “No You Don't” and it's like being in a David Lynch film or Frank Miller graphic novel. The follow-up album, MECD, is just as great, but holy Lord is it hard to find. Your best bet remains to get it straight from his website.

With Music for Moviebikers, the third solo album from Mr. Kaada, he has created a lush, stark (yes, it can be both) masterpiece - another word I don't throw around lightly or often - that makes me thank the heavens once again for Ipecac Recordings for releasing one of the best albums of the year. While usually relying solely on his own programming skills, Music for Moviebikers has an entire orchestra to bring the compositions to life and the end result is beautiful.

Anyone can call himself or herself a “composer,” but it's really a title that needs to be earned. One listen to this album and any shred of doubt as to Kaada's qualifications should be eradicated. At times reminiscent of Les Baxter and others, like the lonely “Mainstreaming” conjuring aural images of Morricone. But at no time is the impression given that their influence is anything more than that, leaving Kaada's compositions very much his own. Now, if we can just find a domestic distributor for the Cloroform catalogue.

9.2 / 10


By Kevin

METALSTORM

01. Smiger
02. Mainstreaming
03. Heckle
04. Spindle
05. The Mosquito And The Abandoned Old
06. Julia Pastrana
07. No Mans Land
08. Daily Living
09. The Small Stuff
10. Celibate
11. Retirement Community
12. Birds Of Prey
13. In Hora Mortis


I once was told that music was the amplification of one's heart, then I bought Death Metal albums that talked about mutilations and raping dead things…time passed by and I forgot about that beautiful statement, I began listening to music just for the sake of clutching heavy riffs and catchy beats. One mysterious day I bought an album called "Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven" by Godspeed You Black Emperor! and my life changed that very same day. 6 years later, and after unsuccessfully searching for "the next best thing" in music, I received a package containing the new album of a guy named "Joe Young"…Kaada for us.

Here you have a Norwegian genius who gathered a great ensemble of classic instruments (some are invented by him actually) and created one of the most beautiful pieces ever in music history. Yes people, it's not metal, but if you are wise enough you'll open your mind and you'll see there's more in music than jammed guitars and piteous ideologies. This personage is also known for writing the score for movies (I seriously don't know which ones but I'm currently doing my homework), so imagine the musical horizon Kaada has; so this time he took his harmonious brain and pasted it on a record called "Music For Moviebikers".

It's one hour of enthralling melodies, shivering atmospheres and even bloodcurdling passages with the most interesting chants I've heard in a long time. Kaada delivers an hour of everything music wise; the thirteen "Takes" have a force of their own, the whole impression is about stances gathered from movies, but each song has a different approach towards the environment and the core of the music; apparently Kaada never says which movies though…he's one of those "My concept is for you to have your own concept" kind of guys, I think that's brilliant in a very creepy way.

This album is so great that I can't even put it into words; this is the first time I hear about Kaada and I'm already searching for his past albums (He even has a record in collaboration with Mike Patton so go figure). "Music For Moviebikers" it is not for everyone; the simple minds won't absorb the intense brilliance that this album emanates. So I'll say one more thing; Kaada is the reason why people says that music is our heart and mind on an instrument.


Performance: 10
Songwriting: 10
Originality: 10
Production: 10
Overall impression: 10
 





Losing Today.

Absolutely perfect musical listening for these long sultry summer nights.

Kaada or more precisely John Eric Kaada has spent the best part of his career crafting award winning soundtracks for independent films released in his native Norwegian territory whilst to date finding time to release two well received solo full lengths one of which a collaboration with Mike Patton. With a press photo (presumably of the mysterious Kaada) whereupon he looks strangely (and worryingly) like Jason King with a hair trim and a ’tache with its own wilfully independent growth pattern you’d be forgiven for sniffing at ’Music for Moviebikers’ his third solo outing.

But you’d be wrong.

Very wrong.

Arming himself with a 22 piece orchestra Kaada has perhaps created as seamless and perfect a soundtrack as to have never been conceived by Ennio Morricone - and believe you me I choose my words carefully here when I say think of the heartbreaking magnificence of ’Once upon a time in the West’ (as perfectly encapsulated on the opening ‘Smiger’ with its Roy ‘Get Carter’ Budd intro) meeting head on in a saloon bar ’Paint your Wagon’ dutifully re-scripted perfectly for shared consumption by both the Black Heart Procession and godspeed you black emperor. ’Music for Moviebikers’ is no mere cheapened Morricone copyist, this is a hard earned labour of love exquisitely dissected, re-drilled and re-interpreted, it’s greatest achievement served by the fact that Kaada has got beneath the skin, bypassed the foibles and headed directly towards the very essence of Morricone even observing the much overlooked minor detail of endowing each of the instruments with its own unique voice so that you get the doey eyed chimes, the inebriated banjo arrangements and the mooching exclamatory twangs of the guitar.

All at once captivating, enigmatic, haunting and sensual ’Music for Moviebikers’ parades about with the kind of enchanting romanticism you’d feared pop had all but forgotten. It never dulls in fact in truth it’s the first soundtrack I can ever recall whereby I’ve never once had the urge to press the fast forward button to skip past tracks I’ve considered nothing more than fillers. Each of the tracks here seductively fall into each other giving an unerring sense of quiet communication between themselves - best exemplified by ‘the Mosquito and the Abandoned Old Woman‘ and ‘Julie Pastrana‘ - the former gives account of itself by being bathed in a foreboding storm brewing resilience while the latter elegantly punctuates the sparseness with a desirable pastoral charged ‘calm after the storm‘ genteelness. Kaada never over reaches or neither gets blighted with self indulgence and it that fact that serves as his ace up the sleeve as it were.

Incorporating a delicious canvas of spaghetti western accents, 60’s noire-ism, ominous Sicilian extracts (just listen to the toy box appeal of ‘Spindle’ and ‘Birds of Prey’) and a glacial sheen, the compositions yawn, creak and uplift with a wide screened shanty like appeal that slightly beckon you in. The aforementioned ‘the Mosquito and the abandoned old woman’ has a similar ethereal resonance as bewitched Goldfrapp’s ‘Felt Mountain’ though here treated to the almost sinister vibe as ran through Add N to X’s ‘Add insult to injury’ like words through a bar of rock with the additional spectacle of a Monty Norman meets Link Wray to die for twang. The ploy is similarly recalibrated on ‘Daily Living’ with its Mexican stand off appeal being twisted and fused with a curious combination of sensual astuteness and the abstract nuances that flitted about Alex Cox‘s ‘Repo Man’ soundtrack. Elsewhere ’Mainstreaming’ is ’Hill Street Blues’ when the lights are switched off flirting with the Bronte-an elegance of fortdax then there’s the wonderfully drifting Gaelic appeal of the spectrally lulling ’No man’s land’ while the kooky ’In Hora Mortis’ leads out the set tucking you up ready for sleep with its disarming dreamlike collage.

What more can I say - just buy the damn thing.

Norwegian “sound artiste” Kaada’s 2001 release Thank You for Giving Me Your Valuable Time was a confusing and eclectic affair, filled with sampled beats, bits of live instrumentation, and Mike Patton-esque sideshow abnormalities (singing through an intercom?), which made his subsequent signing to Patton’s Ipecac label (and re-release of said album in 2003) seem predestined. Kaada’s latest output for Ipecac, Music for Moviebikers, is in a completely different vein. It is a beautiful and creative showcase of textures, melody, and imagery that channels modern moodmakers like Ennio Morricone and Yann Tiersen through a 22-piece orchestra (including bizarre instruments such as the glass harmonica, dulcitone, and psaltery) rather than through samples.

Music for Moviebikers takes the somewhat clichéd idea of “music for an imaginary film” (which was in consideration to be the title, before the more bizarre Moviebikers title was selected) and turns it into something so much more than a music-writing cliché. Each song, while evocative as any Morricone piece, has no imagery tacked on, no squinting cowboy kicking up dust to its humming melodies. Rather, the songs sprout imagery like seeds, with the melodies, textures, and the listener's imagination as fertilizer. The spaces between the sounds fill up the imagination with fuzzy, indistinct locations and feelings, and the listener begins to feel as if they’re in a hazy cinema, watching out-of-focus, impossible memories creep along the screen.

It starts with “Smiger,” a song whose ripe melody is filled with some sort of longing, which drips off of the violin, glockenspiel, and soaring wordless vocals like tears. “Mainstreaming” is one of the few songs with lyrics, in which Kaada paraphrases a ninth-century Islamic text, intoning “Whoever seeks, whoever seeks me finds me, whoever finds me knows me, whoever knows me loves me, whoever loves me, I love too, whomever I love, I kill.” It’s a chilling text, yet it is spoken with warmth, surrounded by tinkling piano and swirling violin, and while the lyrics add context to the melody, they are not overbearing, nor do they force an unwanted image onto Kaada’s empty slate.

Things get more eerie with “From Here on it Got Rough,” which features inhuman wordless vocals that sound - not unpleasantly - like a cat in heat, yet more subdued, as if the cat is telling a secret. The strange, uneasy feeling of the song continues as disembodied voices swirl above guitar and piano, haunting the melody. Morricone is channeled imaginatively further on in “The Mosquito and the Abandoned Old Woman,” whose melody sounds like neither of those things. The classic ghost town guitar opens up an uneasy soundscape that is subsequently filled by unnamable instruments (is that a saw?) and an accordion-like melody.

The album’s longest piece, “Celibate,” starts off like some sort of organic Bohren & Der Club of Gore and morphs into a dark folk song from an indeterminate region, with what sounds like Norwegian vocals eked out in a falsetto over strummed guitar before the lush string section takes it away. It continues on for seven minutes, which makes it the only song that may overstay its welcome by a minute or two.

While the songs are disparate, with each evoking a different non-existent memory, the album remains cohesive, as the unique orchestration and yearning, wordless vocals string together these disparate pieces as a cohesive, coherent, beautiful whole. Music for Moviebikers acts as a hostel for wandering dreams and memories, the imagery filling up the spaces between the walls of instruments. This hostel may be the most beautiful album put out this year.

-Palmer Keen

Kaada

John Erik Kaada, a Norwegian composer known simply by his surname, seems to put as much stock in imagery as he does in sound. That’s imagery, not image, though the precious photograph on the cover of his new album, “Music for Moviebikers” (Ipecac), hints otherwise. Each of the album’s 13 tracks feels cinematic; Ennio Morricone is obviously a major influence. (The video for “From Here on It Got Rough,” accessible at YouTube.com, goes further back, to the shadowy flicker of silent film.) This isn’t to say that Kaada’s music alone is featureless. He scored the album as a suite for a 22-piece orchestra, assigning parts not only to cellists and mallet percussionists but also to a glass harmonica player and a musical saw artist. There are ethereal vocals but hardly any lyrics; Kaada apparently holds those in reserve for Mike Patton, the underground rock Beelzebub who partners with him in a much twitchier collaboration, Kaada/Patton, and whose label releases both artists’ willfully strange creations.

THE FENCE

Kaada: Music For Moviebikers

There are two general categories of movie music: the kind that is composed specifically for a film and the already released kind that was selected by someone for the film. As for which works better, it is up to the director or whoever else makes those big decisions (and if you know anyone who needs someone fills that roll, contact me). Then there’s the music that, while not in any film, sounds like it was written for a film—sometimes, better yet, a particular scene in a film. I always thought “Fear Not My Friend For Tonight We Ride” off You Should Be At Home Here by Carissa’s Weird would have fit well in an indie-flick scene of someone driving through the country. Black Heart Procession released their Tropics of Love album as a murder mystery film. Norway’s classically-based, 22 person orchestra Kaada has produced a full album of such music but without the supporting images, allowing the listener to conjue the images themself and making Kaada's musical imagery a listener-induced audible cinematography.

“Smiger” could follow a 1920s funeral procession through city streets to the cemetery in the outskirts of town. You can almost visualize the black, gray, and dark blue hues used to emphasize an early winter sadness as the progression walks by a small group of children who look up from playing in a doorway. "Julia Pastrana" could almost substitute as the light but eerie piano theme in Donnie Darko while “Mainstreaming,” supported by 9th century lyrics credited to 'Sinda Ali the Moslem,' would bring a movie’s credits to an ending perfection. The middle of “Daily Living” could accompany a minor success for an unsuspected hero as an electric guitar takes the lead and vocalists hum in the background a theme triumphant yet sad.

The light, soft beauty of Kaada’s instrumentation could easily go behind an Anthony & The Johnsons style vocalist though only "Mainstreaming" and "Celibate" have actual lyrics. Many instead use the voice as an additional supporting instrument to a string or piano lead. In Music For Moviebikers, Kaada allows instruments ranging from Sitar to Dulcimer and Cello to Fiddle to take the prominent lead in songs. The primary force however are the keys, played by Joe Young, leading the melody in many tracks. While not as dark or rock as other classical music based rockers such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion, Kaada succeeds as a prominent force in taking the classical music genre to a new, younger audience.

KAADA - Music For Moviebikers
Ipecac

Ipecac releases are just so unashamedly odd, almost without exception, and it's impossible not to appreciate the sheer wealth and scope of interest that Mike Patton invests into his beloved imprint. This time around they've brought back their favourite Norwegian, a man swimming in the riches of his country's oil fund which probably gives him the time to come up with this, a collection of imaginary movie soundtracks played by 22 musicians. He's certainly not the first artist to write a soundtrack to an imaginary film, in fact in the bubbling mires of independent music it's almost impossible to find an artist that hasn't indulged his/her deepest fantasies in creating pseudo-silver screen vignettes. However what I will say is that Kaada steps up to the challenge quite magnificently composing an album of delicate, poetic modern classical pieces which remain beautiful while never falling into the trappings of over-indulgence. The sheer scope of the record is inspiring, bringing in the influence of John Barry (The Ipcress File era), Anton Karas (The Third Man), Ry Cooder (Paris, Texas era), Michael Nyman, Yann Tiersen, John Zorn and Mikis Theodorakis together to create something almost without origin. A fabulous mix of styles which rarely takes a wrong step, this will massively appeal to fans of Max Richter, Sylvain Chaveau or the more cinematic moments of the Type label - sit back and enjoy the show...

There are two general categories of movie music: the kind that is composed specifically for a film and the already released kind that was selected by someone for the film. As for which works better, it is up to the director or whoever else makes those big decisions (and if you know anyone who needs someone fills that roll, contact me). Then there’s the music that, while not in any film, sounds like it was written for a film—sometimes, better yet, a particular scene in a film. I always thought “Fear Not My Friend For Tonight We Ride” off You Should Be At Home Here by Carissa’s Weird would have fit well in an indie-flick scene of someone driving through the country. Black Heart Procession released their Tropics of Love album as a murder mystery film. Norway’s classically-based, 22 person orchestra Kaada has produced a full album of such music but without the supporting images, allowing the listener to conjue the images themself and making Kaada's musical imagery a listener-induced audible cinematography.

“Smiger” could follow a 1920s funeral procession through city streets to the cemetery in the outskirts of town. You can almost visualize the black, gray, and dark blue hues used to emphasize an early winter sadness as the progression walks by a small group of children who look up from playing in a doorway. "Julia Pastrana" could almost substitute as the light but eerie piano theme in Donnie Darko while “Mainstreaming,” supported by 9th century lyrics credited to 'Sinda Ali the Moslem,' would bring a movie’s credits to an ending perfection. The middle of “Daily Living” could accompany a minor success for an unsuspected hero as an electric guitar takes the lead and vocalists hum in the background a theme triumphant yet sad.
The light, soft beauty of Kaada’s instrumentation could easily go behind an Anthony & The Johnsons style vocalist though only "Mainstreaming" and "Celibate" have actual lyrics. Many instead use the voice as an additional supporting instrument to a string or piano lead. In Music For Moviebikers, Kaada allows instruments ranging from Sitar to Dulcimer and Cello to Fiddle to take the prominent lead in songs. The primary force however are the keys, played by Joe Young, leading the melody in many tracks. While not as dark or rock as other classical music based rockers such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion, Kaada succeeds as a prominent force in taking the classical music genre to a new, younger audience.
Check Kaada out at MySpace here.


1. Smiger
2. Mainstreaming
3. From Here On It Got Rough
4. Spindle
5. The Mosquito And The Abandoned Old Woman
6. Julia Pastrana
7. No Man's Land
8. Daily Living
9. The Small Stuff
10. Celibate
11. Retirement Community
12. Birds Of Prey
13. In Hora Mortis

Sound Advice: Regional Spins


The latest release from Norwegian musician John Erik Kaada has a lot to offer those who persist past the enigmatic album title and baffling cover art. Thirteen tracks of largely instrumental soundscapes and a plethora of conventional and unorthodox instruments combine to create deceptively placid and poignant moments of sound.

This is an album that demands active listening to fully appreciate, as an inattentive ear will likely dismiss this as background music. Experienced in full, however, this album conjures a range of images. I envision a wintery street peopled only with parting lovers, and children in pajamas descending a darkened staircase at midnight. Your mental mileage will, of course, vary but the trip should be no less enchanted.

This is no surprise given Kaada's extensive work with film scores in his native Norway, work for which he was recognized by the Norwegian Film industry. Despite his claim that these are "just 13 connected calm songs that I like," Kaada admits to the cinematic flavor of the album: "With this record, I hope to bring the two worlds together -- the recording artist and the film music."

In blending these worlds, Kaada creates a pastiche of pop and program music that is both familiar and otherworldly. Moments of "In Hora Mortis" will evoke the scoring of Danny Elfman to even casual filmgoers, while the latter sections of "Daily Living" are reminiscent of Ennio Morricone's immortal spaghetti-western themes.

The sophisticated orchestration melds traditional elements such as strings and keys with more exotic textures such as saw and sitar (as well as hand-cobbled contraptions of Kaada's own design) to create ethereal themes that never stray far from the traditions of Western music but constantly veer into the unexpected. The tremolo-infected sheen of guitar in "Daily Living" might risk being trite if it didn't contrast so distinctly with the sparse minor-key cello figure that precedes it. The song's winding path mirrors the album, weaving from first song to last.

The sum is vibrant and evocative: a wonderfully subjective mental landscape, a journey to a place that's new but not unknown.

— Daniel McMillan,

Rating: 8.5/10


There are many elements that separate music made for movies and regular music. Norwegian producer/artist Kaada - whose full name is John Erik Kaada - is not a John Williams or Danny Elfman type, but he is an accomplished young composer who has to his credit musical scores for Norwegian films Mongoland, Journey, and Hawaii, Oslo. Kaada has also played music alongside Mike Patton as well as in a band called Cloroform, so he knows both sides of the cinema music/regular music coin.

When it comes to a CD project for Kaada, there are new decisions to be made. Some would expect a hybrid style to immerge – part sparse scoresound, part nod to pop music. The fact that his second album is entitled Music For Moviebikers might be a slight indication as to the direction that it leans. In slight Music For Moviebikers does abide to pop principles. The 13 compositions are tailored to more briefly captured track-by-track listening instead of a straight-up movie score feel, which the album format makes clear in its listing of tracks as Take 01: Smiger, Take 02: Mainstreaming, and so on.

But largely this album feels as if it is accompanying an imaginary film. Consider tracks composed for an album likened to short stories in a volume edition, and movie music is a novel. In the collection of short stories there doesn’t have to be an overwhelming overall theme holding the segments together. For a novel, although there are breaks for each chapter, the flow of the narrative is being developed, twisted, and climaxed throughout.

This album lives on moods, eccentricity, and instrumental color. Unlike a pop album where words often are the focal point, Kaada specifically created the album to have few lyrics, and the ones that were present to be either nonsensical or fantasy-like. Like a fidgety smoker trying to quit, one might wonder: What do you do without…lyrics?! Instead, words might be better put to use in describing the album’s texture, with the initial syllables falling under the headings of "beautiful" and "powerful." Others that also apply: expressive, quasi-melancholic/quasi-uplifting, European, theme-oriented, hymn-esqe, unique, surreal, orchestrated, modern, cinematic [I think I just turned into the All Music Guide].

Music For Moviebikers is performed by a broad range of orchestral musicians. There are standard orchestra instruments – violin, cello, viola, percussion, clarinets, mallets, glockenspiel – and then there are the non-typical instruments which give Kaada’s sound an eclectic feel – electric guitar (often clean channeled), tannerin [used by Radiohead, gives off howling ghostly keyboard sound], Dulcitone (organ that strikes tuning forks), kalimba (an African thumb piano), Stoessel-laute (part-lute, part-zither…a German folk instrument), glass harmonica [I am NOT making this up], and many others. Although an untrained ear usually can’t pick these sounds out from the deep bunch, the ensemble sounds gorgeously cultured.

Listening to this album one might feel a journey taking place. The first two tracks ("Smiger" and "Mainstreaming") have choruses that are striking in their catchiness and also sound a bit like hymns sung in a church, archaic and majestic. Around tracks six, seven and eight ("Julia Pastrana," "No Man’s Land," and "Daily Living") it feels like melodic themes of the first few songs are being brushed on again, but this time with furthered sounds and in a different emotional and instrumental place. The déjà vu feeling is beautiful. The result is an overall feeling of one work through many pieces and it shows that Kaada was able to effectively dance that line between pop music and orchestrated movie music.

Music For Moviebikers is an amazing piece of work, and although it caters to fans of orchestrated collectives, anyone looking to be impressed by surreal sounds will love it. Fans of Rachel's should be first to the plate.

Reviewed by Josh Zanger

5/5

Bedårende imaginært film-soundtrack fra den produktive nordmand

Den 30-årige John Erik Kaadas cv lister fem studiealbum med Cloroform, et med eks-Faith No More-mand Mike Patton og omkring ti film-soundtracks. Nordmanden laver desuden soloalbum, og dette er det tredje af slagsen. Solo er dog nu så meget sagt, for der medvirker hele 22 musikere på pladen. Kaada nægter konsekvent at udgive den musik, han har skrevet til diverse film, fordi han ikke mener, at den bør opleves uden billederne. I stedet udsender han nu Music for Moviebikers: et timelangt soundtrack til en film, som ikke eksisterer – i hvert fald ikke uden for lytterens hoved. De 13 afdæmpede numre emmer af delikate stemninger, og instrumenteringen er udpræget akustisk. Den tæller blandt andet strygere, bas, trommer og guitar, men også sav, mandolin og instrumenter, Kaada selv har opfundet. Brugen af vokal er sporadisk og finder oftest form som ordløs sang. Music for Moviebikers er et originalt, organisk og bedårende værk, der sender tankerne på opdagelsesrejse og viser, at der til stadighed brænder en lys glød af kreativitet i Kaada.
Af Jakob Rosenbak

Kay Svenskerud:

terning : 5

John Erik Kaada er en meget aktiv mann. Dette er hans tredje studioalbum, etter debuten ‰Thank You For Giving Me Your Valuable Time‰ (2001) og ‰MECD‰ (2004), dessuten har han gitt ut plata ‰Romances‰ (2004) sammen med Mike Patton, for ikke å forglemme en rekke utgivelser med Cloroform og ymse filmmusikk. ‰Music For Moviebikers‰ gis ut på nevnte Pattons label, Ipepac, og er ei samling av 13 rolige låter med tydelig filmatisk preg. Tidligere har Kaada gjort det meste selv på sine soloplater, men denne gangen har han snudd på flisa og fått med seg et ensemble på 22 musikere, og det er også en del eksotiske instrumenter involvert, sågar enkelte Kaada har laget selv! Resultatet må sies å være høyst vellykket, som det stort sett alltid er fra denne mannen. I norsk musikkliv er han virkelig noe for seg selv, en dyktig og flersidig komponist med et unikt uttrykk, som ikke er særere enn at han burde få flere lyttere. KS.