When (Pedersen)
When is the musical project of Norwegian artist Lars Pedersen. During the 80's and early 90's Pedersen was a member of the experimental group Holy Toy with Andrej D. Nebb. In 1983 Pedersen created the project Hospital Blimp, which would later become When. The debut album Drowning But Learning was released in 1987, and the collage technique that has come to be one of When's trademarks was apparent already then.
In 1988 When released Death in the Blue Lake, which was inspired by Norwegian author André Bjerke's psychological horror novel. The album had a strong atmosphere of fear, anxiety and mourning, and was quite popular in Norwegian black metal circles. The B-side of the record is an amalgamation of ethnic music, blues harmonica, coughing, psychedelic pop and glissandi effects. Today it's almost impossible to find a copy of the album.
Black White & Grey, When's third album, was a Chris Cutler inspired work, conjuring up images of war and urban decay. Indeed, Cutler contributed to the album himself.
1992 saw the release of Svartedauen (Norwegian for "The Black Death"), a musical description of the ravages of the bubonic plague in Norway ca 1349. The album borrows elements from Norwegian folk music, and features a host of disturbing sounds: hearses, rats, whips, woodpeckers, growling, moans of the dying, a scythe being sharpened, and more. On the making of the album, Pedersen has stated: "I mixed many of my own sounds, and borrowed some from Norwegian Film. Bernt Kanstad, the technician, was working there, so I got access to many sounds that I sampled, looped and used manually. And I recorded many scraping sounds on a big, old cello that was standing in the studio, but many of those sounds were heavily manipulated afterwards, so you can't always hear that they are cello sounds. I like working that way: not using entirely natural sounds, but doing something extra with them."
On Prefab Wreckage, When slowly started moving towards a more song-oriented sound, as opposed to the more abstract soundtracks of the earlier albums. The inner sleeve is covered by a Hieronymus Bosch painting of Hell, one of the inspirations of the album.
In 1997, When released Gynt, which according to the liner notes is a "satiric play on Edward Grieg's 'Peer Gynt'. Inspired by Henrik Ibsen." Pedersen says, "I tried to put irony into the music. There is a lot of humour in When's music, it's not bloody serious all the time."
After Gynt, When was signed by the newly founded Jester Records, and the next album would mark a change in When's musical direction as well. Psychedelic Wunderbaum was indeed a psychedelic mix of electronic elements, with apparent inspirations from rock, noise and cartoon music, and with lyrics by Aleister Crowley and Tom Wolfe. Pedersen remarked: "I fetched many grooves from old, obscure psychedelic garage bands. It was something I had wanted to do for a long time, but I thought that it might be too audacious. But as more and more artists are using that method, I thought that I could do it too. I dug up the old Farfisa organ that I had used in Holy Toy and got Bjørn Sorknes, the old Holy Toy guitarist, with me. We worked together on the production as well. It became a crossing of industrial and psychedelic rock."
The next album, The Lobster Boys, is Pedersen's most pop-oriented effort. He still made heavy use of sampling, and while many of the songs are reminiscent of The Beach Boys and The Beatles, it retains the classic When weirdness that sets it apart from mainstream pop albums. It is also heavily inspired by Arabic music, and some tracks that start out as quite normal rock, end up in a cacophony of distorted sounds before the track ends. Nils Arne Øvergård and Øyvind Borgemoen, who contributed to The Lobster Boys, joined When as full members as of this recording. The trio has played several concerts, including the release party for the single Sunshine Superhead, where they performed in bear costumes.
In 2003 When released Pearl-harvest, another dive into psychedelic pop, with lyrics from The Arabian Nights. The album still has some of the elements of When's earlier album's disturbing soundscapes, combined with surrealistic cartoon music and folk music.
When's latest album, Whenever, continues in the vein of The Lobster Boys and Pearl-harvest, with the characteristic mix of psychedelic pop, sound collages and Middle Eastern influences, as well as occasional noise and industrial loops.
Discography
- Drowning but learning (1987)
- Death in the Blue Lake (1988)
- Black White & Grey (1991)
- Svartedauen (The Black Death) (1992)
- Prefab Wreckage (1994)
- Gynt (1997)
- Psychedelic Wunderbaum (1999)
- WriterCakebox the unblessed world of When 19831998 (2000)
- The Lobster Boys (2001)
- Pearl-harvest (2003)
- Whenever (2004)