Supersilent @ Roskilde Festival. Roskilde, Denmark
6th July 2008
Apparently Oslo’s experimental jazz/electronic four-piece Supersilent never discuss their music outside the studio or the live forum, and they obscurely titled their albums 1-8, with the tracks similarly designated by a single digit. The announcer at Roskilde’s Astoria Stage proclaimed that ‘the only thing for certain is that nothing is certain’ when introducing the band, and that cliche rather aptly summed up the entirely improvised avant garde experience awaiting the quite substantial crowd, as the four musicians settled themselves on the stage facing inwards in a square to see where the music took them.
The group’s set was split into four fifteen minute ’songs’, which between them showcased a startling range of influences and possibilities. Improvisation may not be anything new to experimental jazz, but Supersilent nevertheless demonstrated both intense powers of concentration and substantial musical ability.
The opening two numbers were perhaps the most successful, building from a slow start to an almost post-rock heavy conclusion; Four Tet meets Mogwai. This was a formula that suited the band’s style perfectly. Usually led by Arve Henriksen’s often astonishingly versatile trumpet playing, this jazz beginning would be interrupted by jarring and progressive electronic bursts and glitches, often even suggestive of a house influence. The final epic build-up came as Helge Sten inserted similarly heavy guitar as these two initial pieces concluded in an explosion and flurry of glorious noise. The third song eschewed this slow progression in favour of an immediate tangle of sounds that wrapped themselves around a Middle Eastern vocal sample; a chaotic and cacophonous cousin to Eno and Byrne’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. After the announcer had asked if the audience would rather have silence as the band made a temporary exit, the encore combined these elements, with Henriksen contributing wordless chanted vocals of his own, and occasional synth interjections adding an eerie 50’s sci-fi feel to proceedings, the intense band-members already bathed in green light and shrouded enigmatically in smoke.
The music clearly wasn’t for everyone, my own girlfriend was among those to beat a hasty retreat after only a few minutes, but over the course of the set what was most surprising about Supersilent’s performance was how consistently melodic it was. Experimental, noisy, challenging yes, but never discordant. After the all-too-short hour was up Supersilent left those members of the audience brave enough to stick with their organic and exhilarating music with mingled feelings of elation and disappointment. Disappointment? Because several pieces of music that I would happily have listened to compulsively will never be heard again.
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