Håvard Volden - electric guitar, tape machines
Henrik Olsson - objects, friction and piezo
Martin Taxt - microtonal tuba and electronics
Muddersten was established as a trio in 2015, and released their first album, Karpatklokke, on SOFA in January 2017. Their highly unique trio has been presented at festivals like Le Guess Who? and All Ears. While the music from their first album was developed during a tour in Russia in February 2016, the music on Playmates was recorded during four intense days at the SOFA studio in Oslo in September 2017.
Their releases have been very well received and internationally acclaimed on the scene for improvised and experimental music in numerous reviews and articles for its unique and peculiar nature.
REVIEWS
Muddersten make something out of almost nothing: their fiercely minimalist music blossoms with fascinating detail once you adjust to the superficial limitations of its ASMR-worthy sonic palette.
- Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
Präzise, frei und extrem spannend!
- Westzeit
On est attiré comme un aimant, scotché à ces mouvements subaquatiques, animés de forces telluriques aux tensions permanentes. Un album aux images fugaces et ensorcelantes. Saisissant.
- SilenceandSound
Using guitar, tape-loops, electronics, objects, friction, piezo and - what ever this might be - microtonal tuba the body of work they create on "Karpatklokke" is, although highly digital and somehow walking the line between Clicks'n'Cuts and Noize for a very rough description, droney, fissured and fractured, at times deeply familiar like the very core of what life, and the everlasting process of bloom and decomposition, really is, at times abstract like the noise silently emitted by pretty much every digital or at least microchip driven device one owns and therefore extremely fascinating and defo one of our first highlights on the longplay release circuit this year. Check!
- nitestylez.de
Each track’s title refers to a plant: ‘Stjerneskjerm’ translates as ‘Astrantia major’, commonly known as ‘master wort’, and the impressive-sounding ‘Blodstorkenebb’ is in fact a composition inspired by the rather humble Geranium sanguineum, aka bloody crane’s-bill or bloody geranium. Yes, this dark, dank, swirling noise which gnaws as the intestines and churns at the cranium is inspired by a bloody geranium. Which why it’s a great, if extremely unusual, album. Well worth digging out.
- Aural Aggravation