


During their 2019 Japan Tour, the collaboration of the Norwegian experimental rock band MoE and alto sax virtuoso Mette Rasmussen extended their trio with legendary drummer Ikuru Takahashi to record this energetic, rough and tumble album exploring the boundaries between free improvisation, skronky rock, and other confrontational, conceptual crossover forms.
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Sample The Album:



Guro Skumsnes Moe-bass, voice
Havard Skaset-guitar
Mette Rasmussen-saxophone
Ikuro Takahashi-drums
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UPC: 50902249002584
Label: Relative Pitch
Catalog ID: RPR1109
Squidco Product Code: 29809
Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2020
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded at Black Snowflake Sound, in Sapporo, Japan, in April 2019, by Richard Horner.
"The Norwegian experimental band MoE, led by bass player and vocalist Guro Skumsnes Moe, and Danish, Trondheim-based sax hero Mette Rasmussen began their ongoing collaboration in 2018 and since then toured Norway, Mexico, and Japan together, but Skumsnes Moe and Rasmussen collaborated before with the Jooklo Trio and with American beat poet Anne Waldman. MoE and Rasmussen recorded their first album, "Tolerancia Picante" (Conard Sound, 2019, with liner notes by Waldman), in September 2018. Upon the release of "Tolerancia Picante" MoE and Rasmussen began a long and intense in Japan tour where they collaborated and played with several important figures from the Japanese free-improv scene, among them koto player Michiyo Yagi.
MoE and Rasmussen teamed in Sapporo with legendary drummer Ikuru Takahashi, who has played in seminal Japanese bands like Fushitsusha and Maher Shalal Hash Baz and now runs his book and record shop and label Galleria Zarigania, releasing his electronics work and drum solos. MoE, Rasmussen and Takahashi recorded Painted at Black Snowflake Sound in Sapporo in April 2019.
Takahashi fits organically in the urgent, high-octane energy of MoE and Rasmussen. His freestyle of drumming propels the in-your-face, intense attacks of this quartet, with MoE's guitarist Håvard Skaset, completely blurring the distinction between raw punk energy, pure noise, and free jazz meets free-improvisation. Rasmussen injects a loose sense of coherence into the free-associative, kind of freak-out pieces like the opening "Favourite lungs breath out your tar complete the warriors heart testify if sound hits you", and transforms immediately Skumsnes Moe fierce wordless shouts, chants, and thunderous bass slaps into ecstatic eruptions as on "cuts your heart out I run so fast" and "my stones".
Rasmussen also injects brief gentle and melodic gestures in pieces like "I can't carry my heart soul arrest the giant", contrasting the thorny attack of Skumsnes Moe, Skaset and Takahashi. The main piece is the 17-minutes "echo will you sit by my side swallow my anger" that builds its tension methodically, beginning with almost silent sax blows and highly resonant bass touches of Skumsnes Moe and Rasmussen, blossoms slowly into a haunting, mysterious piece, and concludes with a grandiose meltdown of noisy sounds and sax shrikes and wails. The last piece "painted painted painted painted painted painted painted painted painted painted painted" is built like an enigmatic ritual. The quartet acts like shamans of distortion and noise who patiently channel the voluminous energy.
Please, bring me more of this right stuff."-Eyal Hareuveni, Salt Peanuts
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Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for Guro Skumsnes Moe "Guro Skumsnes Moe (born 1983 in Hedemark, Norway) is a Norwegian Upright bass player, composer and singer. Dance, improvisation, rock, jazz and noise music, are all elements that are important to her expression. Moe is a bassist and vocalist that has managed to make her mark on the Norwegian music scenes, both on and off stage. She has her musical background from the Music conservatory in Kristiansand and the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, where she graduated 2007, she has distinguished herself as an active performer with wide field of interest on the Oslo's jazz and free impro music scene recent years. She has hosted jam sessions on "Belleville", runs the ÇMumle Vind KompaniÈ together with Yngvild Aspelid, play traditional music together with her sisters Eline and Jenny. On her debut solo album It Pictures (2011) she collaborates in trio with drummer Sveinar Hoff and guitarist HŒvard Skaset. Kim-Erik Pedersen, Kjetil M¿ster, Lasse Marhaug also appears on selected tunes. The second album Oslo Janus (2013) is a true solo five pieces album. The third album 3 (2014) she again collaborates with HŒvard Skaset, but this time drummer Joakim Heib¿ replaces Sveinar Hoff." ^ Hide Bio for Guro Skumsnes Moe • Show Bio for Havard Skaset "The Norwegian guitarist Håvard Skaset has been transcending musical borders in countless collaborations spanning from noise, sound based improv to noise rock. A dedicated artist from the Norwegian experimental music scene, whose work is a mix between raw primal sounds and the use of instrumental skills rather than effects. Apart from his solo work, Skaset's main focus is the acoustic noise group SULT and the noise rock band MoE.The Norwegian trio is known for mixing minimalistic compositions with alternative and experimental approaches that fail to fit in the rock genre. Existing since 2008, MoE has released numerous 7"s and 12"s as well as two albums, before Fysisk Format got the chance to release their third album, "3". "3" was recorded and mixed in two days in Norway's well renown Athletic Sound Studio and features 7 tracks of raw and to-the-point music inspired by the band's far stretching tours through Mexico, Japan, South East Asia, Europe. Over the years MoE have collaborated with musicians and bands such as Okkyung Lee, John Hegre, The Observatory, Arabrot and Lasse Marhaug who, with his many talents, also did the artwork for the album. Loud and violent, they molest their instruments and bring the listener close to a healthy insanity. His long-term connection to California has resulted in several releases and US tours with groups like Bay/Oslo Mirror Trio and SULT. Sult is an acoustic noise ensemble with members from Oslo and the Bay Area. Their music reflects the noise genre's concern with layers of sonic texture, though completely performed on acoustic instruments. Individual sounds run precariously aside one another as independent streams, and alternately blur into a unified mass. [...] Håvard Skaset's discography contains electric as well as acoustic releases with musicians such as Frode Gjerstad, Hild Sofie Tafjord, Guro Skumsnes Moe and Lene Grenager. Skaset has also collaborated with artists like Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Maja Ratkje, Okkyung Lee, Lasse Marhaug and Jacob Felix Heule. In addition to running the label Conrad Sound, Skaset curates Høyt&Lavt, a festival for borderless music in Oslo." ^ Hide Bio for Havard Skaset • Show Bio for Mette Rasmussen "Mette Rasmussen is a Danish saxophone player based in Trondheim, Norway. She works in the field of improvised music, drawing from a wide range of influences, spanning free jazz to textural soundwork. Rasmussen works on exploring the natural rawness of her instrument - experimenting on what the saxophone is capable of in sound and expression, with and without preparations. Much in demand, she has performed with the likes of Alan Silva, Chris Corsano, Ståle Liavik Solberg, and with her Trio Riot group with Sam Andreae and David Meier." ^ Hide Bio for Mette Rasmussen • Show Bio for Ikuro Takahashi "Ikuro Takahashi (高橋幾郎 Takahashi Ikuro in Japanese) (born in 1957, Kamisunagawa, Hokkaido) is a drummer and percussionist based in Sapporo, also plays electronic and oscillators. He has been a central member of many groups from the Tokyo psychedelic underground from the early eighties. Some of the groups he has played with include Fushitsusha, High Rise, Kousokuya, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Ché-SHIZU, Nagisa ni te, LSD March, Gu-N, and Akebonoizu, Tetsuya Umeda and Fumio Kosakai of Incapacitants. He has performed under the name Anoyondekigoto since 2000, a unit project with a Butoh dancer Yoko Muronoi(1959- 2017). He runs his own label Galleria Zarigania since 2007." ^ Hide Bio for Ikuro Takahashi
3/26/2025
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3/26/2025
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
3/26/2025
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
3/26/2025
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Track Listing:
1. Favourite Lungs 06:05
2. Cuts Your Heart 05:28
3. I Can't Carry My Heart 05:22
4. Echo Will You 16:36
5. My Stones 04:28
6. Don't Quarrel 07:02
7. Painted 07:23

Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
Rock and Related
Improvised Rock
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Asian Improvisation & Jazz
Quartet Recordings
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Relative Pitch.

