Maja S.K. Ratkje

[FreakAnimalFinland]

I remember when Fe-Mail was a "thing". Already like 20 years from the album that seemed anomaly at the time, two female artists making noise. Got the early stuff, but missing couple things. Recently got link from person who sends a lot of links to me. Like mentioned, a lot of things posted on forum, interview links etc, is something people send me. Not myself actually surfing online and searching noise, hah... 

Thanks to the reminder and link to website of Ratkje, I read some of the material on the site and listened some new recordings. Checked out what has been said about her on the forum. Not much, but clearly there are some fans here!

Mara S.K. Ratkje - Mara

I want to get her Voice album, her solo album Stalker is good. Her Fem@il project with Lasse Marhaug - All Men Are Pigs was my first Paypal purchase overseas off GameBoy Records.

https://majaskratkje.bandcamp.com/album/maja-s-k-ratkje-corona-lockdown-concert-for-tusk-festival-2020
Some of the latest work are on fine line of being a bit too playful for me, while others feel inspiring. Fast moving, very detailed and always shifting highly textured experimental pieces. Like the covid lockdown concert from 2020.

The building block of Ratkje's soundworld is her own voice, sampled, manipulated and processed in real time. Whispers and babbles are rolled into micro-loops of rhythmic texture. Sung notes are stretched into choral drones. Samples sped up as if in whirling tape decks sound like sci-fi laser beam battles. Talking voices come and go the mix, chattering, whispering conspiratorially, then pitching up into chipmunk squeaks. Other speaking voices sound like aliens, distorted, unintelligible, as if they are tuned in from the stratosphere or the ether. There are burbling, watery, bubbling bath sounds, layered over whispers and squeaks. It is an amazing palette of sound from a simple set up.

It feels alchemical, the base human voice transmuted into clicking, clanging, crackling ambient dub noise gold. It feels like a dream, in that it all seems to make sense and yet you never quite know how you arrived where you are. The changes in the flow of the music are constant, yet almost imperceptible, as each layer fades in and out independently of the others. As the last delicate, floating voices are rolled up into whizzing overclocked tape reels to bring the performance to an end, the camera lingers for a moment on a piece of calligraphy pinned to the wall. "Lyset du treng finst" it says, "The light you need is there" in Ratkje's native Norwegian, from a poem by Helge Torvund. A positive message in times of pandemic, and maybe also a user guide to this open-ended music that can be interpreted differently by every pair of ears.

Perhaps being legitimate artists, she has neat website to read, see & hear things, unlike most of noise projects:

https://ratkje.no

[Andrew McIntosh]

I quite liked the Trinacria album, "Travel Now Journey Infinitely".

[spiritassembly]

Crepuscular Hour is an amazing, monumental piece of work.

https://ratkje.no/current-projects/crepuscular-hour/
https://ratkje.no/2016/03/crepuscular-hour-2/

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Listened today three times Maja Ratkje "voice" LP. Someone brought this to my store in trade, unopened copy, hah! Well, it is indeed a bit challenging album as like name suggests, there is a lot of voice experiments. Leaning to sound poetry at times, but also goes through ethereal vocal drone to real deal noise. Dictaphone, tape recorders, some digital treatments.. Something oddly charming in this, while at the same time demanding album.

https://soundcloud.com/majasolveig/voice

[tisbor]

Listened today three times Maja Ratkje "voice" LP. Someone brought this to my store in trade, unopened copy, hah! Well, it is indeed a bit challenging album as like name suggests, there is a lot of voice experiments. Leaning to sound poetry at times, but also goes through ethereal vocal drone to real deal noise. Dictaphone, tape recorders, some digital treatments.. Something oddly charming in this, while at the same time demanding album.

https://soundcloud.com/majasolveig/voice

I remember finding the cd randomly at a very short lived store (owned by Snowdonia Records) in my hometown around the time is was released first. Mind you it's a pretty small italian provincial town, 5000 people more or less and little to none music outlets, so it was a pretty unexpected find. I loved it back then and still love it now.
Even more weird, and without making the connection, 10 years later I ended up living on the same Norwegian peninsula as Rune Grammofon owner. We lived maybe 20 minutes walk from each other.
I also ended up briefly meeting Maja at a Personal Best issue fest I played as Fecalove.
I'll check her most recent work, I'm way behind on her production.

[Svartvit]

Listened today three times Maja Ratkje "voice" LP. Someone brought this to my store in trade, unopened copy, hah! Well, it is indeed a bit challenging album as like name suggests, there is a lot of voice experiments. Leaning to sound poetry at times, but also goes through ethereal vocal drone to real deal noise. Dictaphone, tape recorders, some digital treatments.. Something oddly charming in this, while at the same time demanding album.

https://soundcloud.com/majasolveig/voice

Absolutely love that record, dabbled around in her discography over time but haven't found anything quite as convincing.

[Lazrs3]

I need to catch up with her work. I know she composes and stuff. I found out about her in Wire magazine. I really liked the stuff I got.