The following text was written for the booklet of Idee de Nordens' first CD, "Elation, Elegance, Exaltation", while I was on holiday in Iceland in 1994.

ACHIEVEMENT AND DELIGHT WITH IDEE DES NORDENS!

Ah, that sweet soul music... The music that stirs the hearts of young European men and women. Stirs them into introspection, cogitation, rumination and the general pleasures of Selbstanschau. Dynamic music, really fitting every kind of environment and emotion, designed to penetrate even with the most superficially sounding tid-bit.

"Elation - Elegance - Exaltation" is one of my favourite albums in this respect of being both dynamic and flexible. I'm given the choice of easy listening with catchy tunes, stringy lightness and poppy rhythms, or the sinister and splendourously sombre mood of dark and soothing surveys of the psyche (mine and theirs alike). You either go with the Nordic flow, so to speak, or allow the same flow to take you for a rocky ride through your very own self.

Every artist has a motivation/driving force/neurosis unique to his or her own process, and unique to the specific piece of work too. Whether the neurotic intention actually corresponds with the receiver's perception and reception or not, one can never fully know. And is it really interesting?

Music is such a unique artform, in that it doesn't really require any structure or organisation at all to have an emotional/aesthetic impact on the listener. In fact, the more structured a piece is, the more it gets intellectually filtered and watered down, and the likelier it is that it'll miss its target (whatever it may be).

The musical material that Idee des Nordens present us with on this disc is, I think, quite symptomatic of contemporary audio artists of a tender age. There is an almost libidal drive or hunger in the desire not to be stuck with one specific kind of music. It's not a question of proving to the rest of the world that they can master different kinds of musical textures (although I actually think that Idee des Nordens do it very well here), but rather a wish to be on the constant move and never ever to get stuck in forms and shapes, however interesting or intriguing these shapes may be hip-wise, etc.

I see no red thread, no strategic manipulation, no will to ensnare or force a concept of whatever kind down the listener's aural throat. What I do see though, is a collection of sparks, flames, outbursts caught in time and space and sound, results of interaction between a couple of highly illumined German hearts and souls. They carry on to make music in the same vein as their fellow Hamburgers Stora and Hammafest, and splendidly so.

Perhaps this is a danger of music of such an evocative nature... You get yourself entangled in your own experience of the sounds and their reactions to such an extent that you want more of the "same" (a paradox in this case!). Well, I guess there are a number of worse things to be addicted to...

"Their rhythm is legion. They are used to eroticise, to inflame, to exalt, to madden dancers to superhuman feats, to produce a nightly musical (?) performance which continues with maddening insistence through the dark hours."

("Witchcraft and magic of Africa", Frederick Kaigh, 1947)

In the coldest and harshest winter weather I drove with some friends through the Icelandic landscape. Monochrome black of lava rock, monochrome white of fresh, cold snow, monochrome grey of the dense sky. We listened to the music of this CD, and perfectly fitting it was too! What on the surface appears to be doomladen and starkly morose, quite often contains the deepest joys of life within. The joy to be alive manifests both in Idee des Nordens's music and in the Icelandic landscape, in the illusive hallucinogenic patterns of monochromatic manipulations. If you're simply open to it all, then entirely new colours and emotions will be generated through your own merging with the frequencies distributed from the creative process of these young Germans.

Soul music for me has nothing to with specifically black American beat music. It's rather music that without major effort easily lets you transcend your own inhibitions of mind. Fantasy and imagination are rare items in the youth of today, and the music that stirs these qualities within the deepest layers of the human psyche should be cherished, valued, respected. And, of course, listened to.

I look forward to hearing more of Idee des Nordens. The idea of the North being silent and destructive is now but a myth, as the makers of "Elation - Elegance - Exaltation" so eloquently have proven to be both profoundly creative and psychologically sonorous. Thinking about the immense power of the magical and mystical music on this record, an old poem of Nietzsche's comes to mind:

THE HALCYONIAN

Addressing me most bashfully,
A woman to-day said this:
"What would you be like in ecstasy,
If sober you feel such bliss?"

With many thanks for the msot wonderful music and for this opportunity to see my feelings in print, I wish you the best of luck with your creative future. Conquer all and everything with achievement and delight!

For more information on Idee des Nordens and Stora, please see the Links-page.