'Voice' is originally a collaboration between the electronic duo Jazzkammer (Lasse Marhaug and John Hegre) and Maja Ratkje, for the album with the same name, Maja and Jazzkammer received an award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica 2003. Today the ideas behind 'Voice' is brought further by Maja in improvised concerts with voice and electronics, often joined by video artisit HC Gilje. The musical concept for the live version of 'Voice' is the same as on the album: Maja's voice -processed and acoustic, live and recorded through various media. Live the music is shaped in the name of improvising with existing and non-existing material.


(photo by Iztok Zupan)SPUNK has existed since 1995 and consists of Kristin Andersen (trumpet and various), Lene Grenager (cello and various), Maja S. K. Ratkje (vocals and various) and Hild Sofie Tafjord (french horn and various). This group has an very large activity which includes CD production, theatre music, improvisation to pictures at an art museum, participation at classical concerts as well as our own concerts at jazz clubs, techno clubs and festivals abroad and in Norway, collaboration with musicians and composers from various music styles, improvisation seminars and concerts with participants, film music and music for art installations and modern dance. Please visit homepage for further details.








•SPUNK’s homepageFe-mail is an electronic/noise duo consisting of Hild Sofie Tafjord & Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje from SPUNK. After their debut concert in Tokyo 2000, they have been very active with concerts, releases and collaborations in many countries. Their main collaborations besides the duo format is with dancer Lotta Melin. (Se info on Agrare below.)

"Noise annoys, as the Buzzcocks used to sing. Yet Fe-mail, the Norwegian duo of Maja Ratkje and Hild Sofie Tafjord, is anything but annoying. Obnoxious? Yes. Hair-raising? Frequently-and quite wonderfully so. These electronic divas from the land of ice and snow make an impressive ruckus, deploying live samples that are thrown into a sonic blender with organic sounds the musicians have created or collected. Much of Fe-mail's 2004 release, Syklubb fra Haelvete, is sheer gonzo: a staticky onslaught of oscillations that might have come from dusty sci-fi soundtracks colliding with raw, fractured, synthetic rhythms. The effect is like a cross between a mid-1960s State U. computer lab and a vintage Atari video-arcade game. Blurt. Zap. Whistle. Boom! But Ratkje and Tafjord keep the flow more edgy and complex: Their boisterous agenda has lots of room for wit and even poetic asides, and for all the intensity, many of the tracks roll along at a leisurely pace. Throughout, they introduce odd bits of vocalese, bird song and real-time performances on small, child-friendly wind instruments. The pair delivers all this with a conversational ease that comes from a decade of playing together. The duo formed in 2000, but the women have spent ten years as part of the improvisational quartet SPUNK, and they've collaborated with an assortment of left-field European artists, including dada vocalist Jaap Blonk and the Swedish choreographer Lotta Melin (what, no Björk?). Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore is a booster, hailing Syklubb as "the most exciting noise LP I've heard." Since no one knows noise like Thurston, we're taking him at his word."

-Steve Dollar, Time Out Chicago Issue 29, Sept 15–Sept 22, 2005

•Fe-mail’s homepageA collaboration consisting of Fe-mail and Swedish dancer Lotta Melin. The trio works in the fields of openness and density within an acoustic and electronic sound world. Music and dance is being created together in the instant now, with the help of a spontaneous sharing of the sounding material, coming both from the musicians and the dancer(!). The group makes use of a.o. contact microphones, wireless microphones, theremin, samplers, french horn, voice and various live electronics The actual physical sound of the moving body is being picked up and processed/transformed, blending into the overall electronic soundscape, constantly changing and developing. The meaning of the performance, its form and contents is being created in the actual process where the dance and the music is met in a free improvisation.

•Agrare’s homepageThis is an improvised vocal duo with or without electronic effects. Jaap Blonk is a Dutch performer who has performed sound poetry and free improvisation since the 80's. They have performed as a duo several places in Norway, Denmark and Netherlands, and have also collaborated with other musicians. They have released two album on Kontrans.







•Jaap Blonk’s homepageAccordeon player Frode Haltli is one of the world's most renown players of contemporary music. He has premiered several of Maja's pieces solo or with various ensembles. One of Maja's main works "gagaku variations" is included on the cd in Haltli's name released by ECM. Haltli and Ratkje also perform as a duo on some occasions. They have toured and played in Norway since 1998 with jazz, Kurt Weill, improvisation and tango on the reportoire, in larger settings with the trio POING. In 2002 they toured in Siberia and Moscow with Jørn Simen Øverli. Haltli/Ratkje has also worked with Cikada string quartet.

•Frode Haltli's homepageThe trio POING, consisting of Frode Haltli, accordeon, Rolf-Erik Nystrøm, saxophones and håkon thelin, double bass, has been performing music by Maja S. K. Ratkje since she wrote their first piece "essential extensions" in 1999. Since then they have showed themselves as one of the most interesting ensembles for contemporary music in Scandinavia, with more then 25 first performances by European and Asian composers. They have visited large music festivals as well as clubs in the north of Europe, China and Japan, playing mostly contemporary music, but also free improvisation, Kurt Weill or cabaret/tango-heavy metal, the latter most often with Maja S. K. Ratkje as a vocalist.

•POING’s homepage(x,y,z) is an electroacoustic improvisation trio started in 1997, not having played many concerts since. (x,y,z) draws its inspiration from different sources, but three important elements are the lamentig microtonal Hawaiian guitar of Risto Holopainen, the free, anarchistic theremin interpretation of Maja S. K. Ratkje and the sound structures of the early 1950´s electronic music by G. M. Koenig as interpreted by Asbjørn Blokkum Flø.

Instruments used are, besides theremin and Hawaii guitar, mainly samplers, SID station, moogs, theremin, drum machine from the 80's, sine wave generators and steel guitar. The group has played several concerts since they started. They have played at the opening day of the Ultima festival 1999 at the stage BLÅ in Oslo. Concepts used in concerts: "Samples from the early history of electroacoustic music", "Blue Hawaii" and "X-mas cavalcade".

(x,y,z) has made a striking contribution to SPUNK's remix album "filtered through friends" with the mighty name "tapeunderlaget på ball".

•listen to (x,y,z)! – choose from three sound clipsLucas Abela
Agrare
Alog
Kristin Andersen
Isak Anderssen
Asphodel
Plinio Bachmann
Anne Bang-Steinsvik
Carola Baucholt
Øyvind Berg
Raoul Björkenheim
Per Inge Bjørlo
Jaap Blonk
Monica Bonvicini
Pirjetta Brander
Øyvind Brandsegg
Kristin Bredal
Joseph Byrd
Cikada String Quartet
James Crabb
crashEnsemble
dans design
Maja Delak
de ereprijs
DJ Dickson Dee
Dreams of Tall Buildings
Drivhuset
John Doyle
Enslaved
Fe-mail
Jon Øystein Flink
Asbjørn Flø
Folk & Røvere
Jason Forrest
Fretwork
Odd-Johan Fritzøe
Ruud Gielen
Carlos Giffoni
HC Gilje
Rolf Gupta
Lene Grenager
Tor Grønn
Frode Haltli
Karl Hansen
Karin Haugane
Martin Hauglid
John Hegre
Arve Henriksen
Kathy Hinde
Kim Hiortøy
Risto Holopainen
Marius Holth
Snorre Hvamen
Iceland Dance Company
Olöf Ingolfsdottir
Institute for Living Voice
Jaga Jazzist
Jazzkammer
Ann-Kristin Jones
Kaput Ensemble
Klangforum Wien
Garth Knox
Kyberia
Rick de Leeuw
Aasne Linnestå
Li Tie Qiao
Rolf Lislevann
Paal Nilssen-Love
Tom Lund
Anna Luyten
Cecilie Løveid
Unni Løvlid
Emi Maeda
Manheim
Lasse Marhaug
Daria Martin
Matmos
Lotta Melin
Guro Moe
MoHa!
Ikue Mori
Kjetil Møster
No Spaghetti Edition
The Norwegian Girls Choir (Det Norske Jentekor)
Norwegian Noise Orchestra
The Norwegian Radio Orchestra
Cathrine Nyheim
Rolf-Erik Nystrøm
Morten Olsen
Ursula Andkjær Olsen
Opera i Tiden
Opera Vest
Oslo Industriensemble
Oslo Sinfonietta
Zeena Parkins
Bo Anders Persson
Phonophani
Matthias Pintscher
POING
Alwynne Pritchard
Professor Doctor Doctor
Quatuor Renoir
Peer Rohrer
Dagfinn Rosnes
Else Olsen S
Salvatore
SAND
Kjetil Skøyen
Torben Snekkestad
SPUNK
Øystein Stene
Strotter Inst.
Audun Strype
Kjersti Sundland
Karin Sveen
Kari Svendsen
Mike Svoboda
Hild Sofie Tafjord
Masako Tanaka
Ronni Le Tekrø
Arve Tellefsen
Håkon Thelin
Ticom
Jørgen Træen
Ulver
Vertavo String Quartet
Setsuko Watanabe
White Lord Jesus
Wolf Eyes
(x,y,z)
Otomo Yoshihide
zeromoon
Massimo Zu
Knut Aalefjær
Monica Aasprong

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