Vital Weekly (NL)

From our end of the telescope Norway may seem a land of noise, but perhaps we are at the wrong end. Pjusk are a duo from Norway (Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik and Rune Sagevik) and being on 12k is still far away from noise. They started out in the techno scene about a decade ago and now turned into more contemplative music, as shown here. They were first introduced on the Blueprints compilation (see Vital Weekly 550), where didn’t leave the big impression. Their debut CD Sart does similar. Pjusk built their pieces around “electronics, dub, rhythm, found sounds”, but that can apply to a lot these days. Pjusk to me are very much into the world microsound and glitch me thinks, and even when they occasionally hop into a rhythm, loaded with reverb and delay to guarantee that sense of “dub and rhythm”, it’s all of the usual carefulness and intimate sound knitting. Warm like the mid-winter campfire. It’s certainly not a bad CD, though perhaps a bit long for the amount of ideas that are thrown around. Thirteen pieces at some fifty-five minutes, is perhaps five pieces and fifteen minutes too long. Under the sun of 12k Pjusk isn’t the big turn around, the paradigm of music, but it’s a star that shines equally bright as so many others. (FdW)