Traces And Phases Of The Smell Of Incense

Since we couldn't afford smoked salmon, we decided to put the following little appetizer on your plate to keep your minds occupied in anticipation of a more in-depth article on psychedelic Norway. SHiT Tapes, Famlende Forsøk and Smell Of Incense are some of the most recent intertwining twigs that have sprouted from this - admittedly -slim but hardy tree growing on the all-but-barren soil of the cliffs lining the majestic fjords ... (several pages of tourist information and interesting data on the lifestyle of moose left out, ed.). I have tried to copy all song titles and album names as best I could, but I hope Norsk language purists will be forgiving of the odd typographic error. Please leave the drakkars (*) where they are, gentlemen, and follow us into the realms of Asgård.

The story you're about to become engrossed in is one of a hitherto little-known aspect of Norwegian psychedelic music, compiled by the persons involved themselves and edited by little ol' me. Our history starts to unfold itself in 1974, at the time gnomes Brt Trollblaster and Lumpy Davy (going by their assumed names Robert Ommundsen and Dave Jørgensen) made their first experiments with a tape recorder. Lack of real electric instruments and technique (not ideas, though) made these early attempts none too interesting for others to listen to (the perpetrators readily admit "we don't like them either") so the trollish dwarves turned to another art form: literature! In 1975 they established SHiTpress Unlimited, publishing their first of six issues of an underground magazine called DEIJE SHiTS in the next year (I shouldn't be doing this, but once again I cannot resist the urge to elaborate upon the meaning of this name: it's an acronym that stands for "Det er ingen jassplate, egentlich, sa han til Sunnmørsposten"; what's behind this cryptic sentence is totally irrelevant, but it translates just about like this: "It's not really a jazz record, he said to the Sunnmørsposten" (the latter being a Norwegian newspaper). I suppose the translation doesn't add too much to your hard-core reality knowledge, but it goes a long way towards illustrating the spirit behind it all, L.). The six volumes (published from 1976 till 1981) contained lots of fantasy stuff (Moorcock, Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany), some music articles (Captain Beefheart, Fugs, Magma) and lots of lousy poetry ("our own!", quoth the bad hobbits).

After the do-it-yourself tape explosion of the late seventies/ early eighties they started to write about homemade and independent records and tapes. To try and encourage more people (especially in Norway) to record and release music they started their own tape label, SHiT Tapes, in the spring of 1980. It was among the earliest independent tape labels in Norway, and certainly one of the only ones really stressing the D.I.Y. angle. Their initial releases were compilations, mainly of live recordings by different bands. The first one, "Live Låt Fra Forum 76, 78 & 79", contains music recorded during a Norwegian folk, blues, jazz, and rock festival, and is now deleted ("still a few tracks we like but mostly not our cuppa tea and certainly not D.l.Y., so into the void it goes"). The second release, "Greatest SHits From Silicon City" is labelled "flashes from secret archives" and is purported to contain punk ballads, fake ragas and lots of inside jokes. Two 1981 releases, "Arendalsrock 1981" and "5000 Råkks" highlighted the contemporary scene of two towns on the Norwegian south coast, Arendal and Bergen.

BRT Things didn't get going for us music-wise until the end of that year, when Lumpy Davy, Cool Kat, Chrisph and Han Solo started their own little band, The New Incredible Headcleaners. They were meant to play experimental new wave, influenced by bands like Monochrome Set or Cabaret Voltaire and the like, but they ended up being a bit too guitar- and song-oriented.

LUMPY Born in the wake of the D.l.Y revolution of 1980's autumn, The Headcleaners labelled their music "neo-symphonic no-wave with a touch of industrial Angst". Cool Kat and I had been working together musically since 1974. We included old pal Chrisph on bass and later Han Solo on organ. The band never had a steady drummer, using mostly primitive drum computers. As individuals our musical tastes ranged from experimental to pop, from avant-garde jazz to psychedelia. This is reflected in their songs, all self-penned whims with no certain direction, but often with a Monochrome Set influence. This first phase of The Headcleaners lasted until autumn 1981, until after they had recorded the material for the charming, if rather patchy, album "Swinging With The New Incredible Headcleaners" (with a guest drummer on some tracks).

The tape was released in 1982. Han Solo and Chrisph had left the band by then, with Solo recording a tape of his own called "De Usynlige Horder" ("The Invisible Hordes") with Tom Samuelsen that was privately released in 1982.

LUMPY After their departure, Zetlitz was enlisted on vocals and Cool Kat and I discarded our guitars in favour of monophonic synthesizers and keyboards. For the next year, until the autumn 1982, they recorded loads of synthpop songs in the vein of early Human League, nine of which were released on the cassette sampler "Angst Und Freundschaft" (SHiT 006) (aka "The Greatest SHits From Silicon City Vol. 2", L.).

BRT Meanwhile, Lumpy Davy wanted to make some far out music in the vein of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire ... It was 1982, cheap synths were on the market, The Normal had just done their brilliant "T.V. O.D." single and music was going in a progressive direction again after the pure adrenalin shock of punk. So we went back to our old tape project, with my spoken words and musical incompetence, but with a lot more possibilities regarding the sound sources (loops, guitar, synth, etc.). We made our first, fumbling recordings as Famlende Forsøk in 1981 (three tracks of us were on "Angst Und Freundschaft") (the name means something along the lines of "Staggering Attempts", "Fumbling Efforts", or "Groping Experiments", L.). In the summer of 1982 we rehearsed some material for a local D. 1. Y. festival that we arranged out in the woods: seventy people came, three bands and one poet did their thing and a good time was had by all. Chrisph from Headcleaners guested on sax with us (he had also played on the backing tapes) and Cool Kat and Zetlitz have helped out as well. We played a concert in Bergen that autumn that got good audience response. Our next release was two tracks on "Deka Dance" (SHiT 009), a split cassette EP recorded in '83, out in '84.

LUMPY The Headcleaners were revived for a third phase from summer to Christmas 1983. Chrisph was reenlisted, together with occasional drummer Rrolf. Only two songs were recorded, both released on the EP. For the next couple of years various members are said to have been recording instrumental pieces for imaginary films, under the banner of The Headcleaners. Rumour says that this will eventually be released as a posthumous Headcleaners cassette album.

Famlende Forsøk: It´s only rock´n´roll and we don´t like it.

In 1982 and 1993 gnomes BRT and Lumpy came up with a new fanzine, dedicated to D.l.Y. auditive artists and called "Sprø Musikk". Their grandest concept at the time was the organizing of four successive "Sprø Musikk" festivals, from '82 to '85. Bits of the 1983 and '84 versions were preserved for posterity on Shit Tapes (their 12th and 13th release respectively). Both tapes were brought out in 1985 and contained rare material from Autentisk Film, Brød & Sirkus, Famlende Forsøk, Head Set Junta, A Technicolor Dream and (my personal favourites, L.) Ym-Stammen.

Once again, I just can't help myself; although they haven't got anything to do with the main story-line of this article, I simply have to write a few lines on Ym-Stammen. They hail from Oslo or thereabouts and were to bring out one album (on Cicada Records in 1987). Needless to say I've never seen it, as chances are that it has never been available outside of Norway anyway. Luckily (for me, that is) Tatra Records really made my week when they put out "Dvergmål" (that's the name of the album) on CD last year, including no less than ten bonus tracks pre- and postdating the LP that was recorded between November 1985 and May 1986. Most of the music on the album was written by Trygve Matthiesen, Dag-Olav Sivertsen and Oddvar Karlsmyr. The other regular members of the band were bass players Harald Beckstrøm and Jon Anders Strand, drummer Christian Refsum and synthesizer man Paul A. Jørgensen. A host of guest musicians too numerous to mention helped out on various string and brass instruments. The CD contains a bunch of rather jolly- sounding songs, culminating in "Solbeven", a magnificent anthem the words of which mean absolutely nothing to me although many's the time I've tried in vain to sing along while driving my car down some silent nightly motorway. It' s a perfect album to put on while watching Norwegian football!

Just before the release of the "Deka Danse" cassette Famlende Forsøk did with The Headcleaners (meaning in 1983) there was a hard-core industrial cassette out on SHiT Tapes by Autentisk Film, called " Svart/Hvitt " ("Black/White"), as well as "Musikk For De Intime Salonger" by Head Set Junta, being two ex-members of The Headcleaners (Cool Kat and Zetlitz) with the keyboard player of Brød & Sirkus, playing (according ,o Sounds magazine) "bloated rock which smacks of Simple Minds on the Eurovision Song Contest"; the band themselves preferred to call it "romantic music for cynical people, a nice soundtrack to your afternoon tea".

Then it was time for a first (cassette) LP, Chrisph having become a full member of Famlende Forsøk in 1983 (there haven't been any changes to the lineup since then). As BRT recalls: "Our earliest recordings were done on two-track, now we rented a four-track tape-deck for one song "Dans Dansen", which was meant to sound like Cabaret Voltaire but turned out to be closer to jazz. The Iyrics were in part based on some Peter Hammill stuff, but again it ended up as something else".

SHiT 010, "Famlende Forsøk Viser En Overraskende Mate Hvorpå Man Kan Kaste En Person Over Ende", was put together in 1982 and '83 and Chrisph contributed the two longest tracks, ambient half-speed tape loops.

The FF-Monster by the three of them, including their magic-tool and favourite goat.

BRT: "He also plays a mean saxophone. It was a very varied release, both musically and in sound quality, but it was our very first LP, so there! The reviews it got were quite good, by the way. Then we got the idea to go industrial (like Einsturzende Neubauten, SPK, etc.) (wowl) beating on metal and stuff to make music out of that. So we recorded lots of backing tracks using metal percussion; this was done in an abandoned factory, all during 1983. "

The first thing that came out after this was SHiT 011, "Scrap Material", in 1985; it consists of some leftovers from the 1982/'83 period and some new stuff from '84, done on four-track.

BRT We were being naughty to Ella Fitzgerald on two songs of "Scrap Material". My task was now to write the accompanying Iyrics to the metal backing tracks, preferably dark and pessimistic. Some of the music sounded more like fake gamelan, though, or cheap Residents or pseudo John Cage, so I wrote about metallurgy as opposed to alchemy, the death of our local industry, and mad monks playing with their organs (sic, A.) (he means sick, L.) in lonely towers of temples far off in the Tibet of your inner never mind ... (this Tibetan feel was reflected in the name given to this project, being Døve Munker, or "Deaf Monks", L.)

Up till that time SHiT Studios had been nothing more than a bedroom with two tape recorders, occasionally expanded with a borrowed four-track, but as of the next release, things changed for the better:

BRT We wanted the recordings to be as bare as possible, but with as good a sound quality as we could get. So in 1984 we bought time in an eight-track studio and recorded SHiT 014, "Døve Munker Ut Av Norsk Industri" ("Deaf Monks Out Of Norwegian Industry"); we did it in fifteen hours (twelve for the recording, three for the mixing). We also made a nice little booklet and released it in 1986. Aside from voice and metal percussion it features chants (up to 18 voices!), pump-organ, saxes and horns, and tape loops, but no guitars, no rock, no horse, no wife, no mustache, and Allah is to be pitied, poor guy! By this time we had been on local and national radio, in fanzines, music papers, and even on TV once. One of our quotes from that time goes like this "Famlende Forsøk is a Marxist Buddhist group inspired by the wind and the weather". The eight-track machine later became the basis of Spang Virr Studio, now firmly established in rented localities and owned collectively by members of Famlende Forsøk and Coalmine 5 (and a few others) and ready to take on small production jobs for selected artists.

LUMPY Springing directly out of the 1984 release, the next Famlende Forsøk project was lo be called Døve Munker. I had just bought an old harmonium and the idea was to torture a few doomy, dark Norwegian psalms and folk tunes from the middle ages out of i•s keyboard. As it turned out, I teamed up with ex-Headcleaners singer Zetlitz as a duet. There was a resurgent interest in folk music throughout the Norwegian rock scene that year, and early 1985 Døve Munker contributed the dreary old religious dirge "Jeg Arme Synder" ("I Poor Sinner", L.) to the now legendary "Frendafolket" folk sampler brought out by the Sang cassette label.

Late winter that year young female viola player Bumble B (later to become a member of The Smell Of Incense) was included, to be followed by flute player Robert Menne in May. In August 1985 Døve Munker did their first concert, at the last Sprø Musikk Festival; they teamed up with Famlende Forsøk for the occasion, the two bands playing songs alternately. The result was far from encouraging and Døve Munker went into hibernation for the next year.

Døve Munker was resurrected in the autumn of 1986, minus Robert Menne, only to disband after an even more disastrous concert come Christmas. This time their demise appeared permanent, so let's get back to the Famlende Forsøk storyline.

BRT "Live 85" (SHiT 015) is a live recording done in December 1985 on the eight-track we bought that year, with a few overdubs here and there. Comprising early versions of "Belzebub" and "Hebhel" from the LP, and older stuff, it was released in a very limited edition of 45, with individually hand-painted boxes. I have done poetry and noise recordings on my own for a solo tape, and there's a cassette-side's worth of that on the tape as well, under the name "BRT: Singer Julen Ut". It's still available now, but without the painted box. During the eighties we did some concerts, recorded tracks for compilations and archives, and started to think about our first vinyl album; we also started work on stories by the horror/fantasy writer Howard Philip Lovecraft in 1988.

But more about that later. Incidentally, the compilations that were mentioned really do range wide and far: Japan, France, Norway, Belgium, New York, Massachusetts, Portugal ... Meanwhile, there was one more release done as a SHiT-cassette: the debut of Coalmine 5, a bunch of poets "toying with their private parts & instruments; also some Eskimos and drunk Indians, sort of World Music from the hidden Spang Virr cosmos". Coalmine 5 had one album out in the summer of 1990 (called "5 Fot Fra Sahara" - or "5 Feet From Sahara") on the Ester Electra label (another Crawling Chaos subdivision; in fact, it was the last release on Crawling Chaos). Famlende Forsøk, on the other hand, had already completed theirs, for Eldritch Records:

BRT Some of the basic tracks for the LP "Ars Transmutatoria" were recorded in 1985. Then we put it together slowly, piece by piece, until most of it was ready by 1989. We then booked into a sixteen-track studio to mix it (operated by Tom Samuelsen, the guy who had sold us the eight-track, and who'd been in De Usynlige Horder with Han Solo). We wanted to tone down the harsh weirdness a bit and we wanted a cleaner sound than we could get by producing it ourselves. Some tracks, and especially "Belzebub i Amerika" were impossible to mix, the sound was too dense and murky. On the cover we stuck a picture I had painted, in glossy colours and a foldout sleeve. We pressed 500 copies and it cost us a lot. Most of them are sold by now, but there still are a few copies left for the hardcore fans. The theme is sort of into gnosticism and alchemy, but a bit loose. "Hebhel" is the Old Testament text from Ecclesiastes: "All is vanity ... etc. ", all a bit gloomy and dark. Though we didn't make a lot of money from it we got very good reviews indeed. We also got voted in among the best ten Norwegian groups in a poll in one of the big music papers in 1991.

..And then it's back to ye olde Lovecraft project:

BRT In '88 Chrisph had bought his first sampler• was great for sound manipulation, loops, slow speeds, backwards and ultimate distortion. The project is based on the man's own words, from poems, letters and short stories, read by me in my best Norwegian-sounding English. The music is based on samples of birds, frogs, dripping water, insects, voice, whales, etc. (recently Chrisph has bought a newer and even better sampler); we also want to add acoustic instruments in a perverted Arabian mode, a bit like Third Ear Band on lager, maybe. We hope to have this out on CD in '95.

SPIDER AND THE OCTOPUS

Intro: reversed guitar

        The spider And the octopus
        the madcap laugh, the magic bus
Sung:   A troll or two In the morning

        Trip to, heave and ho
        up down, to and fro'
        Singin' a song in the morning
    Yellow room plastic tune
    Syd and Kevin on the moon

Spinning a song in the morning
Splnnln• on6 •n •h• nln6

They arethe most extraordinary persons
they write the most peculiar kind of tunes
.....

In addition we wanted to include some instrumental pieces by Josef Holbrooke, from a book of music scores, Iyrics and drawings from 1923 called "Bogey Beasts". We've done the music on PC. The link to Lovecraft is this: the Iyrics and drawings are by Sidney H. Sime, who made many illustrations for Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, a great influence on Lovecraft in his early writings. And Lovecraft mentions Sime in the short story "Pickman's Model". So there! The music is strange, twisted and gay piano music, which makes a nice contrast to our more deep eldritch themes. Anyway, by now "The Bogey Beast Opera", as we call it, will be released as a project on its own, after the Lovecraft project.

Apart from all this we have recorded some almost commercial songs: "The Spider and the Octopus" is a tribute to Syd Barrett and Kevin Ayers, and "Looking for Bob" was inspired by the "Twin Peaks" series. These are halfway between the old/weird Famlende Forsøk and the Iysergic sounds of Smell Of Incense. So maybe we are psychedelic after all! We're doing a D.l.Y. video for "Bob"; we have also tried to make a low/no budget axe murder/haunted house video in 1991

LUMPY Famlende Forsøk was originally formed in 1982 to be an outlet for our more extreme and often silly ideas. When it got to be rather more serious than intended we established this fun-band The Mystick Sisters in the summer of 1991. We do silly interpretations of songs by such luminaries as Syd Barrett, Frank Sinatra, Frank Zappa, Cliff Richard and Elvis to name a few. So far we have performed as opening act for The Smell Of Incense and Famlende Forsøk; we see ourselves as a future lounge band, playing at late night parties for people who appreciate good entertainment!

BRT goes on to give us a list of "sound and found sources used and abused by Famlende Forsøk" that we just couldn't keep to ourselves; read it, judge it well and jump on the nearest ferry to get your copy of "Ars Transmutatoria" before you' re left sobbing on a pebble-strewn beach knowing that the last of the 500 has escaped beyond your grasp forever:

African xylophone, airshaft duct, anvil, birds, brass instruments, broken glass, Casio organ, computer, cow bells, cut up techniques, delay, drum machine, drums, feedback, gongs, guitars (all sorts), Hammond organ, insects, Korg MS 20 synth, mellotron, metal percussion, monster movie, pak hawj, phasing, piano, plastic tubes, pump organ, Roland synth, samplers, saxophone, shenai, short wave radio, speed manipulations, stenochord, stylophone, tablas, tambura, tape recorder, thar shenai, Tibetan bells, toy organ, toy xylophone, Turkish drums, vacuum cleaner, violin, voices, water, whales, and wind instruments; not forgetting patience, accidents, planning gone awry and no respect for anything whatsoever.

But what about this elusive Smell Of Incense that the gnomes keep mentioning? After all, theirs is the name that adorns the first page of this article. Where do they fit in? Well, hopefully that will become clear to you after having read the account of their coming into this world and other subsequent meanderings, as told by Lumpy Davy.

LUMPY Three years after the demise of The Headcleaners we felt again the urge to have a real rock band going (after all, Famlende Forsøk is more of a studio project, the three members living far apart and only coming together a few times a year). Han Solo and I had for years shared the dream of starting some rotten psychedelic combo, playing solely forgotten classics by obscure acid-punk, psych and power pop bands from the years 1965-69. Cool Kat, my musical partner from way back, and sharing my fascination for all things Canterbury, had just switched from guitar to drums and was included to round off the basic trio. Tired of home studio recording, we were happy to live a murky cellar life, practising our fave obscurities and consuming somewhat large quantities of booze, not to mention ... (accidentally erased, L.). The band had no name or ambition and was intended to be an all-cover setup. Starting up in April 1986, we used to bring along no fewer than five songs each session, many of which were discarded after one run-through. Some nights, when the boozing was particularly heavy, we'd do only Kink-kovers, the versions of which would get wilder & weirder, until Kat would get the idea of playing drums and keyboards simultaneously, resulting in several broken keys on the old Hammond!This was more or less the situation for the next three and a half years, the list of cover songs getting ever vaster. Here's a few of them, many of which have been performed live at least once and some of which are still in the set: "Acid Head" (Velvet Illusion), "All Fall Down" (Standells), "All Night Stand" and "Big Black Smoke" (Kinks), "Flight from Ashiya" (Kaleidoscope), "14 Hours Technicolor Dream" (Syn), "Gemini Child " (Kevin Ayers), "Guess I was Dreaming" (Fairy Tale), "Hashish" (Indian Puddin ' & Pipe), "I Got a New Love " (Omar & The Night People), "It's Cold Outside" (Choir), "It's no Use" (Byrds), "Living in a Child 's Dream" and "Wars or Hands of Time" (Master's Apprentices), "Love Makes Sweet Music" and "Memories" (Soft Machine), "Milky Way" (Syd Barrett), "Mindrocker" (Fenwyck), "Mizzer Bahd" (Luv Bandits), "On the Plane" (Leaves), "People Games Play" (Faine Jade), "Put the Clock Back on the Wall" (ETypes), "Ride" (Caravan), "The Wind Blows Your Hair" (Seeds), "Try and Stop Me" (Creation), "Workshop" (Hunger), .........During this early period The Smell Of Incense only performed live twice, under the temporary banner The Psychedelic Unknowns; the second time being for a local "Gathering of the Tribes" in the summer of 1988. The band was to round off the evening after Famlende Forsøk and Coalmine 5, having in advance made the crucial mistake of entrusting Han Solo with the job of barkeeper. By the time we came on stage there was no liquor left in the bar and our bassman was drunk as a turkey! Truly, no band has ever done a more thoroughly drenched version of "Waterloo Sunset" than we did on that fatal night! As the songs didn't quite work out in the trio format we'd long been searching for the right fourth member. We tried to enlist the guitar player from the locally legendary The Mountains and had in fact one inspiring session with him. But alas, he'd grown too sedate and plump for a rock & roll life. Late '89 we ended up with another in-demand guitar player, Ernie Chung, who was and still is playing with a host of other bands. But still he's been with us ever since. With the coming of Ernie things really started to roll. Much to our surprise we found the sound to have tightened sufficiently to think about performing in public again. With our new-found audacity we chose a permanent name, The Smell Of Incense, from a 1968 original song by The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (later that year to become a minor hit by Southwest F.O.B.). The sound was changing too, towards longer, instrumental structures in the vein of early progressive and free-form freak-out. Though still basically a cover band, some original material was staring to creep into the set.

Late 1991 saw The Smell Of Incense enter a local 16track recording studio (Pollen Studio) to record a five-song demo: "I'm Allergic to Flowers" (an original by The Jefferson Handkerchief) that was later to appear on flexi disc, "A Visit with Ashiya" (H.MS. Bounty) ", "The Smell of Incense " (the two of which appear on the first single), "Golden State" and "Christopher's Journey (the last of which was completely re-recorded for the album). Meanwhile, various members were doing things on the side as well: Ernie was recording with The Consumers (in 1991 and '92), Han Solo did a spell with Gloppegaards and Alfses (see the family tree), and Lumpy Davy (that's me, folks) was working with Famlende Forsøk, starting up Mystick Sisters in 1991 and joining forces again with Bumble B and Zetlitz in January '92, to undertake another recording venture with Døve Munker: we were approached by a young Norwegian film director, who wanted a version of "Jeg Arme Synder" for a new film he was working on. We agreed to reform for that one job and in May '92 recorded a new version of the old psalm (concerning the dreariness of earthly life). We also did "Lyut Lyut Låvamand ", an even darker folk song about some dark ritual in the depths of the forest. It was released in October 1992 on an international CD sampler (called "Ur-Rauten") on the small, experimental Norwegian record label Debut. Døve Munker's music fitted in well with the topic of the film, which was the ruthless exploitation of animal life, animal experiments, etc. The soundtrack was released on CD and should still be available to those interested, from the Urban label. The film, "Svarte Pantere" ("Black Panthers", L.) had a run on Norwegian cinemas in August that year and as part of the promotion for it, Døve Munker did their first successful concert. In September 1992 Robert Menne rejoined on flutes. This final version of Døve Munker is still at work, slowly collecting songs for a forthcoming CD release. Their repertoire is extended to include not only traditional Norwegian material but also modern folk songs by C.O.B., Steeleye Span, and even Moondog, along with a few originals. But they still do dark and entirely acoustic versions of those songs, trusting their old harmonium, viola, flutes and vocals.
The Smell Of Incense demo, meanwhile, was sent to carefully chosen individuals and record companies, and got favourable response from several of these. One was sent to Merrell Fankhauser (of H.M.S Bounty and Mu fame, and the writer of "A Visit with Ashiya") whereupon the old psycho exclaimed: "It really blew my mind!". TSOI had already been in contact with Merrell in the summer of '91, trying to entice him to come over from California to do a concert in Norway. Plans were well underway for a European tour and Merrell in fact asked The Smell Of Incense to become his backing band for the tour! But alas again, the tour never materialised, much to our sadness. To make a long story short, the result of the demo was a contract with the Norwegian vinyl-purist label Colours. You can say that Colours chose us as much as we chose them, as we regard them as one of Europe's leading labels in the progressive field. We are proud to be label-mates with bands like Tangle Edge, Anglagård, Anekdoten and Landberk.

After some debate on whether or not to remain an allmale band, Bumble B had been added to the Smell Of Incense lineup in the spring of 1992. That year TSOI did more live jobs than ever, starting with a big Crawling Chaos event in Oslo (in January) featuring Mystick Sisters, Famlende Forsøk, Coalmine 5 and TSOI. One critic had this comment: "Let me tell you about the singer in TSOI. He is like cut out from a magazine from 1967. The whiskers were right, the striped pantaloons, the smile, the glasses, the waistcoat, the starry eyes & the bobbed hairdo. There was not one mistake that couldn't have been made on January the 6th, 1967. Could it have been a Wednesday?"

ln May '92 the song "I'm Allergic to Flowers" was released on flexi disc with a Norwegian rock magazine. During the long, hot and fiercely romantic summer that followed, Brt of Famlende Forsøk was guesting live on space doodle synthesizer, while Bumble B was taking over the role as lead singer on the new material, where she wasn't playing viola. The live season culminated with a concert in August, co-billing the aforementioned YmStammen.

Sessions for the "All Mimsy Were The Borogroves" album commenced in November '92 and were to continue in hops and leaps until the final mix-down in August 1993. It may seem a long time, and so it was, but there could be weeks, even months between each session. The basic tracks were quickly recorded fin retrospect, some too quickly). Much time was spent on arrangements, special effects and small details. Perhaps this is reflected in the great variety of sound between the seven songs of the album, four (and a half) of which are TSOI originals. Tom Samuelsen was the sympathetic and very patient producer (as he has been with Famlende Forsøk, Døve Munker and the '9I demo) in his new studio (Agder Lydproduksjon).
In May '93 we were invited by Colours to join a memorable concert in the town Skien, in a venerable old outdoor theatre, along with Utopian Fields and Gentle Touch. For me that was a special event, as it w.as from that very stage that I attended my first rock concert ever, with The Pussycats, way back in '65! The dressing rooms even had makeup mirrors surrounded by light bulbs. Less than a month after that, we had the honour of warming up for the legendary Tangle Edge. Nice blokes they are!
Late November 1993 TSOl partly re-recorded and remixed two songs from the old demo for single release on the German September Gurls label. The •" materialized in May '94, as part of their Dis-Cover series, in a limited edition of 500. I must mention the kryptonite green vinyl and the beautiful, Stringbandish cover by Bumble B. It's now deleted from SG, the few remaining copies can be had from Colours or from our own Crawling Chaos.

During winter '93 and spring '94 The Smell Of Incense have been working hard on a live set with songs from the album plus new material. We've drafted a new keyboard player for live jobs, Vidar Ersfjord by name. He also joined us for the hitherto last recording, in Fløystones Studio (Oslo) in June '94, where we recorded the long and freely interpreted versions of two Gong songs: "Magic Brothers" and "What Do You Want?", for a future Crohinga boxed set tape compilation

The album was finally released on LP and CD in September '94 and was celebrated with a release concert in Oslo on the 9th of September. We were as many as eight people on stage, including Chrisph and Brt of Famlende Forsøk as guest musicians, with appropriate liquid lights, orbital lasers and smoke

I could go on talking about future plans and visions, but as we've talked too much already, I'll let the future reveal what it will. Space is deep!!!

Brtrom Trollblaster & Lumpy Davy compiled by Løuis Moosestrangler artwork by Bumble B.
Adapted for web by ChrispH.

THE CRAWLING CHAOS - MAIN PAGE

THE CATALOGUE

GALLERIES