Description

PNL Records is excited to present two new albums of Paal Nilssen-Love, both documenting his solo work with gongs. Nilssen-Love began using gongs in his music years ago, but in 2018 after a meeting with Kelly Paiste of Paiste Cymbals and getting a subsequent sponsorship deal with Paiste his focus on gongs became stronger. A further factor to this was as the Covid 19 pandemic closed down the world and put all touring on hold, Paal’s own collection of cymbals got stuck in Brazil. Nilssen-Love himself was at the Nesodden peninsula just outside Oslo, so he began ordering new gongs (as well as cymbals) from Paiste and used the lockdown to deepen his study on the possibilities of this special instrument. He ended up with nine gongs, eight of which are planetarium gongs, which are tuned to the frequencies of different planets, by mathematician and scientist Hans Gusto.

At Nesodden, he got access to a local gallery called Galleri Vanntårnet, which is an old water tower with incredible acoustics. The room itself works as an amplifier. Two of the largest gongs (38”) are tuned to a C and C#. There’s also a 32” gong which is also a C# but the difference of frequencies are 70,64 and 68,05 Hz. Needless to say, the sound of these gongs, played at the same time, is quite something.

On March 5th 2021 Lasse Marhaug was invited to come and record him playing the gongs at Vanntårnet. The session became the first solo recording of Nilssen-Love only playing gongs, although at some parts features woodblocks. The recording is raw and direct, you can hear Nilssen-Love move around in the room, adding a physical aspect, and the low-end frequency pulsates and creates waves of sound. The pure physicality of the sound makes the music take on an architectural dimension. Documenting his solo gong work at such an early stage, there’s a freshness to the music and we can hear Nilssen-Love exploring the possibilities of the set-up.

Jump ahead three and half years later, to December 15th 2024, we get a concert at the Gustav Vigeland museum in Oslo. The night before, Nilssen-Love’s friends had arranged a surprise birthday party to celebrate him turning 50, which the next day according to himself set him in an usually vulnerable and sensitive state, perfect for the performance ahead. The Vigeland museum was also quite a special place, but this time the set-up of the nine Paiste gong was expanded with several other objects and instruments, like a metal plate lying on the floor, and using different objects like styrofoam, paper bags, knitting needles, ping-pong balls, and vibrators to play the gongs. Unlike the 2021 recording this is a live recording in front of an audience, and Nilssen-Love roughly followed a score, which was written out on a large piece of paper. During the concert he moved around in the space, also moving the actual instruments, creating a visual as much as sonic experience for the audience. This approach ties in with the question that Nilssen-Love in later years have asked: “What is a concert? Where does a concert begin and where does it end?”

These two albums are not the first recordings where Nilssen-Love has stepped away from the drum kit and worked only with percussive instruments, but the nature of the gongs dedicates a different pace and form, although played at the proper volume (loud!) on a proper sound system, it is no less intense. The 2021 and 2024 recordings offer a unique way to hear Nilssen-Love at two stages in this new direction of his solo work. 

SOUNDSTREAM

Shipping from:Chicago / Vienna

VIEW MORE / BUY