Maja Ratkje
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, born 29 December 1973 in Trondheim, is a Norwegian vocalist and composer. She performs and releases music for concerts, recordings, films, installations, theatre, dance and other performances. Maja is a member of SPUNK, a Norwegian improv group, and Agrare, a performance trio consisting of the noise duo Fe-mail and the Swedish dancer Lotta Melin. She has collaborated with, among others, Jaap Blonk and Jazzkammer.
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, born 29 December 1973 in Trondheim, is a Norwegian vocalist and composer. She performs and releases music for concerts, recordings, films, installations, theatre, dance and other performances. Maja is a member of SPUNK, a Norwegian improv group, and Agrare, a performance trio consisting of the noise duo Fe-mail and the Swedish dancer Lotta Melin. She has collaborated with, among others, Jaap Blonk and Jazzkammer.
Mara
* Picture disc edition of 300 copies * Maja S. K. Ratkje is at the forefront of the musical avant-garde. Her music is bold, original and it is meant for sharing. At its heart lies Ratkje’s own voice, an open door to her individual musicianship and a constant tool for realigning her work with natural expressions and human truths.
On Mara, layers of vocals overlap and layer their way through the reverberant woodwork of an early baroque parish in Austria. At times slow and beautiful, other times fr…
Sult
Based upon Maja Ratkje´s music created for the ballet ”Sult” (”Hunger") by profiled director Jo Strømgren for the Norwegian National Ballet, this is a departure from records and live settings normally associated with Maja S. K. Ratkje, as we find her placed behind a modified, wiggly and out of tune pump organ, singing songs and improvising. Metal tubes, PVC tubes and a wind machine were built into the organ; guitar strings, a bass string, a resin thread, metal and glass percussion and a bow are …
Crepuscular Hour
Crepuscular Hour is an epic, hypnotic one-hour piece for three choirs, three pairs of noise musicians, and church organ, to be performed in a cathedral or similar location with musicians surrounding the audience. The room fills with sound in an intense, but almost meditative hour, as the voices blend with the distortion, the noise sometimes takes over, and the organ eventually takes the music to a new level. The visual design of this concert is a play on the crepuscular rays -- rays of su…
Celadon
A work of slowly evolving beauty that gradually unravels its meditative design. Recorded in 2013 in the mausoleum of Norwegian sculptor and painter Emanuel Vigeland (1875-1948) in Oslo, a recording space that is famous for its acoustics and its long and full-sounding reverb. These three tracks utilize both the delicacy and the power of acoustic instruments and human voice in relation to the unique recording space. Otherworldly and eerie but also with a great primal expressive force. Perfo…
Voice
The debut solo album from founding Spunk member and composer Maja Ratkje has secured her a place among the finest experimental singers. From the weird and furious to the enchanting and beautiful, this is an album rich in atmosphere, color and creative madness. First released on CD in 2002 and now available on vinyl for the first time, this is a central release in Rune Grammofon's catalogue and is an essential item in any record collection of experimental music. Composer, singer, electronic …
In Dialogue With Eugeniusz Rudnik
"Making music is to be in constant dialogue with your own aesthetics and preferences. In inspired moments, you can get surprised by where the process leads you. And in welcoming circumstances, there are no limits or sneaking doubts that disallow you to try out any possibility. The electronic music made by Eugeniusz Rudnik unquestionably encourages such a position. Working with his music has been greatly inspiring, and the nature of his music feels strangely fitting to my own approach to e…
Janus
Recorded, composed, mixed between Paris & Oslo, the Janus LP is a collaboration started in 2008 and finished in 2013. Experimental mouth music duet, free interlaced vocal noises, sonic poetry and free electronics. A convergent formal meeting of two complementary paths between poetry and music. Mastered by Frédéric Alstadt. Master cutting and vinyl manufactoring : magnetic.fr. Cover : Janus bust of Silenus and a Satyr, A.D. 120-150 Roman Marbel, Chrysler collection. Artwork by Joachim Montessuis.
Scrumptious sabotage
A recording of live performances which brought together two essential figures of the contemporary scene: an oustanding Norwegian composer and vocal artist Maja S.K. Ratkje and a celebrated improviser and composer, former DNA drummer, Ikue Mori. The common sound territory, created together by Mori and Ratkje, balances between quietly growing tension and powerful outbursts of unrestrained, relentless noise. Within this harmony, Ratkje takes adventurous excursions towards the borders and unknown fa…
Majaap
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, voice. Jaap Blonk, voice. 18 duo improvisations. Recorded in Amsterdam, 2001 and Oslo, 2002.
Adventura Anatomica
** longtime sold out at source, few copies restocked ** A fairy tale world comes to life in sublime fashion on Maja Ratkje’s latest collaboration Adventura Anatomica, a musical work for theatre she created with choreographer/danser Odd Johan Fritzøe and stage designer in November 2005. This is a world of bittersweet fairytales, of wolves and innocent maidens losing their way in a dark wood, a world of fear and despair and joyful ecstasy. In any case, emotions such as these coexist closely in Rat…
Stalker
Renowned international composer Maja Ratkje is a founding member in two of Norway's most respected improvisational units -- Spunk & Fe-Mail. Like much of Ratkje's work Stalker flawlessly contrasts these two distinct emotional and audio extremes. While Stalker is influenced by the hardest Japanese noise it is also a quiet emotional drift based around Bertolt Brecht's story of a girl who has drowned and is floating down a river while her body slowly dissolves leaving only her hair to remain. With …
Ballads
"Ballads“ ist the first collaborative album by two key figures of the Norwegian noise, improv, experimental, whatever-you-call-it music scene. Anyone expecting a rackety wall of distorted feedback guitars and voices will be gently surprised though by the sparse and intimate sketches to be found on this wonderful record. Songs are stripped down to their raw bones using only the most essential elements to reveal the soul behind every single sound. Superfluous effects seem to be completely absent,…