To call the Norwegian group Supersilent "post-rock" is a misnomer: Their music is pre-rock, or, in a sense, pre-genre. It's the kind of amorphous sound mass you imagine at the beginning of the universe, an obliterative black-hole suction that takes modern cues only from the intuitive progressions of jazz and the chaotic sound atmospheres of electronic devices. Not to mention that post-rock is in the habit of forcing its cues, determined to hit that cathartic peak before the tape runs out. Supersilent, meanwhile, arrives at catharsis torturously if at all, preferring to let their variations unspool organically, reveling in unresolved tension and inertia.
On his third full-length album for Rune Grammofon, Supersilent's virtuoso trumpeter Arve Henriksen explores the genesis of his own universe: Strjon is the medieval name of Henriksen's home town-- it roughly means "streaming water," which even the most unsympathetic listener would have to admit is germane to the album's fluid, natural sound. Drawing from a wealth of home-taped sounds from his youth in Stryn, Henriksen recruited his Supersilent band mates Ståle Storløkken and Helge Sten to produce the album and to add keyboards and guitars to Henriksen's trumpet and electronics. But Strjon isn't an early demos thing; Henriksen simply used these early sketches as templates, allowing his modern polish to dovetail with his youthful zeal.
The result is a quietly stunning album of fugues, stasis, and moods. Given the starkness of its sound palette and the restraint of its compositions, its allure is uncanny-- that melancholy trumpets threading through evocative drones doesn't wear thin over the album's forty-seven minutes is a testament to Henriksen's compositional ingenuity and ace musicianship. The album opens with "Evocation": The sinuous, quavering trumpet figure is at once ominous and inviting; it has a palpable whooshing quality that makes it sound almost like a reed instrument, and you get a distinct sense of the musician's subtle embrasure behind the sounds. As a bowed drone pushes in for contrast, Henriksen's theme breaks out of its unsteady rut and waxes lyrical. Amid the gently reverbed guitars of "Leaf and Rock", Henriksen plays a slightly throttled and darkly romantic theme that cracks emotively at its root notes. His trumpet springs tiny, squealing leaks over the angelic glimmer of "In the Light", and lurches through damaged iterations of the caesurae-divided theme of "Evocation".
Elsewhere on the album, Henriksen breaks away from this satisfying but circumscribed approach to tinker with rhythm and mood. On "Twin Lake" cavernous guitar twinkles play off of hovering keyboards and Henriksen's bracingly high trumpet runs. Its nighttime-at-the-wharf aura is so strong you can practically smell the brine; all that's missing is the caw of gulls and the lonesome clank of a rusty pylon bell. The title track consists of nothing more than a primordial, modulating rumble; it's a study in soupy inertia. "Green Water" is light and airy with an atonal atmospheric buffer; percussive pings make it feel less nebulous than most of the album. "Black Mountain", a gyroscopic whirl of clipped, aggressive synth peals, is also atypically kinetic. And on "Glacier Descent", which is remindful of Growing with its shivering melodic cycles and low textural rumbles, Henriksen intones clear vowels over droning throat singing, gradually gathering it all up into a celestial crescendo. It's worth noting that the presence of a voice doesn't humanize "Glacier Descent" to any greater degree than the instrumental songs on Strjon, an album that is remarkable for its intimacy and wordless expressivity.
