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Ratkje’s recent River Mouth Echoes (Tzadik) covers a lot of terrain, focusing on her more serious compositional side with six pieces from 1997 through 2005. In her brief liner notes she writes, “Contrasts are essential; extremes and clear cuts. Music is a part of life and should sound like that. Noise and distortion have an unlimited earthly beauty, chaos and simplicity often appearing side by side, but also the romantic softness of quiet sine waves or melodic lines.” She goes on to emphasize the importance of context in how disparate sounds sit with one another.
Plenty of sharp electronic noise punctuates the songs on Travel Now Journey Infinitely (Season of Mist), an album credited to Trinacria–aka Ratkje, Hild Sofie Tafjord (her partner in the duo Fe-Mail), and several Scandivian black metallers, including members of veteran Norwegian band Enslaved. The music was originally commissioned by Rikskonsertene, a prestigious concert hall and presenter in Oslo, but the musicians were happy enough with the results that they made an album. The recording definitely feels a bit manufactured–not assembly-line style but rather in the way the two parts of the group fit together (or fail to fit together).
