Chances are you’ve heard Erland Dahlen’s drumming, one way or another. In recent years his main day job was as drummer for Norwegian rock band Madrugada, but he’s appeared on numerous albums and in various collaborations (over 130 since the mid ’90s), alongside artists such Arve Henriksen, Mike Patton, Hanne Hukkelberg and Serena Maneesh. Rolling Bomber is however, his first solo album and in many ways, it’s a wide, warm and startling thing.
The first thing I noticed about the album is the sound – a thing of resonant spaces and warm velvety depths. Rolling Bomber was recorded over 3 days in February and April 2011, inside an abandoned coffee factory in Olso, a space Dahlen has utilised in the past. It consists of comparatively little – drums, obviously, subtle electrical fields, similar to something Helge Sten might eructate in his dreams, gamelan-like vibes, Dahlen’s other signature instrument the bowed saw here and there – but everything seems to levitate inside a wider field of force, the sounds expanding to the edge of your hearing. The timbre is largely a metallic one, yet there is a real tactility to the sound, as if you could clasp it to yourself.
A huge part of this comes down to Dahlen’s drumkit , after which the album is named. The ‘Slingerland Rolling Bomber’ originated in World War 2 and as most metals were in high demand, the parts traditionally made from steel, chrome and nickel were actually built with rosewood. What you get, especially on a track like ‘Monkey’ as well as the great booming depth of sound from the calfskin covered floor toms and snare, is an incredibly intricate insect like clicking as Dahlen plays the full surface area of each drum and the set’s constituent parts.
The album does descend into less sonorous depths, with ‘Pryamid’ in particular occupying a deeper sonic substrate, with the gamelan instrumentation offering an atonal sprinkling over Dahlen’s primal thump. ‘Piratman’ has a similar repetitive atonality to it which approaches a hypnotic almost Reichian intensity – something which could easily have been stretched out and explored in more depth.
In terms of influence, it’s a bit of a struggle to come up with anything coherent. There’s the distant ghost of Peter Erskine perhaps, but probably mostly through the choice of kit more than anything else; the aforementioned Steve Reich and some vague nods towards some of the more fractured kosmische bands of the early ‘70s; Jon Mueller’s mantric workouts also come to mind, some of the squelchier moments of Supersilent… On the whole though Rolling Bomber feels pretty sui generis, and it’s a triumph of minimalism and atmosphere that emphatically achieves the task of leaving the listener wanting more. It’s also another triumph for the Hubro label which has provided a number of intriguing releases in its short life span. It’s also evidence that Dahlen has a good deal more to give. We await.
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