Body Sculptures’ sound is at times ambient and devotional, and at other times gruelling and fragmented.
The project brings together five leading lights from Europe’s experimental noise arena – Swedish composer Erik Enocksson, industrial artists Puce Mary aka Frederikke Hoffmeier and Ossian Ohlsson of Vit Fan – along with Varg, co-owner of Stockholm’s Northern Electronics and Loke Rahbek of Posh Isolation.
The initial idea for Body Sculptures came together over “10 bottles of Bollinger” one night in Copenhagen about two years ago. “Most soccer teams have a sister club in a different country and Northern Electronics is our sister club,” offers Rahbek – who is also a member of Damien Dubrovnik and Lust For Youth and who we spoke to about naked selfies back in 2014.
Enocksson explains that the five individual voices do not work together in conventional band format but are instead more of a fluid entity, bringing whatever instruments they feel like using to recording sessions, hooking it all up and “leaving it open for anyone to go at it.” It allows the group to roam into territory none of them would visit on their own.
Enmeshed in both performance art and experimental noise, Body Sculptures’ controversial set at Berlin’s Atonal in 2015 saw Rahbek fake-strangle Hoffmeier with a microphone cable as part of their performance, while their debut album, The Base Of All Beauty Is The Body, is a textured spillage of caustic feedback and eerie samples.
“Our different expressions merge into something new and the sum breaks itself free of the individual parts,” says Enocksson of the group’s composition. Their new LP A Body Turns To Eden takes this a step further, with Rahbek describing it as “a beautiful garden, above the flowers and below. It’s a celebration of both.”
One of the biggest inspirations for the record was a photo of a Moroccan garden that Rahbek came across online. And from opener ‘A Breath of Wind Sows the Seeds’ – all kosmische bubbles and black metal church bells – to the hint of jangling chains on ‘Feet Into Soil’, there’s certainly a darkly bucolic element to dig through here.
A Body Turns To Eden is out now on Posh Isolation.
