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Few people have been more important to the alternative music scene in Norway than Trygve Mathiesen. One of the first punks in Oslo, he made music, wrote fanzines, ran a cassette label and a cassette duplication firm. Both his early punk rock and his later folk/ mediaeval-inspired music was a huge influence on contemporary music in Norway.
Mathiesen started his career in music singing and playing bass with punk legends Squirms. A punk activist, he made several fanzines in late 1978 and the following year. By the beginning of the 80's however, many punks felt that they had had as much as they could take of the 'new' sound; the three-chord aggressive rock was beginning to stale. In the summer of 1980, Mathiesen bought his first synthesizer, a Welson Preset monophonic monster, and started playing with some friends in the industrial project Negativ/ Positiv. This band, consisting of Stein Marvold and Mathiesen on synths, drummer "Ponny" Bjørgan and vocalist Kristin Andersen, played together for a few months, always improvising. There was talk of putting out a single, but no recordings of Negativ/ Positiv were ever made.
In October 1980, Trygve started another project with his friend, guitarist Carlos Platou, previously of several punk bands. By this time, synthesizers were embraced by the punk scene as an important source of new sounds, and the duo found new inspiration in electronic industrial bands: Throbbing Gristle's "United", short-lived Swedish project Plast and The Leather Nun's "Slow Death" EP. (The Swedish connection came through the Swedish fanzines Anarki & Kaos released by Jonas A, later in Leather Nun, and RIP, illustrated by Aldo Morot from Plast). Platou and Mathiesen started writing songs together, and in January 1981 three tracks were ready: "Total Krig", "Femte Kolonne" and "Schizofren".
The music press and the record-buying audience both were very ready for Something New, and LiK seemed just what the doctor ordered. A 3-track 7" EP was released in an edition of 1000, and quickly sold out. The band were interviewed in national press, and found themselves being contacted by several bands about support gigs. However, since the three tracks on the record were all they had, they decided against performing live.
LiK started planning another EP, but before they knew what was happening, the band fell apart. In April 1981, Trygve started afresh with another project, "I Angst". This was a duo where Mathiesen sang and played synths, and Torunn Garder played synths and bass. Torunn also recited a short story Gene Dalby had written for them, over an instrumental piece written by the duo. “i Angst” was a natural progression of the LiK sound; harsh, dark and forbidding. Mathiesen developped a sense of existensialism in the lyrics – themes of life and death that would inform much of his later work.
“i Angst” recorded a four-track demo, including the “Fourth LiK song” that never were; “Farger” had lyrics by Carlos Platou. In August 1981, two gigs were scheduled. The first was performed by Mathiesen alone, Garder joining him on stage for the second. The duo came to an end when Mathiesen was approached by Thanasis Zlatanos, of new wave band Lumbago, who wanted to make music with him. The two knew each other since Mathiesen had been Lumbago's roadie, and Zlatanos was very taken with Mathiesen’s ideas.
The new project was called Nekropolis, and started within weeks of Lumbago’s demise in December 1981. Mathiesen and Zlatanos wrote songs together through the beginning of 1982, and in September, they had their debut concerts, supporting Holy Toy at the new Academy of Arts in Oslo on the 17th before headlining a concert at Venstres Hus a week later.
Their third live booking led to an argument between Mathiesen and Zlatanos, causing Mathiesen to leave Nekropolis in October 1982. At this point, most of their debut LP was already recorded, so Zlatanos removed some of Mathiesen’s contributions, changed some of the tracks and released the material as a solo LP; “Nekropolis” by Thanasis Zlatanos. Zlatanos played some more concerts in December 1982 – helped out by Jan Berg of Blue Mathue among others – but moved to his native Greece in early 1983. Mathiesen and Zlatanos kept in touch, and when Zlatanos released his second LP “ARTificial” in 1987, the two performed live together again at a festival in Thessaloniki.
After leaving Nekropolis, Mathiesen wanted a new project, and soon decided to make a solo album, "El". Still making fanzines, he had written a full list of every two-letter word in the Norwegian language, and this led to all songs on the cassette having two-letter words for titles. Mathiesen was looking for similar kinds of experiment in sound – among other things, he created a makeshift ‘drum kit’ of scrap metal, called the "blikkofon", and was searching for other unusual instruments to play on, and unusual people to play with.
In the end, the album – released under his Likvider imprint on cassette in the spring of 1983 – had near a dozen collaborators, and the word ‘diverse’ can only begin to describe the music. Most of the songs were results of improvisations, where Mathiesen would have a vocal line, a short piece of text, and take this to one of his collaborators - as much to see what would happen as anything. The music is very sparse, very free-form, and the whole cassette holds not a hint as to his punk origins - that is to say, musically - there are no electric guitars or shouted vocals, but of course it's DIY, "anything goes" attitude comes from the punk revolution.
After the release of the 'solo' cassette, Mathiesen realised that he and most of his friends were disillutionned by punk. A friend of Mathiesen said that they needed to go back to their roots - he was talking about the origins of punk, ca 1976, but the thought inspired Mathiesen to try to go back to the stone age! The next band, Ym:Stammen (The Ym:Tribe) started out as a "stone-age punk" group. Mathiesen had found an indian banjo at a friend's place, and borrowed it, and they used simple hand-held drums and 'folk' instruments, trying to reach backwards in time, to a primordial, pre-historic sound.
All the songs on the “Nekropolis” LP had been credited to Thanasis Zlatanos, but some of the melodies were ‘taken back’ when Mathiesen started his band Ym:Stammen; “Black Scandinavians” was re-worked into “Urjotnen”, and “The Dead Don’t Remember” shared melody and some of the lyrical ideas with “Gjennom Det”, both from Ym:Stammen’s second cassette, “I:Vi:Landet”.
Ym:Stammen became a famous rock group in Norway, releasing four more albums (on LP and CD), playing live in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Faeroe Islands, at the WOMAD festival in London, Dublin's 1000 Years Anniversary Festival, and touring Canada. Their line-up kept changing – Mathiesen being the only permanent member through their entire career. Since their demise, Mathiesen has written a book on the Norwegian punk revolution 1977-1980 and held a photo exhibition around the same topic. He is currently working for the National museum of rock; “Rockheim”, and is writing a book on Sex Pistols’ gig in Oslo, 1977.
Releases (selected 1980-1984)
Known demos/ Unreleased Material
Related projects
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Trygve Mathiesen
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