Before visiting a city for the first time I always make a point of looking up the local record shops so I can find a few (or a bunch in cities like London and Berlin) that fit my interests. When traveling I try to focus on finding and buying music from local artists, which serves the double purpose of allowing me to discover new-to-me music while also acting as a sort of scrapbook of our travels. As an added bonus sometimes you meet some cool people in record stores and maybe, if you’re lucky, stay connected with them.
I wasn’t sure I was going to find any record stores in the Faroe Islands, but it turns out there are two in the capital city of Tórshavn. One of them, Oceania Records, was unfortunately closed on the days we were there. But the other, the label and shop TUTL Records, was open, and I spent an enjoyable half hour browsing their selection of Faroese artists and picking up a handful of records to bring back to Seattle. And that, my friends, is how I came to hear SUPERVISJÓN for the first time. Here’s what’s on his Spotify bio:
SUPERVISJÓN is a Faroese experimental electronic project from musician and composer Lasse Jæger. Blending noise, techno, footwork and juke through his punky compositions, Supervisjón explores the hauntedness of everyday life. In the midst of high energy dance music, beats, breaks and eerie melodic fragments, the sampled voice of poet Liv Maria Róadóttir Jæger picks out the traumas and elements of a totally normal life, the bubblewrap of relocation, cardboard boxes, cleaning up, arguments, bank loans, work, being in love – with yourself as well as your computer.
All of which sounds right up my alley.
FAST TRAKK is the kind of album that grabs you by the ears and holds you in place, the sonic glitches and twitches re-wiring the synapses in your brain. Your inability to categorize the sounds you’re hearing forces you to remain in the present and engaged – it’s impossible for it to slip into the background and become sonic wallpaper the way so much music does, particularly given how we consume it today. This isn’t noise, nor is it entirely avantgarde. Instead SUPERVISJÓN blends elements of acid house, glitch, and samples into arrangements that are somehow both simultaneously incongruous and cohesive. Tracks like “AT BYGGJA” flirt with flying off the rails and exploding into a fiery ball, blasting clefs and half notes in every direction, but somehow Jæger holds it all together, imposing his musical will and bringing you back from the edge of a full-brain reboot. I couldn’t tear myself away from FAST TRAKK if I tried.
The vinyl was released in an edition of 100 copies, and it’s still available on SUPERVISJÓN’s Bandcamp page HERE. You can also stream it there, as well as on Spotify and I suspect the other major services. FAST TRAKK won’t appeal to everyone, but I encourage you to give it a try – you may just find what you’ve been looking for, without even knowing you’d been searching for it all this time.