Year: 2024
Label: Zoharum

This is one of those cases, where I’ll readily admit I am completely out of my depth. The label’s promo sheet throws around terms such as minimal, dub, post techno, industrial and experimental when describing this 20 minute tape EP. At least a few of those are entirely outside the bounds of any expertise I can claim.

Which makes for an interesting challenge, wouldn’t you say? I’m not one to throw in the towel easily, so – competence be damned, here we go.

NOR_POL are a Norwegian-Polish duo – see where the name comes from? – and + is apparently their second release after the self-released album – (minus). When it comes to genre pigeonholing, I’ll leave it to Zoharum to do that. As far as I’m concerned, I find it exceedinly difficult to affix genres to this.

Musically, a lot of the time + is understated to say the least – minimal certainly hits home. This means sparsely used layers of sound, each layer being given ample space instead of cramming everything too tightly. This results in an airy, crisp, bright and clear soundscape. Compositionally too this is an excercise in sparseness: true to the industrial tradition, for the most part this is entirely abstract, non-traditional music.

However, not exclusively or entirely: “Old McDonald Had A Farm” (the double quotes are part of the name) has clear musical elements beside layers of industrial droning crackles. A sort of pseudo-melody in a slight muzak style, perhaps: it’s very unintrusive, but at the same time pleasant to listen to.

The EP is a bit all over the place in the sense that each track seems to broach NOR_POL’s musical concept from a different angle. One track might be industrial ambient hums and skipping electric sounds; another with a piercing, shrill ringing as the centerpiece of sound; opener Estetiquetock and aforementioned “Old McDonald Had A Farm” even conventionally musical. This makes not only for tricky reviewing, but also a somewhat unfocused whole. On the other hand, perhaps the very point with an EP release like this is to present a multitude of facets instead of focusing on a coherent EP length whole.

At any rate, NOR_POL’s rather calm and serene approach to experimental electronics has its charm, much due to the bright sound and serene atmosphere. Still, I find it a bit hard to be overly enthused about this EP. Not only is it well outside the kind of stuff I usually like, it’s also a bit tricky to get a firm hold on due to the differing approaches on a release as short as this.

Visit NOR_POL on their Bandcamp