In the first half of the 70's the British pianist Joyce Hatto (5 September 1928 – 29 June 2006) carried out a series of recitals featuring works by Franz Liszt, but after some quite unfavourable reviews of her performances she retired from the stage. Her performance at Wigmore Hall on July 7th 1976 was to be her final public appearance. After a somewhat promising beginning of her career back in the 50's, Hatto now disappeared from the spotlight and few would at this point expect that the aging pianist would more than 20 years later create a major stir in the world of classical music.

In the early years of the new millennium the pianist suddenly unleashed more than 100 CDs of her recordings of classical pieces onto the unprepared music world. The discs were released with the help of her husband William Barrington-Coupe, who was running a small record company. On these albums, which supposedly contained recordings from all the years of her public exile, Hatto was interpreting a vast array of the most important classical piano pieces, and the records were met with very positive reviews. The aging pianist, whom few had heard anything about for the last 25 years, became a phenomenon in the world of classical music, and there was almost no end to the appraisal of her skilled and sensitive renditions. It was indeed a triumphant comeback. Or so it seemed.

CD-booklet with longer text (PDF)

Listen to mp3 samples below:

Edwin Howard Armstrong (December 18, 1890 – January 31, 1954) was an American electrical engineer and inventor. Among other things, Armstrong invented the modern wide band FM (frequency modulation) radio, an invention that would eventually lead to his death. His lifelong struggle for the rights for his inventions is a prime example of how the copyright and patent laws have never functioned to protect artists and inventors, but have instead always been a tool with which the dominant businesses can maintain the status quo. His legal battle with RCA (Radio Corporation of America), whom not only made it almost impossible for Armstrong to develop his invention by intense lobbying against the technique, but finally plainly stole it from him, lasted for years and in the end it left him financially broken and mentally exhausted. On the last day of January 1954 he wrote a letter to his wife, whom he had violently split up with some time before, put on an overcoat, hat, scarf and gloves, and transmitted himself out through the window of his 13th floor apartment, moving through the air one final time, towards his death below.

The standard before Armstrong's invention was AM (amplitude modulation), in which the strength of a radio signal is proportional to the strength of the audio signal that is being transmitted. Unfortunately, the natural world is full of similarly modulated signals which interfere with the reception and are heard as static. For example, AM transmissions are very sensitive to bad weather. In FM, instead of its amplitude the frequency of the main signal is varied. Since few natural sources vary in the same way as an FM signal, there is much less interference. When Armstrong demonstrated his invention the audience was baffled and amazed. Never before had music been broadcast with such fidelity and clarity. A journalist present at the occasion reported that "it was as if the orchestra was performing in the room".

Armstrong received a patent for his invention in 1933. RCA had by that point in time made huge investments in the AM technology and they basically had a monopoly on radio transmissions in the US. All of their transmitters and all of the millions of radios that they had sold used AM technology, so they set out to prevent Armstrong from developing his superior technique.
RCA began to lobby for FCC (Federal Communications Commission) regulations that would prevent FM radios from becoming dominant. Consequentially FM-broadcasts was moved to the periphery of the transmission spectrum at 88-108 MHz, and the FCC also voted to severely limit FM's broadcasting power, and disallow radio relays from central stations to mountaintop antennas. This made it impossible to transmit further than locally unless sending the material over AT&T's coax cables at intentionally high rates. The shift also meant that all the equipment Armstrong and fellow enthusiasts had constructed for FM transmissions was rendered useless. Both these actions were quite obviously an economical attack against Armstrong. When weakened by them he would be less able to defend his patents in court.

"Looking for Armstrong" is a scan through unused FM frequencies recorded on the 31st January 2012, exactly 58 years after Edwin Howard Armstrong threw himself out of his window, making himself airborne, if only for a moment, before his brutal end. The piece is often shown as a diptych together with As Above, So Below.

Manipulated tape hiss.

1. Jag kan höra vad du tänker (I Can Hear What you Think) (45:00 min)

Tape his recorded from the actual cassette, amplified and then recorded back to the cassette. Side B contains non manipulated tape hiss.

1. Kassettbrus - förstärkt version (Tape Hiss - amplified version) (45:00 min)
2. Kassettbrus -originalversionen (Tape Hiss - original version) (45:00 min)

070-5432156
Recorded in 2003 and released in 2004. 10 numbered copies, CD-r

In dystopian novels the state is most often surveilling its citizens with different kinds of gadgets and techniques, but in reality we are happy to do the groundwork ourselves. We carry our cell phones around with us, constantly transmitting a plethora of private information for anybody to intercept.

During 2003 I kept getting pocket calls from an unknown man. He was in this way successfully bugging himself, transmitting sounds from his pocket to me and my recording device. The sound piece 070-5432156 consists of two of these transmissions.

This record is based on sound recordings made on site in Rydöbruk and Hyltebruk. Some of the sounds are unaltered while others have been subjected to hard processing. The source is however always the same. It all begins with the river. Just like how the industrial communities once arose along the river, this composition is built around the ripple and roar of the river Nissan. A pulse consisting of sounds captured at the Stora Enso paper-mill slowly grows strong and continues to run alongside the recordings of the river. The two sounds are sometimes confusingly similar, sometimes in direct opposition, but always dependant of each other. When the paper industry developed it was totally dependent of the river in the same way, and now the communities are dependent of the industries. When the production moved from Rydöbruk to Hyltebruk it was more or less a death sentence to the former community.

An edition of 50 signed copies was made for the exhibition "(för-)brukad ort – global ort?" at Konstnärsbyns galleri, Rydöbruk, Sweden, 2002.

1. Bruksort (25:24 min) 

Improvised performance at legendary, now defunct, rock club Gottwalds in Ängelholm, Sweden, featuring homemade funnel gramophone, bongo drums, keyboards, guitar, saw, recorder, cello and vocals. The excellent opening act Mashbrick and the Horns of Plenty reluctantly joined the band on stage for a common encore, although they probably would prefer to forget the evening ...

1. Tuning In (08:47 min)
2. We Are the Rocket Queen (06:57 min)
3. I Love Frank Sinatra (05:46 min)
4. Blue Bird (10:58 min)
5. Where Is He Going? (05:37 min)
6. Autobahn Forever and Ever (09:56 min)
7. Beautiful Happy (11:48 min)
8. Thank you (Featuring Mashbrick and the Horns of Plenty) (09:09 min)