Janne Eraker
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Album blog

Single nr. 5: If You Find Yourself Falling, Dive, with Juliana Venter

5/2/2023

 
Juliana Venter is a voice artist, and has the ability to use whatever material she wants to express whatever she wants. My expectations going into this collaboration with her, was that it would probably be challenging to pick a certain direction, out of all the possibilities I saw coming. Juliana was prepared and came with ideas for some texts to incorporate in our improvisation. We spent some days playing around with material, varying from blues, to poetry, to harsh noise, to rhythms that reminded me of Indian music, and more. On the last day, Audun, the sound engineer, and Sigurd Ytre-Arne, a photographer stepping in for Morten for this one time, came to record and film. Without setting a score, Juliana and I performed 8 improvised pieces. It was an intense experience, exhausting, and very exciting. I noticed that I felt the need to steer the sound with the tension and release of my whole body. I felt the music creeping into my face, making me pull my face in weird ways. I felt more alert and precise in my sound by exaggerating it into my body, and it felt natural to move more than usual.

These days took place in an absolutely beautiful location, namely a former boathouse at the fjord. I got there by taking a ferry, bringing my transport bike including all my tap boards with me, and then biking for half an hour. Along the road there were forests, farms, horses, and even a deer ran alongside me for a little while. The boathouse itself was completely out of wood. The old floor had been taken out, renovated, and put back again. It had a nice bassy sound. The room was completely sound isolated, and the sound of tap dance on that floor, in that room, was so satisfying. The different planks had different tones that I could play with. It was a bit chilly outside, and we had a fire in the fireplace. 
When I listened to the recordings later I was struck by the last one. I loved it! In the studio with Audun and Juliana we decided to keep it like it was, except for one tiny part towards the end. There we cut out a bit, so that the build-down of the song comes in a bit sooner. Other than that, it’s truly improvised.
The title is a quote I heard somewhere, and I find it fitting to our collaboration. It’s about surrendering to the given situation, and going all-in.
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Improvised by Juliana Venter (vocals) and Janne Eraker (tap dance on a wooden floor and metal)
Recorded by Audun Strype at Naustet
Mixed and mastered by Audun Strype
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​About Juliana Venter

​Juliana Venter is a voice artist who was trained as an opera singer from childhood on. She’s known for her heartfelt voice, broad palette and groundbreaking and sometimes extreme expression. The press calls her “the queen of the South African avant-garde”, but she’s at home in opera, contemporary music, folk music, jazz, noise and free improvisation as well. She was the front figure of The Mud Ensemble from Johannesburg, and reached cult status as a pioneer in avant-garde music in South Africa in the 90s. The Mud Ensemble was also known for its work against apartheid. Venter composes for large and original ensembles, while also making music for her own voice and the various collaborations she has. Also, she has a vast experience in cross-genre performance concerts and music theater performances, and she works as a film and theater actress.
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Single nr. 4: Two Miniatures for Tap Dance and Drums, with Michaela Antalová

3/23/2023

 
Michaela Antalová is a drummer with a great sense for detail, timing and subtlety. I knew her from a couple of improvisations, and was very curious how it would be to record music with her. We met at Urban Sound Studios and set up our stuff. This music studio is a typical one, with several booths for recording, a big window between the sound engineer’s room and the studio, and an enormous console for him to work with. Jock was sitting there, hearing the music through the microphones, and talking to us through a speaker in the studio. Since we wanted to record at the same time, together, not separately, Jock did his best to put up walls between me and Michaela, wanting to limit how much our sounds would bleed into each other's microphones. After a short sound check we started recording, without any preparations or agreements. The only thing we decided on beforehand was to aim for relatively short tracks of 5-7 minutes. We then listened to the recordings, and spoke about what we liked about them before improvising some more of the same material, and then choosing the two tracks that we wanted for the album. 

The music I make with Michaela can have a beat and a groove, but more important is the out-of-time placing of sounds that are similar to the other player's instrument. In the end, it’s hard to distinguish our sounds from each other. We both happened to have several toys with us, and a lot of the small sounds are coming from a plastic play drum and a tiny music box. To me, it feels like we’re making microscopic music, hyper aware, with the ears close to the source, full of textures and a feeling of space. In contrast to most of the recordings of this album we listened to the tracks right away, and used what we had heard to make better choices in the next round. We were super sensitive and aware of sound, silence and timing. I felt like I had to be totally ready for anything in my body, but at the same time be very sparse in what I chose to play. There was a suspense and alertness which made me carry myself in a different way. At some point this was released into a rolling groove.

​About Michaela Antalová
​Michaela Antalová is a Slovak drummer living in Oslo, traveling worldwide to perform solo concerts and to play with different projects. Michaela is an active composer and writes for both bands, larger ensembles and percussionists. Her music contains complex textures arranged with different orchestrations that change gradually with nuances. Leading her own ensemble Mikoo and touring with her solo drum performances, Michaela drifts through genres playing a variety of percussion, hand drums and drum kit. She is occupied by exploring improvisation in many settings and using this experience in baroque, world, singer-songwriter and experimental music.

Improvised by Michaela Antalová (drums and more) and Janne Eraker (tap dance on wood, sand, play drum, loose taps)
Recorded and mixed by Jock Loveband at Urban Sound Studios
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Single nr. 3: Cute, with David Arthur Skinner

3/2/2023

 
David Skinner is an amazing musician, playing old jazz music in new ways. While taking a quick break from renovating his home, he sent me a new 5/4 version of the old standard Cute. Originally, Cute is a tune that’s famous for its drum fills, played by Jo Jones in the Count Basie Orchestra, and, notably; with brushes.

Naturally, I spent a lot of time getting comfortable in the 5/4 time signature. David and I decided that I would play the exact melody together with him during the head, but also fill the breaks in between the melody. This turned out to be super challenging for me. The melody has long notes, and requires me to hold my balance, whereas during the breaks I felt obliged to try to produce fast and intricate rhythms. Shifting gears like this was hard, but after a while I developed a set of groove steps and some more “fancy” steps that I thought fit well. I called my neighbor and drummer Ulrik Ibsen Thorsrud, and asked for some feedback.

Tips from Ulrik were:

  • Be more consistent in the swing groove
  • The quarter note is the most important, especially before a syncopation
  • But be careful of too many heavy beats
  • Incorporate some slides and small sounds in the long notes of the melody, to keep the flow
  • Be intentional with the start and end of the slides

Another great insight I got was that I had had the wrong idea about the sound of my stamps. I thought they would resemble a heavy and emphasized note on the drums, but it turns out the stamps are more loud and high pitched than bassy-sounding. Really it is my heel that sounds closer to a bass drum. Adapting all of this feedback caused me to reconstruct how I tap danced the piece completely. I choreographed a whole new part, so that I could do the slides without falling, play the ghost notes and accents, and all the while shift my weight where it needed to be.

Then we went to work at Nynorskens hus, a huge ballroom with a high ceiling, beautiful paintings and chandeliers, where Norwegian folk dancers have their training and events. There were two very different floors there. On stage was a black, raked, non-slip floor, sounding quite muted. The rest of the room had a lacquered parquet floor, quite slippery, with less bass and more high frequencies. On stage my movements were more restricted, because I was more stuck to the floor, and since the sound was more muted I could dance “harder”. There were already a lot of subtle sounds in the floor, for example scraping sounds were soft and nice. On the slippery parquet floor it was easier to tap dance at speed, but the sound was also a bit high-pitched and hard. Nevertheless, when David started playing, adding all of his sounds to the room, the tap dance sound fit better and I liked how it sounded together. Also, we were physically closer, so it was easier to stay connected. Actually, the track we chose for the album was just a joke; we did it at a ridiculous speed, just for fun. Listening back to all the recordings, this one is where I’m the least exact, and many of my sounds disappear in the rush. But we decided that we like it best, because the recording bubbles with energy, interaction and fun.

Performed by David Arthur Skinner (piano) and Janne Eraker (tap dance on a parquet floor)
Composed by Neil Hefti
Recorded by Audun Strype at Nynorskens hus
Mixed by Audun Strype

About David Arthur Skinner
David Arthur Skinner is a jazz pianist, bandleader and composer, who specializes in swing jazz and stride piano. He has released three solo piano albums based on these genres, namely Diagonal Jazz (2013), Cubistic Boogie (2015) and Skinner plays Skinner (2017), in addition to the duo album Look Both Ways (2022) with the drummer Magnus Eide. Skinner  is interested in atypical time signatures, as well as other ways to tease and confuse his audience. He has absolute control over the groove, all the while overlaying it with asymmetrical melodies and polyrhythms. Skinner also performs (usually in a regular four beats to the bar) at his own monthly jazz club “Café Society Oslo”, where the best swing dancers in town gather to dance to the music.

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Single nr. 2: Chair Variations, with One Small Step

2/2/2023

 
One Small Step is a trio that I’ve been working in for a long time. It started with a collaboration with Roger Arntzen, the double bass player, when I still lived in the Netherlands. Separately from this I was interested in the combination of Hardingfele (a traditional Norwegian fiddle with a double set of strings) and tap dance, and had begun playing a little bit with Vegar Vårdal. On a special occasion, when the great tap dancers Heather Cornell and Thomas Wadelton were in Oslo for a concert I organized, we played all together, and have ever since. It’s the only track on the album that’s not performed by a duo. 

We always improvise, and more or less anything is possible. When we practice, we often record ourselves and listen back together. This gives me a better overview over what actually happened, which choices I made and why, and it teaches me something about my habits and prejudices. For example, I’ll notice that it benefits the music if I do less, or if I keep going with something that I might think is not entertaining enough while I do it. Or it’ll make me listen even more closely to the sounds we are all actually making. When we perform, we always take in account the room, the floor, the audience and the situation. This inspires our performance. Last year we recorded an album, Gol Variations, in Gol Stave Church, where the wooden floor is very, very old and has great tonality and textures. It was tempting to go back there for this recording, but it is more in the spirit of this trio to search for new challenges. That’s why I loved the idea of recording at Emanuel Vigeland Museum, a stone mausoleum with a reverb of about 15 seconds. 

It felt like painting with aquarelle and too much water as opposed to crayons. I felt like I could hear how the sound traveled away from us, and how it came back. At some point Vegar sang one note and then another, and they mixed. My own sound seemed to be different where I heard it as opposed to from where someone else heard it. When you do something, it’s going to ring out for a long time. You can’t hide anything, and it’s like it forces you to commit even more to your choices. Everything bleeds into each other, unless you wait for 15 seconds for the reverb to be done. This creates a whole new timing between us when we improvise. It magnifies the moment of the (re-)action, overlap, interaction, start and finish. We tended to take more turns, instead of playing all three. We stayed close to each other, and surprisingly enough it was possible to play in time / groove together. Whenever I moved further away it was so much harder to connect the timing. 

Regular tap shoes with metal or wooden taps on a marble floor created a hard, high sound, which seemed to shoot out in space much faster than I was used to. Soft shoes sounded more like normal shoes in a museum or something. I tested a pair of shoes that had metal taps on the heels but none under the toes, thinking that that would give me both options at once. But that didn’t work. 

We recorded several improvised tracks, and I’m sure some of the other recordings will come out in some format some day. The recording has not been edited at all. The one I chose for this album is the one where we played the most recklessly, including the chairs of the room in our music. When these wooden chairs are moved around on that marble floor they create something that sounds like a trumpet sound. Of course, the title Chair Variations is a pointer to our first album Gol Variations.

There was a distinct smell, from the mural paintings that cover the walls from top to bottom. There was a marble stone floor, with some dirt and sand. This produced an extremely harsh and unpredictable sound, which totally interrupted and distracted my dancing. I brought a swiffer and made sure there was no grain of sand left on the marble floor. 

We were there for two days. Especially after the first day I felt so weird when I went home on my bike. It was almost like being carsick. It was so intense to play in that room, almost like we were in some kind of audible illusion.


Improvised by One Small Step: Roger Arntzen (double bass), Vegar Vårdal (fiddle, voice, chair) and Janne Eraker (tap dance with soft shoes, loose taps, chair, water container, metal)
Recorded by Audun Strype at the Emanuel Vigeland Museum
Mixed by Audun Strype
Video by Morten Minothi Kristiansen
​Cover art by Daan Botlek​
About One Small Step, the trio of Roger Arntzen, Vegar Vårdal and Janne Eraker
This trio has been working with tap dance as percussion in music for several years, and released its first album Gol Variations on Clean Feed Records in 2022. With a wide-ranging background, One Small Step plays with minimal music, Norwegian folk music, jazz, and, of course, all kinds of rhythms. They challenge each other in their interaction, and launch into musical escapades that consist of textures, tonalities, imaginative ideas and exhaustive stretches. Roger Arntzen is a double bass player from In the Country, Trail of Souls, Ballrogg and Chrome Hill. Fiddler and folk dancer Vegar Vårdal has roots deep in the Gudbrandsdal, but travels around the world with his work and has even played with Camille Norment Trio at the Venice Biennale!
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Single nr. 1: Chulas Fronteras, with Knut Reiersrud

1/3/2023

 
Since I saw Knut Reiersrud performing on national TV in the 90’s, I’ve been a fan. I love the way he plays the blues, and how he blends it with other folk music genres. Needless to say, I’m totally honoured that he said yes to record a tune with me for this album. Knut is a master, and I just tried to catch up and do my best next to him. 

We met about a year in advance to practice, and he suggested this 5/4 groove. Knut used his pedals and put a couple of layers on top of it, while I was improvising some swing grooves. When we met again a week before recording we practiced this, and talked about how we would record it. His approach was that we would record the bassline first, then record other parts that would be added on top. This was a completely new way to make a tune for me, and it took me a little while to understand exactly what he meant.

I took the practice recording with me in my studio and searched for ways to play the 5/4 groove in a complementing way. My focus was mainly to get a good flow and a nice swing feel in the dancing. On days where I was more relaxed I managed this better, and on days where I was stressed or impatient it was harder to sit in the relaxed groove. I did not at all focus on any kind of soloing. This song seemed like a steady ride to me, going in on and on. On the day of recording I was constantly in a weird state of being a little bit starstruck, enjoying the music a lot, trying to stay sharp and focused in what I was doing, while also wondering what we were actually doing. Knut is a seasoned pro, of course, and sort of just directed me (and Audun) through it. He seemed to have a pretty good idea of where this song was heading. 

First he recorded the bassline for about 2 minutes. He did this while hearing a click on his headset, to make sure that it would be easy to combine, cut and paste later. Then he added a second layer to the bassline. Audun quadrupled the length of this so that we had 8 minutes, and I was asked to do whatever I wanted with this playing in my ear. So, there I was, tap dancing for two rounds of 8 minutes in this big church, while Knut, Audun and Morten were waiting and listening. We concluded that there were parts in there that we could use for the tune. Then we recorded some shorter parts, again with a click. Knut surprisingly brought out a fiddle, and made a beautiful part for the end. I tried to figure out how I could contribute in the best way, and tested out a sequence on the church floor, which I thought was way too brutal-sounding. After hearing the bits we had made again I realized that what I really wanted to hear was the sound of bare feet on the sand. All this time Knut was super supportive, and I felt that I could trust his opinion. 

We met again in Audun’s studio some time later, and there we cut and pasted the bits together. Knut suggested the title Chulas Fronteras, which means Beautiful Borders.

Performed by Knut Reiersrud (guitar, fiddle) and
​Janne Eraker (tap dance with regular tap shoes, tap shoes with wooden taps and with bare feet on sand)

Composed by Knut Reiersrud and Janne Eraker
Recorded by Audun Strype at Kulturkirken Jakob
Mixed by Audun Strype, Janne Eraker and Knut Reiersrud
Video by Morten Minothi Kristiansen
​Cover art by Daan Botlek​
About Knut Reiersrud
Knut Reiersrud is a Norwegian blues guitarist. His work also incorporates elements of Norwegian traditional music and African music. Reiersrud has recorded and played with David Lindley, the Blind Boys Of Alabama, Rickie Lee Jones, Nina Hagen and Norwegian church organist Iver Kleive. In over 40 years he has played his guitars on countless stages and mesmerized the audience all around the world. King Harald can be quoted; he had never seen anyone disappear into his instrument like Reiersrud. President Tabu Mbeki, at the very same concert, even offered him a South African passport, just to get one more song!
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Sound statement

11/23/2022

 
​In the week of mixing and mastering at Strype Audio I got so used to listening to the music on a great sound system that I started to assume that this was normal. But then, when I came home and played the same tracks on my Harman Kardon bluetooth speaker I was shocked how different the music sounded. It seemed like half the tap sounds were not coming through at all, and the ones that were had much less texture, tonality and clarity than I had gotten used to. Similarly, some of the musicians in the project had heard the recorded music on their phone speakers or on other equipment and were positively surprised how much better it sounded in the studio when we heard it over Strypes speakers. 

Of course we know that there are good and bad quality sound systems. But when we listen to music we already know, and instruments we already know, we can sort of filter the bad sound and know what it really sounds like, approximately. But the tap sound is not a sound that most people know as anything more than click clacks and noise. So, when they listen to a recording with tap and guitar on a bad speaker, and the tap sound is bad, they don’t even know that that is the case. To paraphrase David Lynch: “People watch a movie on their phone and think they have experienced the film, but sadly that’s not the case at all!”

Now this project is all about making the effort, spending much time and money, and working with experts, to make recordings that do the tap sound justice. All aspects are considered and used to the maximum potential: What does the tap dance sound contribute in each specific collaboration and what does that mean for my tap dance vocabulary, musical role and rhythmical responsibility, how do we use the specific location and sound of the room as well as possible, which microphones, boards, shoes work best, and then how is it mixed and mastered in the studio? 
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Each recording session was also filmed, and the documentary videos will be available after the vinyl is released. In the meantime very short teaser videos will hopefully make people want to go in and listen to the digital singles that are released online beforehand. It’s a very conscious decision to not release the videos of the recordings at the same time as the singles, because I want people to listen to the music before they see it. All of this to make it possible to really hear the tap dance, to perceive it as a part of the complete music. 

So, please, let yourself experience the music, in all its range and complexity, by listening to it on a better sound system or headphones!​
  • JANNE
  • ABOUT
  • WORK
  • Movements for Listening
  • ALBUM BLOG
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