Dokkemand is the alter ego of Marius Egenes from Oslo, Norway. His bio doesn’t reveal much, other than the fact that his full-length debut is loosely titled after a Norwegian children’s game popular in the 50’s. Something to do with plastic rings. So there is a sense of play at work here -- it’s not an all-out assault on your senses, or a violent industrial mash-up of machine-versus-man. Instead, we’re led through a sampling of “disheveled music boxes”, “warped ambience” and “arcade-tronic attacks”. The last one I get, as Egenes is playing with soundscapes for the Radio Shack sect, or those who might wonder what a conversation between Star Wars droids might sound like.

It’s funny to see Dokkemand’s myspace page list his music as electronica, indie and “other”. That’s for sure. It seems as though the label has done its best to come up with some clever catchphrases to describe the indescribable. As I was listening I tried to come up with my own. The best I could do was “atonal pop-static”. Digital crickets. Distress signals from my fax machine. Not to belittle this type of music - but my ears were constantly fighting for the recognizable, for some semblance of order, some recurring motif. But I guess that’s the whole point. Fighting all those things and exploring new sound collages and “rhythmic landscapes.”

There are some interesting moments that border on the cinematic (the breakdown section in “Undulat) and those that sparked my affinity for Bjork (“Lupe”), but I wonder how many of those were inspired, or just his tongue-in-cheek way of being purposely weird.

It’s ironic to hear a human breath sampled at the end of “Kanaria”… because this music seems to be all about removing the human element. It’s almost unsettling. There are moments of respite, with various (female) guest vocalists, but they can’t seem to break free from the overwhelming landfill of bips and bleeps.

The album closes on a somber note with the desolate “Slapp”. A comment on man’s loneliness in the wake of technology? Maybe. Or just those depressing winters in Norway.



Track Listing:

Kanaria
Lapp
Undulat
Knapp
Eike
Klokka
Lupe
Hest
Stempel
Lumpa
Telefom
Slapp