Humcrush are Thomas Strønen and Ståle Storløkken. It has taken me a couple of minutes to write this sentence. Diacritics?? abound on these names, but while the spelling remains awkward to non-Scandinavian (or at least non-Norwegian) keypads, the musicians themselves are far from obscure, at least within the free-jazz / improv / near-noise realm that Norway’s Rune Grammofon label usually caters for. While keyboarder Storløkken is a founding member of Supersilent, Strønen has earned himself quasi-legendary status as one of the most interesting drummers going. “Rest At Worlds End”, the duo’s third album, is supposedly a live album, but its carefully arranged, meticulously executed music doesn’t give that away, and, thankfully, another stock feature of improv live recordings, the sobering applause of what usually sounds like ten people in the audience, is also absent.

Anyway, “Rest At Worlds End” puts almost all of the improv/noise releases I’ve heard this year to shame. Yes, the doodling and the boring lounge bits are here, too, but the backbone of the album is built of fantastic rhythms in which Strønen’s unbelievably rich and textured percussion and Storløkken’s pulsing synth bass interact to great effect. Starting off as a hiccup of sorts, “Stream”, the album opener, has you check the connections of your audio setup before things are running more smoothly with Storløkken getting more and more audacious – throughout the last minute or so, this track is closer to a ripping T.Raumschmiere bass line than anything else. Other tracks, like “Edingruv”, “Steam” and the final track “Hit” are beat-driven, and I like them the better for it. Strønen’s drum work here must be some of his finest yet: The variety of percussive elements used simultaneously suggests there’s an octopus at work, but how the duo manages to blend their musicianship into such utterly organic tracks may be their real achievement.

As mentioned already, there are other tracks that are less urgent, and less to the point. Some of them are atmospheric, but others don’t do much for me – other than create tension that is sure to be released sooner rather than later. Maybe that’s where the live factor comes in.

The vinyl version of this album comes with an extra 2lp (!??) with seven bonus tracks. As these haven’t been included in the promo version I cannot comment on these but they should be well worth tracking down. 7/10 -- Jan-Arne Sohns (16 June, 2009)