DECADE.

30th october to 1st november Trine and me celebrated our 10th anniversary as colleagues and partners with the DECADE exhibition. I haven't had the time to post anything about it until now, so I'm starting with the press letter.

"DECADE": TEN YEARS OF DARKLY RADIANT CHAOS

"Black metal album covers. Ballet, circus and ladies' fashion. Golden diamonds shimmer when Oslo designers Trine and Kim celebrate their first decade.

If it is dark and elegant, you may safely assume that Trine and Kime designed it: record covers, posters and flyers for clients so diverse as Ulver, Mayhem, Darkthrone, Pain Solution and the Norwegian Opera. For ten years Trine and Kim have provided the art world with darkly radiant layouts from their design studio in Oslo East.

One can sum up the work of Trine and Kim in one word: craftsmanship. Be it logos, illustration or photography, the master hand is just as steady. With Norwegian Black Metal as their aesthetic point of departure, Trine and Kim have drawn, etched, painted and engraved their way across multiple genres and art forms. The golden diamond adorning the front page of the literary review Vagant is emblematic in this respect: its simple lines spark the desire of the eye.

After ten years in the business the designers are still hungry: "Decade" is celebrated with the release of two records and a book! There will be a retrospective featuring album covers from Trine and Kim's career, with limited edition prints available for purchase. Works from Trine and Kim's art projects "Psykosedyr"("psychothic plush animals", roughly) and "Unreality" will also be screened.

"Decade" takes place from October 30th to November 1st 2009 at the Podium cultural centre in Oslo (local address: Hausmans gate 34, ten minutes' walking distance from the Oslo S train station). The vernissage on Friday 30th is a closed event and thus requires preregistration."

Cornelius Jakhelln

"Enkelt og greit: Trine og Kim er de flinkeste designerene jeg kjenner. Jeg har jobbet med dem i noe sånt som ti år, siden de snubla nyforelsket ut fra et eller annet grafisk institutt, og jeg tipper det blir et decade til. Jeg liker Trine og Kim som mennesker, de er bra folk, og de har en særlig god intuisjon når det gjelder å gi form (gjerne vektorisert) til mine høytflyvende innskytelser. Out of the blue. In the red. Det er bærre lækkert."

Kristoffer Rygg, ULVER and Jester Records

"It was great to collaborate with Trine and Kim. We gave them a pretty challenging task for the last Mayhem record called "Ordo Ad Chao". When we met the first time to talk about the record I could not tell them really how to manifest "Order to the Chaos" in the artwork. But they just come out with a great idea of symbolism which worked very well; the whole band was very happy and impressed how they managed to combine minimalism and complexity, rustiness and purity, anti-masonic order and alienation... The Great Oppositions. It become a success and we could use some elements of the artwork even for the live performances later. Thank you guys and hails from Mayhem!"

Attila Csihar, Mayhem

"We met Trine and Kim quite late in our motley career - our first cooperation was Trinacria's debut release "Travel Now Journey Infinitely". On my journey towards this designer duo I had an epiphany when I realised how many of their album designs had impressed me without really noticing who stood behind them.
It is herein their unabashed strenght lies: they dive into the material they work with and form something new together with, and beyond the music. This talent is oddly enough unique - as many designers these days seem to work with the purpose of branding their own style on various different artists. It is obvious which design school of thought I lean towards. The work they did for Trinacria was a solid confirmation, and shortly after we teamed up again to collaborate on Enslaved's "Vertebrae". If we get to have it our way this is only the beginning..."

Ivar S. Peersen, Enslaved and Trinacria

Interview

In a recent interview at avantgarde-metal.com regarding Trine + Kim Design Studios Decade exhibition that opens October 30, I was asked a few questions regarding Unreality.

Read it here.

DENMARK

Leaving Oslo.

Black sea.

Spider monkey.

Goat.

Kim (of :Of the wand and the moon:) and Kim (me) talking about C93 and actively doing something about our soberness.

ORGAN:

Go to Duplicate Records to order an untitled 7" from Organ:, a brilliant and peculiar band. A few years ago I made the artwork for their still unreleased full length debut. This album will be a gem and it will be such a pity if it never gets released. Order their 7" and let them know there are people out there waiting for them to finish it.

UNREALITY.

My name is Kim Sølve. I was born in 1978 and live in Oslo, Norway.

The relentless rain this summer has given me time to catch up on some things I should have done a long time ago. Most importantly establishing this blog. It's main purpose is to be a source of information about the various projects I'm involved in, especially Swarms and K100, which together with my visual artworks make up Unreality. I also plan to use it to shed some "unlight" on my other outlets of inner turmoil, such as M, Delirium Bound, Blitzkrieg Baby, Pronounced "sex" and my daytime occupation as art director at Trine + Kim Design Studio.

I've been making music since I was 14. I had been escaping dysfunctionality by immersing myself in music since kindergarten, but it was in the throws of my teenage love affair with Black Metal that I began writing music in 1992/93. However, I soon strayed off the Black Metal path when I started to feel that norms and rules were increasingly being worshiped at the cost of individualism, musical open-mindedness and sincerity. Since then I have been making music relentlessly, always working but never sharing anything outside a small circle of close friends.

In late 2007 I fell ill, and spent several months in a state of confusion and depression, struggling with panic disorders. When things were at their darkest and just seemed to keep getting darker, I realized that my only way out of the pit I seemed to be digging for myself was to start completing and releasing my personal work, as it seemed to be the only way I could feel complete, the only way to achieve a necessary sense of closure.

I began releasing my music last summer, in 2008, with Swarms' "The silver hour" (on Vendlus) in July and Pronounced "sex" "XXX" (on Interregnum) in August.

Pronounced "sex" is my cooperation with Zweizz (Fleurety, Umoral, MAZ, ex-DHG). The track "Earthquake from behind" was used in Bruce LaBruce's erotic zombie flick "OTTO; or, up with dead people". "XXX" can be ordered from Interregnum, but there are not many copies left so be quick if you want one.

Here's a selection of what some other people have said about "XXX":

"The seven tracks of this album are vast spaces with black corridors, synth ambient washes and unstable and disquieting atmospheres." Source unknown.

"(...) the two core members of Pronounced Sex have recorded, manipulated and restructured a wonderful collection of single- or maximum double-layer noise drones, that refresh the mind with the sort of ambience found in “Eraserhead” or steel factories late at night when it has closed down for the day." Monochrom

"En af mine kammerater fortalte mig engang om en film, som han kun havde set halvdelen af, fordi den var for uhyggelig. Den foregår nede i en kæmpe grotte, hvor en gruppe naive piger går nervøse rundt, fordi de ikke kan finde ud igen. Selvom man ikke ser monsteret, ved man, at det er det, der dræber pigerne en for en. Sådan lyder XXX. Uhyggeligt." Undertoner.dk

"If either William Burroughs or HP Lovecraft hadn’t turned their hands to the written word and had taken up music instead, this is how their strange missives from inhuman dimensions most probably would have sounded. (...) Make no mistake, this is a deeply disturbing and terrifying album, one which plumbs Stygian depths that very few other dark ambient albums get down to." Heathen Harvest

"Musikken er kraftfull og kresen; det er ingen bruk av lettvint sjokktaktikk eller utbrukte virkemidler. Dessuten låter det fortreffelig - denne må spilles høyt." Lyd fra baksiden

"That part of the album has been used as the soundtrack for underground zombie-flicks makes sense, since the atmospheres invites the listener into soundscapes of creepy darkness." Earlabs

Swarms' first album, "The silver hour" was classified by some as dark ambient. Here's some review quotes.

" (...) And I think that is where this project derives its power from, a power to both scare and unsettle. Certainly there’s a slow but icy-cold undercurrent of malice rippling through the whole, like some underground stream bubbling gently but freezingly through the hidden places of this world." Heathen Harvest

"The expression is extremely dark turning associations towards classics such as Lustmord's "The place where the black stars hang" (Soleilmoon, 1994) and Inade's "Aldebaran" (Cold Spring, 1996)." Earlabs

Didrik Söderlind did an interview with me for Knokkelklang about "The silver hour", and I was also interviewed by Olivier Cote here. "The silver hour" can be ordered from Vendlus (US), Malignant Records (US), Nuit Et Brouillard (FR) or Cyclic Law (CAN).

There's a lot more in the pipeline; years' worth of intense nighttime production. First and foremost there's my solo venture K100, I'll be releasing the debut "The feral silence" on a new, exciting Canadian label this year. This is the sister album to Swarms' "The silver hour".

Following that will be the calmer and more subtle K100 albums "Vault of apparitions" and "Sea mirror", both albums are in the final stages of mixing after being in the making for 7 years. They're both being mixed by my close associate Petter Berntsen. Neither of these two releases have any labels or dates tied to them yet. I am very much open to hearing from any parties that might be interested in working with K100/Unreality.

Then there's a new album coming from Swarms — my cooperation with Bjeima (Yurei, The Ghost Conspiracy, M, Delirium Bound, Konstriktor, ex-Rex), Petter Berntsen (M, Virus, Audiopain, Denture) and Qeriq (—). We have been composing music for modern ballet performances for some time now. This album, still untitled, is partly based on commissioned work from the last 5 years. If you have "The Silver Hour" the upcoming material will be both a surprise and a natural continuation. Perpetual mutation.

Outside the circle of Unreality things are also on the move:

My Blitzkrieg Baby has grown into such a monster since its birth in 2001 and has now agreed with prime industrial/whatnot label Neuropa (Toroidh, Der Feuerkreiner, etc.) to release "Misantropicana", the first in a series of albums of absolute negativity and disbelief in mankind. Wrapping up a Blitzkrieg Baby album is not unlike how I picture it would feel to have a cancer tumor removed. If the tumor had the shape of a pig. Release date is not set.

This year M will also finish recording our debut "M plays tuxedo classics", 17 years after the band was founded. It's been a long time coming. The line-up consists of Bjeima, Petter Berntsen, Member 01 (The Konsortium, ex-Rex) and me. It might be worth the wait.

Then there's Delirium Bound. The god-faced dogs have been locked up in the basement for too long and are foaming at the mouth. Thrash metal? Perhaps. We will release our debut "Delirium, dissonance and death" as soon as recording is finished. Only vocals left now. We are thankful to all the labels that have shown interest in Delirium Bound in the last 12 months, but we have decided to do things a bit differently on this one. More to be revealed later.