A What from Norway?

Here's a fun game to play with experimental musicians: degrees of separation from John Zorn.  Today's contestant is Andrej Nebb.  Let's see, Nebb's off/on collaborative partner in Holy Toy was Lars Pedersen, whose brainchild When has releases on Chris Cutler's ReR label.  Cutler's first band was Henry Cow, which also included Fred Frith, who was in Naked City with John Zorn.  Four degrees, not bad I guess.

Andrej Nebb hooked up with Pedersen for the electronic-krautty Holy Toy only after having fronted post-punkier De Press; Nebb established himself as a fixture in Oslo's music scene in the early 80s.  The Block To Block album in particular is solid.  Get a taste with On Top (MP3).  To be honest, sometimes Nebb's vocals can be pretty painful - although sometimes his missed notes and broken English can also be very charming.

Holy Toy, like De Press, put out a lot of records of varying quality, some of it very good.  For my money, their best material is the stuff written only by Nebb and Pedersen without any others to clog the creative process.  Some nice person posted a very good music video of the power duo performing in Holy Toy's prime, around '85.  Nebb's keyboards are too low in the mix, but thankfully Pedersen makes up for it with awesome drumming reminiscent of Lark's Tongue era King Crimson.

 

Nebb must be a pretty big egotist...late in the video, you can see that his name is embroidered on the back of his jacket.

(Five more mp3s follow...)

I've got this recording here called "Mechanical Grave".  Not sure who plays on it other than Nebb and Pedersen and I'm not sure exactly when or how this was released.  From the little info I've been able to garner, I belive this to be an early incarnation of Holy Toy, in effect a demo tape (if anybody has more info, speak up!).  The music itself sounds more like De Press than later Holy Toy - two good pop writers taking a first stab at experimentalism, with a foot in each world.  A varied release evoking early Devo and Kraftwerk, with many nice avant-noise, techno and no-wave moments.

Da Da | Do Wroga | Warszawa | Marmur | Disturbens

After a few years with Holy Toy, Nebb returned to De Press and continues to release records with that band.  I, er, wouldn't recommend checking out this stuff.  Lars Pedersen, however, hasn't fallen off yet and has made much excellent music under the When moniker.  For a few years now, When has been getting attention at WFMU - a nice recent music video is up on YouTube.  This new stuff is upbeat, quirky, sugary, sample-laden pop and contrasts with the darker, abstractier plunderphony of early When.  The Writercakebox retrospective gives a good cross section of When's history to the new listener.

Comments

[Brandon]

hmm, I actually have Holy Toy records...the first 4 anyway. I has no Idea they had more. I had them pegged as "dark wave" or some silliness and slung them in back of the pile. Maybe I ought to drag em' out now that I know they are experimental kraut wave, or whatever. I remember not getting Panzer and Rabbit when I first bought it 15 years ago. Maybe I would finally understand....

[Gyron V]

I have at least 12 Holy Toy releases on vinyl, as well as the alternate mix of "Panzer" on CD, and I think that's pretty close to a complete discography, although there's probably some compilation appearences out there too. [I took a look at the discog linked to above and find out that it actually is complete; the entry "Document" is a Best Of album]. I also have the VHS "X" by Oddvar Einarson, that has soundtrack and cameos by Holy Toy; Jørn Christensen, guitarist of DePress has the lead role in the film by the way!

It never occured to me to look for Holy Toy on YouTube, and I'm pretty impressed to know that it's there! I'll start looking more closely for obscure stuff there too then...

I've had the pleasure of partying with Andrej and Lars, and they really know how to do it ;-) I'm an artist (as is Nebb) and when I went home to bed in the morning after a night of drinking he kissed my forehead and said: "Remember, my friend, art is not above you, art is below you!" Haha, good advice I guess...

Cheers,

TTTTT

[Gyron V]

Damn! I just wrote a lengthy comment, but it didn't pop up on the page :-(

I have the complete Holy Toy discography (except the "Document" compilation), even "Fjøse", the alternate mix of "Panzer" and the "X" VHS; they're probably my favourite band. I've never heard these versions that you have though, so your Demo theory sounds plausible. I actually think "Mechanical Grave" was the name of the band before they became Holy Toy.

I can not enlighten you on wether he's an egotist or not, but I can explain why his jacket has NEBB on the back... It's in principle a readymade; NEBB is a mechanical firm in Norway, I think, they make parts for trains and stuff like that. Andrej's real last name is Dziubek, which possibly means "beak" in Polish, which is "nebb" in Norwegian, or so he said in an interview.

I had the pleasure of partying with Nebb and Pedersen a while back, and I can tell you for shure that they know how to do it! I am an artist (as is Nebb) and when I went home in the morning after a long night of drinking, Andrej kissed my forehead and said "Remember, my friend, art is not above you, art is below you!" I found that rather entertaining...

Nice blogg! Cheers,

TTTTT

[Gyron V]

Haha, so both the comments showed up after a delay, and now I look like a dork for posting the same story twice... oh well, I've been through worse...

I might as well add a few more stories while I'm at it:

-These guys did an album of covers of Bruce Haack songs, which is a nice thing to do, but they sadly didn't come close to the originals :-( The name of the album is "Electric Evil" by Nebb Blagism, and I think it has got version of all the songs from Haack's "Electric Lucifer".

-Andrej lost a couple of fingers on his left hand in some mysterious accident (it's a different story each time he tells it), but I was not able to tell from this video wether it was before or after he lost them. He continued to play great bass even after the accident though.

-Haha, if you are annoyed by Nebb's broken English, you can console yourself with the fact that his Norwegian is just as dubious... I wonder how his Polish is then ;-)

-The album release called "Fjøse" is actually a sawblade in a LP-sleeve, together with a 33rpm 7" (that often gets pretty fucked up from spending time with the sawblade, as anyone who has looked at second hand copies can confess to).

-The two first DePress albums, as well as the first Holy Toy 12", was produced by John Leckie, who among others has produced Buzzcocks, Magazine, The Fall, New Order and Pink Floyd (what a strange mixture of bands!); he of course did more, take a look at wikipedia...

La dee da... That's some stuff from the top of my head, I hope I haven't bored you guys...

Pi Ho!

TTTTT

[-sto]

for the dedicated holy toy / de press / a. nebb fan it might be worth noting that a.nebb made two cds where he sings in norwegian ("natural" and "kvite fuglar" [= white birds]). no idea if they are accessible outside norway. well - nowadays they are quite inaccessible even inside norway :-)

by the way, the "fjøse" release came with a sort of grinding disc with a sandpaper-like surface and not a sawblade - well, at least my copy did. not that sandpaper is any better for the vinyl :-)

[Gyron V]

I thought that was the sort of sawblade that they use to cut metal? Andrej still uses a smaler version of such a saw at his concerts, cutting into oil drums and shit. In Norwegian we call it a "smergel-skive" / "smergel-sag", but I have no idea what it's called in English, saw blade was sort of the closest I could come up with... Not good for the 7" at all... TTTTT