Deathprod - Biography
Deathprod is the moniker Norwegian musician Helge Sten uses to release his solo ambient work. Sten is a crucial member of the Norwegian art music scene, playing in innovative groups like Motorpsycho and Supersilent, as well as producing the work of many others. The Deathprod aesthetic melds elements of electronic ambient music, industrial, avant-rock, noise, and post-classical composition for an emotive, often harrowing, and always unique sound. While his records are often classified as “dark ambient,” Sten’s music moves far beyond any easy genre tags.
Helge Sten was born on January 26th, 1971 in the town of Roros, Norway. He has been creating music as Deathprod since 1991 and has been active with the heavy psych-rock band Motorpsycho since the early 90s as well as an integral member of minimalist free-jazz group Supersilent since 1997. Since the foundation of the Rune Grammofon label in 1998, Sten has worked as a producer on many of the imprint’s best releases.
The first official Deathprod release came with Treetop Drive 1-3, Towboat issued in 1994 via the Metal Art Disco label. The three movements of “Treetop Drive” swell and recede with an organic nature that will come to define Deathprod’s music over the years. Heavily processed stringed instruments, mainly violin, rise and fade, massing up into an ever shifting swarm of dark tone clouds before rising full force into a deafening wall of sound. “Towboat” arrives more calmly, a claustrophobic, endless circle of submerged feedback that seems to fold in on itself.
1996 brought the second Deathprod full-length. Imaginary Songs From Tristan Da Cunha is comprised of four short tracks and one thirty-plus minute epic. The first four pieces were made with an interesting process. Sten recorded and manipulated violin sounds, then had the recordings transferred to phonographic cylinders. This created very low fidelity versions of his recordings, adding tactile layers of crackle, hiss, and distortion that prove to be mesmerizing with their minute details. The closing “The Contraceptive Briefcase II” is a long form piece for violin, bowed glass, electronics, and a five person choir. The music slowly unfurls, dark ambience growing into overlapping phrases and persistent drones to create an alien sonic space that is alternately serene and unsettling.
In 1998 the newly minted Rune Grammofon label released an album of reworked music by the Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim titled Nordheim Transformed. Featuring seven tracks, three remixed by Biosphere and four by Deathprod, the record illuminates Sten’s deft production skills as he treats the original source material with reverence while taking the music somewhere else entirely.
Between 1997 and 2004, Sten was extremely busy with Supersilent. This remarkably original group takes the templates of electric fusion era Miles Davis and grafts in elements of noise and minimalist composition. The group released four albums during this period, including a triple CD set. The band also maintained a heavy performance schedule, appearing at jazz and new music festivals around the world.
Deathprod returned in early 2004 with the stunning Morals and Dogma. Arguably Sten’s defining moment under this moniker, the record is an exercise in haunted, moving ambience of the deepest variety. The music is sourced from material created between 1994 and 2000 and remains Deathprod’s finest work in terms of structure. Comprised of what sounds like processed violin drones, buzzing electronics, reverberant echo, washes of feedback, distorted loops, and sub-bass tones, the record crystallizes the overall Deathprod aesthetic. Dark, emotive, disturbed, mournful, and extremely beautiful, these four long tracks rank as some of the best ambient music made in the past twenty years.
The final Deathprod release came later in 2004 with an eponymous four CD box set that collects all of Sten’s previously released records and adds a disc of unreleased work. A fittingly grand summation of a truly innovative body of work, Deathprod is required listening for all fans of abstract electronic music.
