The Norwegian Swamp trio – vocal artist Maja S.K. Ratkje (of Spunk and collaborations with POING, Stian Westerhus and Lasse Marhaug), guitarist and electronics player Torstein Slåen, and his long-time collaborator, electronics player (and video editor and sound engineer) Sigurd Ytre-Arne – describes itself as «a get-to-know-you party where furniture is broken, wine glasses are smashed, and walls are defaced with graffiti, but the living room remains more beautiful than the night before».
The trio’s title plays on a swamp that must be regularly drained with life-affirming, fantasy-promoting music to keep down the high population of totalitarian oligarch mosquitoes to stop them from infecting the surrounding population with conformity malaria. The Swamp Live is the sophomore album of this anti-bullshit, experimental free improvising trio, following the studio recording of The Swamp (Self-Released, 2025). The album was recorded live at All Ears Festival at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo in January 2026. Marhaug mastered.
The album offers four pieces that encapsulate the trio’s resistance to any power structures – political, sociological, and musical. It begins with «Oligarchification II» (following «Oligarchification» from the debut album), with Ratkje spitting and shouting gibberish spells against all oligarchs, while Slåen and Ytre-Arne intensify these urgent, threatening spells with walls of noise. «Spit out of the Rest» is a natural extension of the opening piece, with Ratkje’s commanding vocal delivery incorporating the erratic syntax of Slåen and Ytre-Arne’s guitar and electronics.
«The sun also rises, the roses will bloom» takes this trio to a more contemplative territory, with Ratkje delivering sensual, Dadaist chants, soon transformed into an intense and noisy sonic mayhem, with Ratkje’s gentle vocals still erupting through the noisy layers. The album ends with an inspired, extended cover of the Italian partisans’ anti-fascist folk anthem that captures the subversive spirit of this trio. Ratkje, Slåen, and Ytre-Arnedeconstruct this popular song into kaleidoscopic, fragmented vocalizations, noises, and beats, only to suggest a vulnerable, reflective reconstruction of the song, suggesting that we all need to do much more to fight the totalitarian oligarch mosquitoes and other reptilian, fascist rulers.
Eyal Hareuveni
Maja S. K. Ratkje (vocals, fuzz pedal and bells), Torstein Slåen (guitar, synth electronics), Sigurd Ytre-Arne (sampling, drums, synth electronics)
