ISMISTIK - Live @ Borgen 1994 (HMD18)
Cassette only release. 100 copies.
Dropping 16.06.23

Bandcamp: https://hmdrecords.bandcamp.com/

This cassette contains a recording of Ismistik (aka Bjørn Torske) live in concert at Borgen in Oslo on the night of October 30th, 1994. The concert was held as a release party for "TOS.CD", a compilation CD which was Tromsø label Beatservice’s first release. The live set was recorded on DAT, and the recording then lay untouched in Bjørn's archive for over two decades. All of the material from this set is previously unreleased, with the exception of the track “Miditrip", a version of which was released on the first Ismistik 12-inch. The only people who have heard this material until now - besides Bjørn himself, HMD and mastering engineer DJ Sotofett - are those who were at Borgen that evening.
The live set was made especially for this concert. “I had many sketches lying around which I stitched together into a live set. I was making music all the time, and a good part of it never came out," recalls Bjørn. "It was a lot of work to prepare the concert. This was long before you could play live with just a laptop, and there was a lot of equipment that had to be transported on the train to Oslo. The aisle was full, so I had to put the Juno synth in the luggage rack above the seat. There was no time for a sound check at Borgen and the acoustics in the room were difficult because there was concrete and pillars on all sides. I had to play everything live on the spot and it shows: some of the sounds are quite high in the mix. At the end of the live set, the DAT player fell to the floor, so that's why the sound suddenly cuts out in the second-to-last track."
The seed that would grow into this release was sown in 2017 at the event Graff & Grill, which is held every summer in Moss under the auspices of Sex Tags and Kambo Super Sound System. Bjørn DJed there that year, while HMD collaborator DJ Kompressorkanonen attended as a guest. At one point, Bjørn asked him if it was possible that he was present at Borgen that time in 1994. And he was right! Bjørn then mentioned that he had the recording of that concert somewhere, and that he could send it over. The recording arrived in Kompressorkanonen’s inbox a few weeks later. When made aware of the existence of the live set, HMD CEO Jan Mayen had the idea to have it released on cassette. Bjørn gave the project a thumbs up, and the rest is history.
“Play it loud, close your eyes and imagine that you are standing in a run-down concrete hall with a smoke machine on full blast. Because that's exactly how it was.” – DJ Kompressorkanonen

ISMISTIK - Live Borgen 1994 (snippet)

Sjonkel Rolfsen is a vinyl enthusiast and music collector from Trondheim in Norway. He has been welding records at local venues and events for two decades. Nowadays, he mostly enjoys to fiddle around with experimental and ambient in the comfort of his humble abode, but still get the odd epiphany to wonder out into the enchanting world of house and techno. When he is not fumbling about on the decks, he likes to travel. He tries to play with the possibility of combining electronica and leftfield soundscapes, in a mixcast friendly way, catering to your everyday soundtrack needs.

HMD Records Oslo
https://hmdrecords.bandcamp.com/
www.hmdrecords.com