Pitchfork

Adventura Anatomica documents a live performance by Norwegian singer, composer, and sound artist Maja Ratkje. On a minimally appointed stage with dancers and hanging, two-dimensional birdlike constructions, Ratkje used a homemade sampling tool called ImproSculpt, harmonica, flute, some metal objects, and a vast array of vocal and bodily noises to craft this abstruse yet engrossing sound collage.

I'm rushing through these preliminary details because they have little to do with the actual experience of listening to this record. By the fourth track, Adventura Anatomica seals you in so completely that it nearly blots out everything but the music itself, including the details of its creation. This isn't to say that what Ratkje does here lacks exterior points of reference. The Italian futurist Marinetti laid the groundwork for this type of sound art with his seminal "sound poem" Zang Tumb Tumb. Rich with inventive typography and onomatopoeias, it inspired Luigi Russolo to start building his noise machines. Kurt Schwitters' recorded sound poem, Ursonate, which Adventura Anatomica resembles, is another clear precursor to Ratkje's preference for deranged vocal sound effects to more traditional intonations.

We tend to expect experimental musicians to break the mold with every effort while allowing rockers and rappers to rehearse the same idiom over and over. The vitality of Ratkje's album reveals the flaw in this thinking. Far from sounding like a derivation of the fine company it keeps, Adventura Anatomica is a singular experience. It's possible to map the terrain: the first two tracks are comprised of little more than sucking, clicking, and dragging noises scattered judiciously across a vast field of silence. As the album eventually shapes up into something like a postmodern play about fairy tales, these opening tracks are the sound of the forest set being wheeled onto the stage.

On "The Red Hooded Lady of the Woods", the rising action begins in earnest: With the words "Once upon a time," an increasing chorus of Ratkjes gradually weaves an overlapping litany into a nest of shadowy whispers. "Too Many Trees" is as claustrophobic as its title suggests, an intensifying nightmare amalgamation of hoarse murmurs, snorts, cackles, and chirps, as saturated as the early tracks are desiccated. "Once Upon a Time" grants us a respite with its eerie yet serene drones, while "Floating, Hiding, Posing" blends an angelic warble into a noise explosion where Ratkje beatboxes strident, concussive vocal tones that flutter and careen like bats. On "The Wolf", she somehow makes herself sound like a vacuum cleaner battling a squeaky rubber balloon.

So, as I said, it is possible to map Adventura Anatomica. More difficult is figuring out what it's a cartography of, once all the constituent parts are assembled. Certainly, this record is about fairy tales. The imagery of trees, woods, and red hoods are a dead giveaway and the album's sense of perpetual wonder at the mundane is commensurate with fairy tales' unique logic. But it's also about the body. Listening to the record, you become aware of the body as a phenomenal sound source, suddenly noticing the musical potential of your gurgling stomach, the blood squeaking in your ears, your knuckles popping. But Adventura Anatomica transcends about; it constructs a conceptual space you enter into, and the question remains: Where are we, when we're in here? The album cover contains a clue: It's a close-up of Ratjke's face, pale amid dark hair, eyes shining like portals into an utterly interior space.