Drivan - disko

Norway's Kim Hiorthøy is a graphic designer and musician, in that order. His album covers for Rune Grammofon and Smalltown Supersound are dynamic, striking, and original. But only that last quality really pertains to his streamlined folktronica, which blends snippets of live instrumentation and field recordings with hip-hop breakbeats. There's a thin line between elegantly simple and undercooked, and Hiorthøy often seems more like a loop-maker than a songwriter. His albums contain lots of neat ideas, but a repetitive guitar twang, a few atmospheric scribbles, and a boom-bap beat don't necessarily add up to a satisfying composition.

From his 2000 debut, Hei, to his most recent LP, 2007's My Last Day, Hiorthøy has resolutely pursued this formula, so it's great to see him trying something new. Drivan is a multinational collaborative project featuring Hiorthøy, Louise Peterhoff, Lisa Östberg (Sweden), and Kristiina Viiala (Finland). They all met while working together on a dance piece called The Potato Country by Gunilla Heiborn, for which Hiorthøy composed the music, and then decided to continue their collaboration as Drivan. Unfortunately, this new configuration doesn't seem to have inspired many fresh ideas. Dominated by Hiorthøy's signature loops, Disko is distinguished from his prior work only by Swedish vocals and a slightly more ramshackle feel.

With its brief and often repetitive tracks, Disko suffers from the same sense of incompletion that has dogged Hiorthøy's solo albums. The songs seem to run in place, often ending almost exactly where they began. Once you've heard the first 12 seconds of "Som en läderlapp", you've pretty much heard it all, other than a few flashes of something horn-like and an inevitable, blocky snare pattern near the end. This wouldn't be a problem if the guitar phrase that pinions the song were livelier, but it's dryly recorded and melodically flat. "Campingvagn" follows a nearly identical formula, though its melody is happily spiced up with syncopated breaks and handclaps.

But the vocals! Surely the vocals add something to the music, right? Unfortunately, not often: They seemed mismatched. The singing is all airy, drifting melody, with little texture or dynamic rhythm. Meanwhile, the music is melodically lax but full of texture and rhythm. Neither gives the other much to work with, and you'll be hard pressed to remember a single tune. The frustrating part is that there are flashes of excellence throughout, like when Hiorthøy seamlessly blends a limber guitar part into coiling trip-hop drums on "Inget mer sen". Even better is "Det gör ingenting", a techno-inspired track for piano and drums with a forceful developmental arc. It makes the rest of the album sound thinner and more shapeless by comparison. Hiorthøy is evidently capable of doing more with a good idea than documenting it, drawing out viable compositions that progress and grow. We're left wondering why he doesn't do so more often.

— Brian Howe, August 25, 2010