Former, Current MAYHEM Members Featured On SUCHTHAUS Debut

Perhaps until now better known as the sculptor whose extraordinary work graced the stage and album covers for bands such as MAYHEM, Spacebrain is set to launch the debut album from his band SUCHTHAUS with a show at his own music venue, the Spacebunker, in Oslo, Norway on December 17. While the event is a celebration of the release of "The Dark Side And The Bright Side", it also marks the closure of the unique venue itself, where the audiences mingled and the bands played amongst Spacebrain's sculptures. Spacebrain himself has now confirmed that he no longer intends to continue with his sculpting, but will instead concentrate on his music and SUCHTHAUS, so this will probably be the last time that his sculptures and stage sets are on display together in one place.

The 14-track album, which comes in at just over 72 minutes in length and is released on Spacebrain's own label, Rollabigone Records, on December 17, has all the trademarks of Spacebrain's perspective as a visual artist. He is insistent that the band is given no genre label, and that the tracks bear no names so that the listeners come to them with no preconceptions and can form their own opinions.

SUCHTHAUS itself is formed of the nucleus of Spacebrain and Fruen, with a fluid line up that varies as the fancy takes them, while the list of guests on the album is as eclectic as the band itself with, amongst others, SKITLIV and former MAYHEM frontman Maniac, MAYHEM drummer Jan Axel Blomberg, CURRENT 93's DavidTibet, Ingvar Magnusson of SKITLIV, Fredrik A. Juell of BURNING RUBBER and BERSERK BASTARDS, and Sibob Jawara who has sung the world over but has never used a microphone before recording with SUCHTHAUS. It is certainly worth noting that this will be the first time that Maniac and Blomberg appear together on an album since the vocalist quit MAYHEM several years ago.

Commenting on his decision to move away from sculpting to concentrate of music, Spacebrain had this to say: "I'd reached the point where it was becoming impractical for me to continue to work with the metal and other heavy materials that I was using for my sculptures. First of all I'm not as young as I used to be, and the work was physically very taxing, and secondly and probably more importantly, finding premises in Oslo that could house the size of work that I was producing had become virtually impossible. With the building that houses the Spacebunker due for demolition, it was the right time for me to change direction. After all, music and performance has always been an integral part of what I do, and art is art, whatever form it takes, so it's not as big a leap as it might at first appear."

He continued, "SUCHTHAUS is a reflection of our own musical preferences and you can't therefore squeeze it into some particular genre. Every track on 'The Dark Side And The Bright Side' has its own individual character — the atmosphere changing with our mood and the amount of drugs and alcohol we consume while we're making the sounds, and varies from the very dark to the very bright. Most tracks are an experiment with sounds, and we start each one with no plan or idea of where the piece will lead us. Some tracks are made as a one man project; others have 7-8 contributors. The best way to describe what we do is that instead of making visual sculptures, we try to make sound sculptures, although we do visualize them with the help of videos."