You may have already guessed.

Lis­ten: Moha! — C5 [Rune Gram­mophon, 2006]

Unlike oth­er Rune Gram­mophon artists Super­si­lent and Shin­ing, Moha! stayed well under the radar, although they got a pass­ing men­tion in Bran­don Sto­suy’s piece on Øyafes­ti­valen. Their halt­ing, spas­tic impro­vi­sa­tion sounds far denser than two peo­ple might pos­si­bly cre­ate with just per­cus­sion and gui­tar. Yet as “C5” illus­trates, Moha! whip up fren­zy in a way that would make Orthrelm jeal­ous. Atop apoplet­ic drum­ming, gui­tarist Anders Hana plays spiky riffs while his phras­ing oscil­lates between reck­less and razor sharp. Nei­ther tune­less nor tedious, Moha!‘s Raus aus Sta­vanger cool­ly com­bines rig­or and play, some­how bal­anc­ing equal parts Oslo and Detroit.

[This is the first part of a mul­ti-part, unordered list to sort through the pro­mo rub­ble that’s accu­mu­lat­ed on my desk and clut­tered my desk­top in 2006. With luck, I’ll post a track or two dai­ly to keep pace with year end oblig­a­tions. Of course, if I’m invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this, I may end up reshuf­fling the deck a bit.]