Norwegian Krautrock

Photo by Mike Bax

120 Days are from Norway which is a very peaceful, prosperous country that’s totally removed from the place that the rest of the issue is about. The news is that they just made an album that sounds like the krautrock numbers from Primal Scream’s XTRMNTR if it was recorded in a snow-covered forest in the middle of the night by a load of guys who were on valium, ecstasy and cocaine and had posters of Jason Spaceman all over their bedroom walls. If that sounds like your kind of thing, then you should definitely buy a load of copies of it. (It’s on Vice Recordings btw). Vice: What’s it like living in Norway? Adne Meisfjord (vocals): It’s a good country to live in, everyone’s kinda rich compared to may other parts of the world, so there’s not really that much to complain about. So are you guys rich kids, like most guys in bands? Oh no, I wouldn’t say that we are rich, not at all. Playing the music that we play doesn’t make us a lot of money. Not yet at least. Do you live in a big house? No, my room is 6 square metres. It’s just a bed and a record collection—that’s it. Sounds like you’re really living hard, buddy. Do you struggle to get by every month? Yeah, you know we struggle, but like most of Europe it’s impossible to starve to death. What’s unemployment like in Norway? I think Norway is kinda good for employment right now. It’s not getting worse, anyway. What’s the main problem in Norway? The main problem is boredom. Especially where we came from. Our home town is a small coastal town, on the north west coast of Norway. It’s like a dead end town. It had one of the worst unemployment rates in the whole of Norway for a while but I think it’s getting better because they just discovered oil outside of the coast, so now the money is coming in. That happened after we moved, though. Where did you move to? We moved to Oslo. When we first arrived, we lived in a house wagon to get by because we couldn’t afford a regular apartment. That was a strange experience. What’s the most hungry you’ve ever been? Have you ever eaten something disgusting because you’ve been so hungry? Oh yeah. I’ve eaten many rice and vegetable meals because I didn’t have any money for anything else. I’ve had to eat that every day for weeks. How much would I have to pay you to eat a pickled eyeball? How much have you got? I could pay as much as it’d take. I’d have to see it first. Would it be well prepared? No, there’d be blood everywhere and it would be pickled in a jar, just a single eye ball. Would you eat it? No, well we’ve got the advance from the record company now so I don’t really need the money. THANDIE NEUTRON