Ring Van Möbius ____
Despite their founder’s black metal beginnings, Ring Van MÖbius look and sound as though they were transported straight from 1971’s prog rock scene, with fans of ELP and VdGG sure to love their debut. From old school style recording to ditching guitars,
Say hello to the brightest new hopes on the progressive rock scene.
What a difference a few years can make. Emerging in a shower of psychedelic sparks and old school fervour, Ring Van Möbius have just released one of 2018’s most authentically unhinged prog records in the form of debut Past The Evening Sun. Formed barely four years ago in Karmøy, Norway, the band are led by Hammond organ maestro Thor Erik Helgesen: a vision in suede and paisley, he and his band give the distinct impression that they’ve been teleported forward from 1971.
For those music fans with a taste for the extreme, however, Helgesen is far better known as Infamroth, founder and creative mastermind behind cult black metal band Throne Of Katarsis, whose visceral, primitive epics could hardly be further away from
Ring Van Möbius’ boisterous prog noir. With his former band firmly on the back-burner, Helgesen has clearly immersed himself in prog’s kaleidoscopic essence, but his past works still seem a little at odds with his current artistic persona…
“I guess you might think that,” he chuckles, clearly having heard the same observation countless times before. “But it’s all me and I do think there are similarities between Throne Of Katarsis and what we’re doing now. What’s really different is the means of expression. Music-wise, in terms of the arrangements and lengthy songs with a lot of different emotions being released, that’s all familiar from where I come from in the black metal scene. But the truth is that I’ve been listening to progressive rock for a long time now.
“I had a friend who showed me bands like Camel and King Crimson. He was completely into the 70s style and there were no albums in his universe after 1975! Somehow I just connected with this music and this is what’s inspiring me right now, for sure.”
Helgesen is happy to admit that he never had any specific plans to form a prog band. Instead, he was simply enjoying being a prog fan. Fate has a tendency to intervene when great ideas are floating idly in the ether, though, and a chance meeting led to the genesis of the Norwegian’s best idea yet.
“Four years ago I met this guy who played the flute,” he explains. “I was playing guitar at the time and we were just jamming, playing some classical stuff and then doing some Jethro Tull songs, and suddenly I had this cool riff in my head. I got the guy to play a melody and I had that riff going on underneath, and from that point on the riffs just came out of me, for three or four months, every day. There were loads of riffs so I had to record something. I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t have all these cool riffs just lying around, so suddenly I needed a band to do this with!”
Brimming with inspiration, Helgesen embarked on a mission to recruit musicians for his new project. Norway has a perfectly serviceable prog scene of its own, of course, but it soon became apparent that spending the best part of two decades in the black metal scene had limited the aspiring bandleader’s options somewhat.
“To be honest, I didn’t know any musicians at all. All the guys I know are black metal dudes! I was living in a parallel universe, I guess. But eventually I found two guys. Håvard [Rasmussen, bassist] was involved in part of the production for the last Throne Of Katarsis album. He had all these old tape machines, which was a good omen, and he was also into progressive rock, so I phoned him and that was it. He was in. He was really keen to do it. Then I also found a drummer… and he’s married to my sister now! But I knew Dag [Olav Husås] from before that. He was a thrash metal drummer but also a big Rush fan so I thought, ‘Okay, that sounds about right, let’s give it a try!’ We’ve all got a more metal background than anything else but we were all quite keen to do this. We didn’t have that specific 70s thing going on at first. We just wanted to make music, but after a while we realised it had that 70s vibe.”
He’s not kidding. Past The Evening
Sun doesn’t militantly adhere to some preconceived, misty-eyed notion of old school prog, but its debt to the darker, weirder end of the genre’s golden first wave is undeniable. Fans of ELP and Van der Graaf Generator will be particularly well served by the crazed arrangements and Hammond-powered fury of the three epics on the album, not least due to the total absence of six-string guitars.
“Actually, I started off as the guitarist and we had another organ player at the beginning,” Helgesen says, “but somehow I got hooked on playing the Hammond organ. The more I played the organ, the more I’d get annoyed by the sound of guitars on old songs. There would be some cool Hammond organ going on but the guitarist was always soloing
away and taking all the attention. So we thought, ‘Let’s do this differently, and not have a guitar player.’ We do have a saxophonist every now and then, but a guitarist wouldn’t have a very steady job in this band!”
From the wonky-eyed keyboard line that ushers in the album’s Crimson-like opening riff, Past The Evening Sun is an album that proudly salutes the past, both in terms of the songs themselves and on a sonic level. Echoing the intensity of focus that typified the music he made in the black metal scene, Helgesen’s approach to committing Ring Van Möbius to tape – and it had to be actual tape – is as holistic and feverishly authentic as can be.
“Oh yeah, man, we had to build our own analogue studio to record this,” he grins.
“Even though there are plenty of analogue studios around the world, and some really great ones, we’re all very much into sounds, the possibilities of sound, and the whole creative process, being truly connected to that side of it. So we were quite focused on doing it with the old techniques of tape phasing and singing through organ speakers and a lot of things that are perhaps not so normal any more. I’ve recorded with analogue equipment many times, of course, but this was the first time I’ve been sitting at the desk. It was a very steep learning curve but we’re really happy with how everything turned out.”
Clocking in at 22 minutes, Past The Evening Sun’s title track is an extravagant way to introduce your new band to the world, with numerous moments of jarring mischief and psychedelic flair. The message lurking within the song’s surreal monologue is far more restrained and rooted in the frustrations of real life. As the crescendos and changes of pace and mood swirl around you, there’s a palpable sense of melancholy and disquiet looming amid the chaos, as Helgesen observes.
“I’m questioning the term ‘freedom’ in this life, balanced against the obligations and the roles we have to fill. Even when we are free, it seems that we might be trapped in a game, you know? On this record, the lyrics are stories and observations from the somewhat schizophrenic world that we live in. There’s the more ordinary stuff about everyday life, because everyday life can also be very psychologically challenging. Not to mention the general situation in the world today, of course. But I tend to focus on mental aspects, rather than the actual actions of man. It’s always quite abstract, but you can follow the lyrics to a certain point.”
Call it evolution. Call it an awakening. Call it, as Helgesen does, “a different means of expression”. Whatever you call it, Ring Van Möbius’ music has given their founder a new lease of creative life. He talks about tentative plans to recruit a chamber quartet for the band’s next album, much of which is already written, and a fervent desire to connect with a rapidly expanding international fan base.
“When starting this band, we had no goals other than just making the music,” Helgesen says. “But we’re getting a lot of attention now and we’re really enjoying playing live and getting all the positive feedback afterwards, so we will be doing shows outside of Norway. Doing this is terrific and it’s inspiring.
“When I played black metal,” he adds, “I always envied prog rock bands when it came to dynamics, so I really enjoy that side of this band, that’s for sure. Sometimes there’s almost no sound at all, and then you have the other end of things, where it’s just madness.”
“We had to build our own analogue studio to record this. We’re all very much into the possibilities of sound, so we were quite focused on doing it with the old techniques.”