House of Hiss

The Londoner arrived in town like a four-track Morricone with a bag of

cassettes and a book on elevator music under his arm. Alisdair Stirling was

working lo-fi nights with the Sensible Twins, Kato Adland and HP Gundersen,

in Gjoa studio, seventh floor, Industrihuset, Bergen, Norway.



A search for imaginary timbres was underway, and the trio were busy sampling cassette

demos, bending sounds through antique tape recorders and haunting the

stairwell outside the studio for night reverberation purposes as they

recorded batch after batch of songs. Early versions of these tunes had begun

to emerge from Stirling‚s house in south London in 1998, made on the bones

of junkyard equipment at night through a fog of hiss you could hear

upstairs. But what began as Stirling‚s solo project soon became a band.



Studio neighbours Jorgen Traeen and Yngve Saethre from Duper heard the

material early on and were first choice to mix the songs. Then Traeen joined

the band as remixer and live member. Gradually, a small, strange songbook

called No-Fi‚ took shape and the foundations of the House of Hiss were

laid. As an album,No-Fi‚ never saw the light of day, but the recording

sessions continued. Drums, piano, organ and harmonium textures and more

studio guests were added to the original mixture of guitars, Casios and

cassettes.



Around this time, Brazilian pop joined the growing list of production references

and Milton Nascimento and Lo Borges hugely generous

1972 album Clube da Esquina‚ stole everyones hearts and set a new template

for the sessions to come. Now it didn‚t seem to matter whether it was lo-fi,

no-fi, nu-fi or whatever. The attitude stayed the same as the House of Hiss

catalogue continued to grow. This album is the story so far. A big listen ˆ

21 songs, 21 musicians, all styles and dozens of thank yous, starting with

thanks for listening. House of Hiss 2006.