WHEN

Please note that this site is NOT maintained by Lars Pedersen, but a confidant.
Lars Pedersen was born in 1961; his father, Tore Pedersen, was a Norwegian musical composer. At an early age, Lars performed with his father, brother and two older sisters, often being compared to The Partridge Family. Lars made his first apperance on a record when he was 11 years old, and got to meet Chuck Berry and other stars.
In the late 1970's Lars played in the first Norwegian punk band Hærverk, and would later – as the 80's came – go on to form the band The Last James. The Last James explored the 60's sunshine pop sound, releasing three albums, Grape, The Last James and Kindergarten. During the 1980's and early 90's, Pedersen was also a member of the seminal industrial/new wave group Holy Toy, fronted by Andrej Dziubek Nebb. Holy Toy put out severeal stand-out albums such as Panzer and Rabbitz, Why Not in Choir? and Pakt of Fakt.
Over the years Lars has also composed music for several productions by the Norwegian avant-garde ensemble The Theatre of Cruelty, firmly rooted in the visions of the French surrealist poet and playwright Antonin Artaud.
In 1983 Pedersen launched the one-man project Hospital Blimp, which would later become When. The debut album Drowning but Learning was released in 1987, with When's trademark collage/cut-up technique already apparent. It was released on vinyl through Pedersen's own tiny Witchwood label in 1987.



In 1988 When released Death in the Blue Lake, inspired by Norwegian author André Bjerke's suspense/thriller novel of the same name. The album had a strong atmosphere of fear and mourning, and was quite popular in Norwegian black metal circles. People like the late Euronymous (Mayhem) as well as his murderer Varg Vikernes (Burzum) often referenced When in the early nineties. Satyricon even used an excerpt from the album's A-side as intro to their Dark Medieval Times album. The B-side of the album is an amalgamation of ethnic music, blues harmonica, coughing, psychedelic pop and glissandi effects. Today it is almost impossible to track down a copy of the LP.
Black, White & Grey, When's third album, conjured up images of war and decay. Chris Cutler of legendary R.I.O. initiators Henry Cow, and collaborator with The Residents among others, was also a central inspiration and contributed to the album. Black, White & Grey was released on Cutler's RéR Megacorp. in 1991.
Pedersen then moved on to Norway's Tatra Records, who would later re-release Drowning but Learning on CD as well as three more When albums. The first of which was 1992's Svartedauen (Norwegian for "The Black Death"); a 38-minute musical description of the ravages of the bubonic plague in Norway ca. 1349. The album borrows elements from Norwegian folk music, and features a host of disturbing sounds: hearses, moans of the dying, rats, flagellant's whips and a scythe being sharpened, to name but a few. It is, perhaps along with Univers Zero's Heresie, one of the scariest albums ever to have been released.
On 94's Prefab Wreckage, When slowly started moving from the more abstract soundtracks of the earlier albums and towards a more song-oriented sound. The album had a nightmarish bent, featuring a chamber music ensemble and recurring clockwork motifs. The inner sleeve is a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, one of the album's inspirations.
In 1997 When released Gynt, which according to the liner notes is a "satiric play on Peer Gynt"; a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, with incidental music by the composer Edvard Grieg. As burlesque as it is tributary, Gynt is a cut-up of rapid caricatures and theatric silhouettes cooperating sporadically with the truths of Grieg's work. As Pedersen explains: "I wanted to put irony into the music. There is a lot of humour in When's music, it's not bloody serious all the time."
The next chapter in When's career began in 1998, signing with the then recently formed Jester Records imprint, which is run by Ulver's Kristoffer Rygg, a fan of Pedersen's work for many years. When's first album for Jester, Psychedelic Wunderbaum, would mark a radical change in When's musical direction. It was – as the title suggests – a psychedelic mix, with apparent inspirations from rock, noise, techno and cartoon music, and with lyrics taken from Aleister Crowley and Tom Wolfe. Pedersen remarked: "I fetched many grooves from old, obscure psychedelic garage bands. It was something I had wanted to do for a long time, but I thought that it might be too audacious. But as more and more artists seem to be using that method, I figured that I could do it too. I dug up the old Farfisa organ that I had used in Holy Toy and got Bjørn Sorknes, the old Holy Toy guitarist, with me. We worked together on the production as well. It became a sort of crossing between industrial and psychedelic rock."
Jester followed this up with the career-spanning double-disc compilation Writercakebox: The Unblessed World of When 1983-1998, which gathered together highlights from all of When's releases up to (but not including) Psychedelic Wunderbaum, along with rare compilation-only tracks plus a half-hour's worth of unreleased material from Pedersen's vaults.
After a slight delay in the production process, the third When release for Jester, The Lobster Boys, came out in 2001. It was Pedersen's most pop-oriented effort till then. Many of the songs were reminiscent of The Beatles and The Beach Boys, but there's often something a little 'off' and/or odd about When's music that sets it apart from its more mainstream pendants. Some tracks start out as 'normal' pop/rock, but often end up in a cacophonic concoction of strange samples, effects and harmonious combinations. The Lobster Boys was also heavily inspired by Arabic music. Nils Arne Øvergård and Øyvind Borgemoen joined When as full members on this recording. The trio has played several concerts, including the release party for the single "Sunshine Superhead", where they performed in bear costumes with paper-mâché guitars. Said song also got heavy radio rotation in Norway in the summer of 2002.
In 2003 When released Pearl-Harvest, more or less The Lobster Boys pt. II, but with lyrical concepts taken from The Arabian Nights. Combine those fables with sampled, shambling Middle Eastern bazaar muzak, jangling exotica and electronics, and you've got When's winning formula. The album earned a nomination in the Open Class category of Spellemannprisen, the Norwegian equivalent to the Grammy Awards.
When's 2004 album, Whenever, features a characteristic mix of Bollywood influences and trance inducing African tribal rhythms, as well as the trademark When sound collages. The lyrics, written by Chris Cutler, often deal with grim subject matter such as the apocalypse and death.
A long time in the making, 2007 was the year of the meticulous Trippy Happy. The album received rave reviews in Norwegian press, bringing back a sound that hadn't been heard since the first psychedelic era 1965–1968. It explored folk à la Donovan, combining banjo lullabies with the fuller-bodied sound of baroque pop, the rawness of early garage rock as well as Raymond Scottesque looney tunes. All impeccably implemented into the chimerical world of Lars Pedersen's When.
Via new distributor PHD, Jester released When's twelfth album, You Are Silent, in 2008. To the delight of fans of older When, this one was considerably darker, more 'chamberish', and perhaps more analogous to albums such as Prefab Wreckage than more recent When releases. Norwegian literary journal Vinduet did a seven-page story on Lars and his music: "What I have done now is sort of falling back on the kind of music I used do make. I wanted to find out if I was still capable of it, if my progression since then would affect the process. Am I a different person now - am I still dark?"
While that question remains pending, the first installment of When's Homage Series is here. A mashup/mixtape jamboree in tribute to brilliant bandleader, pianist, mystic and philosopher Sun Ra. Eleven tracks of "cosmic jazz", where Lars in a teamwork with Beamwork a.k.a. Nils Arne Øvergård borrows, cuts, loops, adds and completely turns the universe of the legendary jazz-brother from planet no. 6 inside out.
You have never heard anything like it.