Anyway, BNH was conceived by one incompetent non-musician (myself) and one near incompetent non-musician (Kim Heikinheimo) for the sole purpose of having fun and experimenting with all kinds of sound. That was 1997. We were young, foolish and drunk on all kinds of alcoholic substances as well as Neubauten and the above-mentioned Famlende Försök. Basically we had no idea what we were doing, but it had to be noisy and abstract.
The first, live one-take tape recordings consisted of Heikinheimo playing grand piano and me banging away on a variety of metallic surfaces. Later on drills, vacuum cleaners, tractors, synths, loops and even the kitchen sink were thrown into the mix. Not surprisingly, much of that earlier stuff sucked.
At some point we started reading our own swedish poems and texts on top of it all. Some sort of trippy, ambient-like approach began to develop in place of the free-form improvisation. The spoken word thing has stuck with us ever since. As a duo, we recorded two demo tapes: Glassplitter (1998) and Hfors (1999).
In 2000, BNH:s two dilettantes had the fortune of teaming up with a real musician. Sebastian Förström joined us on guitar and we started making more structured, song-like tunes. He also had some idea how to record and mix the music. Stylewise I think the music developed in all sorts of directions. Perhaps it could be called a mix of industrial experimentalism, progressive rock, spoken word, trip-hop and electronic music.
Since we're pretty clueless about any sort of musical direction or style, we've also made some freakish circus music as well as full on noise and even something distantly resembling pop/rock. The most important thing for us when we make music, is to keep it intuitive and free. One unifying trait might be that much of our music tends to be somewhat dark or sombre in nature.
2000-2003 was BNH:s most active era. We recorded a shitload of stuff and in 2002, we released a cd-r demo called Overklighet (Unreality). It was to be followed by Overklighet B in 2003, but that never happened. Förström moved from Helsinki to Pietarsaari and our regular session-activity ceased. We've gathered to make music on some occasions and we even played live in 2006. So no, we're not dead, only resting. We're probably going to do a recording session soon to celebrate our ten years of existence.
Anyway, this has always been more of a pastime project than a serious musical endeavour. That said, I think we've managed to create some interesting stuff over the years. You can listen to some of it here on our myspace page. I think we're going to rotate at least some of the songs from time to time as to give you a better idea of the diversity of the material. Feel free to leave comments and what not.
Tom/BNH,
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