Vulhvah

Vhulvha, Hvūlhvą, Vhulhva, Hvulvha.... however you write it! ? Nevermind the spelling, mind the sounds... The sounds of Vhulvha sounded like no vulvha I've ever paid visit. Their music (like the spelling) was also rather confusing. Haunting, creepy, eerie, out of bounds and the idea that 3 youngsters in my nearby town made music that hit my centre like hardly any had ever done before was beyond imagination.

I'll never forget the look on Tomas' face bringing over the latest Vhulvha-tape with the handdrawed- cutup- collage- covers, so fond of the result. So fond of his Vhulvha. I saw hundred of Cthulbergs drawings in school (as we were in the same class for a couple of years), and I knew he put quite some effort into making his lines really neat, altho' the motives were seldom neat. Homemade black/white covers, so stylish! Tomas, Tomas and Tomas always did their things with extravaganza. Frugally and meticullously. DIY allright, but no shortcuts please! Hours and hours drawing, writing, listening, collecting sounds, programming, manipulating sounds, finding samples that were so off limit, and totally living for their music. They spent days together making music, drinking mugs of coffee with T.Jensens mom, laughing at their own obscure ideas. Like when they took a 20 kilo tuba into a toilet so tiny it only had room for the main person and a roll of toiletpaper. They strapped mics to the Kaisertuba and blew the thing smoking hot. The tones were so sour and everything peaked on the recordinge quipment, but the three Tomas'es were so very pleased with the result! It can be heard on "The Evaginated Rectum" That's how they worked and produced their 7 (or 8 ?) releases.

These guys were involved in several other projects, but Vhulvha had such an uniqueness. So unconventional, so wrecked, such total lack of respect, so nihilistic, somehow humourous (?) -yet again confusing, like a heavily sedated mania in full flowering. Not to mention the titles. How did they come up with them? - probably hours of pondering . You'd need a degree in anatomy, psychology and pathology to really understand them. Or atleast have an encyclopedia at hand... "Scathophallus Necrosa", "Aesophagus Pump", "Lhulli Melaena", "That Pelvic Visitation" Nothing seemed to be prohibited and nothing too repulsive for them to lay hands on. Quite a thrill to dive into that Vhulvha !

The Vhulvha in the birthcanal. In the mid 90's T.Jensen made a tape of homemade sounds and samples that didn't fit into their other projects being more industry, metalpercussion, electro, ebm-ish. Hearing this tape T.Kulberg (later Cthulberg) fell rock bottom into a new territory of musicmaking. Soon T.Hoel was involved in the world of Vhulvha, bringing his odd samples and sounds to their texture. Apparently T.Hoel was a true wizzard in finding the weirdest sounds that fit right into the Vhulvha universe. T.Kulberg sat at home with a tapedeck connected to the TV at all times, full-on volume from one tapedeck to another made the sounds distort like hell and crumble like a cookie. Commercials, MTV, kids shows, porn and animalsounds were all filtered thru heated tapedecks and cut-up to match the patterns of Vhulvha, and a highly disturbing, lo-fi soundmosaic slowly occured. When asking Cthulberg about the mixing part he explains: "Vhulhva was made i a kind of dual mono. Four mono channels with the opportunity of two stereochannels with lousy sounddefinition on an old Amiga. We never cared shit 'bout the soundquality and the lack of quality actually made the assembly of the sounds a fair bit easier. We never wanted a clean sound, plus it was made for a tape release anyway" After a few years T.Jensen got a new PC (with MS-DOS) and keeping up the lousy soundquality was impossible. Apparently that was the death of Vhulvha... and the birth of Mauled by Sloths. MBS has in a way the same idiocrazy humour but not the same total lack of musical expression as Vhulvha.

The fetid Vhulvha is now again made available for a broad audience. It's been years since I last listened to Vhulvha, but I must say it was a sweet reunion. I guess the original tapes were a limited affair, but here it is for the world to see: hvulvha ! To quote Cthulberg again: "Every kid should have Vhulvha in his room". A true slogan !

Respectful regards! Continental Fruit (Jon Øyvind Lærum)