Release info/Press release

Lars Pedersen's latest, on a planet of its own. How to describe the place where he wound up? These are part plunder, part original, part chaos, all tuneful, but stretched through kitsch to pure inspiration - 10 songs based on the Arabian Nights that borrow and mix soundtrack, late sixties Beatles, Lounge, Film music (lots of orchestra), Psychedelia, early Prince and Middle Eastern instruments. Dense arrangements in which a lot of played instruments and a lot of samples melt into one another and historic time lose it's definition. Strange and strangely compelling.

Chris Cutler

REVIEWS:

"The follow-up to the smash AQ-hit The Lobster Boys -- dozens upon dozens of copies sold here, and counting, no petite potatoes considering that the disc only sold 500 in all of Europe! -- is in fact a follow-up in the best sense. WHEN doesn't return to the dark soundtrack stuff a decade ago that made earlier WHEN albums so beloved by the black metal community. No, WHEN gives us what we want -- sunshiney sike-pop n' electronica incorporating international ethnic sounds into a heavenly yet weird pop concoction. Pretty much The Lobster Boys part II, but with lyrical concepts taken from The Arabian Nights! Those fables and proverbs are rendered with gentle, even gently twee, self-harmonized vocals with a British accented lilt. You'll hear the Beatles, XTC, and some Bowie too. Combine that vocal-pop capability with sampled, shambling Middle Eastern bazaar musicks, jangling exotica and electronics, and you've got WHEN's winning formula on Pearl-Harvest. It's a bit like Tipsy on a magic carpet ride with Andy Partridge doing the vocals. There's some darker, cartoon-wacky surreality thrown in that echoes old, disturbing WHEN stuff, but that's almost a warped Disney element that works in perfect contrast to the pop-perfection of most of the songs.

If you're not already one of the many AQ customers to have acquired a copy of The Lobster Boys (or Psychedelic Wunderbaum, or Writercakebox, or...) then you maybe unaware of the who and what of WHEN. It's the project of Norwegian Lars Pedersen, an eclectic eccentric musical mastermind if there ever was one. Here he sings and plays almost all the instruments -- keys, zither, flute, xylophone, programming, etc. -- with a little help from friends making guest appearances on accordion and guitar. We've liked all his stuff in the past, but this sampledelic pop niche he's been exploring recently is most impressive, and certainly the most sweetly satisfying." - Aquarius

"Tap the name of Norway’s Lars Pederson into any search engine and you’ll throw up a host of glowing references to his previous outing, ‘The Lobster Boys’, an eccentric, sampladelic rollercoaster that ran zithers, flutes, xylophones and keyboards together with all the care of a hyperactive three year-old. Here he’s gone one further, taking as his inspiration the tales of The Arabian Nights and lining up the likes of Bowie, Beatles and Beck against the din of a middle-eastern soukh for one big battle waged on a tatty magic carpet. The sheer range of sound, influence and atmospheres is startling, yet it’s all coherent, like every idea The Avalanches ever had bottled up and sold onto XTC. A harvest of pearls indeed."
- LOGO Magazine

"Perhaps one of the most eagerly-awaited albums in the MJ reviewing shack. Despite this magazine's tendency towards things dark and droning, there is something terribly addictive about The Lobster Boys with it's Flower-Power-cum-SCRITTI sound.

And the quirky sound, torn from the underbelly of times-gone-by, still remains in this album, although to be frank there's less of an immediate hook to the handful of songs on this album.

But where they sacrifice the instant allure of previous works, they make up for with the overall brilliance of this album.

So, if not as immediate as before, then what makes this album so good?

Ah, my reader, first you have to let your mind go blank, drifting slowly back to days of childhood. Enter the fantasy world of Sixties Disney - specifically The Jungle Book, with it's lush, mysterious Eastern score, weaving around the listener like the coils of Ka the snake, spinning as hypnotically as his eyes, interwoven as the tendrils hanging from the jungle trees.

Whether they have created this rich multilayered music from scratch, or have used a multitude of samplers, I can only guess (and I'd favour the latter - if not they deserve to be in Hollywood getting paid an astounding amount for re-creating the wonders of the past).

Beyond the film-fantasy scores, their music falls basically into the same simple breezy structures as with the previous album. I'd find it hard to criticise such charming music - this goes way beyond the sit-up-and-beg roughness of most of the music which came out of the Sixties. Given the clarity of modern recording studio technology, they manage to create a music which superficially seems quite simple, yet the deeper you listen, the more complex it seems to be.

I must admit I don't find their music that easy to describe as I listen to it. The urge is to enjoy it rather than analyse it, and that is the crux of the matter - this is an album to be enjoyed - to indulge in - to lose yourself in. Be charmed, be entertained, be thrilled - WHEN have the controls and your only hope of escape is when the CD whirrs to a standstill at the end of the album. Loads of Eastern sounds, voice samples and some wonderful grooves. I'm not unaware that this album may be a joke - a stab at the basic shabbiness of latterday Disney, both on screen and in the theme parks - or a portrayal of a generation which does not hold up well to close scrutiny. But I'd like to think that, as clever as they appear to be, WHEN have a genuine love of everything they do, of all they re-create, and manage to pass that good feeling down to those who listen with awe and count the days to their next release.

It's a gas, Man!" - Metamorphic Journeyman

"Lars Pedersen returns with a swell concept: lyrics taken from the stories in Abu-Abd Allah Muhammed Gahsjigari's ARABIAN NIGHTS, with Arabic music to match. But Pedersen's Arabic stylings are filtered through Beatlesque harmonies circa ABBEY ROAD and often totally Western song structures at times, and the result is mesmerizing to hear. On songs like Goose, poor Goose and The Night Empty of all Stories, Arabic motifs and counterpoint riffs are repeated endlessly, snippets of the story are repeated in hypnotic fashion, and melodies wind through the carefully-constructed pieces like a floating procession of sound. The album as a whole greatly resembles an exotic soundtrack (which it might well be, for all I know). Shades of reggae crop up on Cost of Pleasure, while countryish guitar (and a stuttering ambient-noise intro) provides the backbone for Daughter of Brightness. The title track is a pulsing groove rendered in rhythmically varied clusters of instruments and frosted with horns, sounding like an after-midnight jam between jazz, r&b, and Arabic musicians. The entire album is a great-sounding and complex assembly of moods and styles riding over an Arabic sensibility, and frequently mesmerizing, always invigorating. More brilliance from Pedersen and Jester Records." - Dead Angel