Aural Aggravation

Fysisk – 4th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The line ‘here we are now, entertain us’ from Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is on which has come to resonate with me more powerfully in recent years than it ever did at the time. It’s a sad fact that – and I like to think of it as being through no fault of my own – my attention span isn’t what it was, and I’m no longer quite as patient as I was. I can still listen to a twenty minute instrumental without any issue, but have to be in the frame of mind to do so. But then, as far back as 2018, Forbes reported that 24.14% of songs were skipped within the first five seconds by users of Spotify, some 29% skip in the first ten, and that increases to a 35.05% chance of a skip within the first 30 seconds. I very much doubt that we’ve grown more patient in the last eight years. An article published earlier this year at Mixreflect detailed the reasons listeners skip, and gave practical solutions like ‘How long should a song intro be on Spotify?’ with advice including ‘The practical target is 8 to 12 seconds for pop, hip-hop, and R&B; up to 20 seconds for rock and indie if something is actively developing throughout.’

It’s twenty-six seconds before the vocals start on the single edit of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. The intro to one of my favourite singles of all time, ‘Alice’ by The Sisters of Mercy occupies the first minute of its three and a half minute duration. And how long is the fade-in on ‘India’, the opening track on the eponymous debut album by The Psychedelic Furs? All very different songs, but each a classic in its own right. Are we really in a place where most people would simply skip before things got going? Instant gratification is one thing, but there is so much to be said for a good build-up.

Thankfully, there are musical fields where a slow-build and an unravelling over time is appreciated, and Superføkk – pitched as ‘a bursting new raptus project that shoots off in inexplicable directions’ which is ‘neither background listening nor pop music’ they’re described as having ‘a foot in many camps’ and ‘aim[ing] to break down established genre conventions and create a sound that is distinctly their own…. drawing inspiration from jazz/noiserock, electronica, and no-wave’. And their debit album contains just three tracks, the shortest of which is six minutes long (there is a four-minute radio edit, but I doubt that it’ll get much airplay on the likes of Radio 1 or Kiss FM, or that it’s going to convince the Spotify casuals to stick around, not that the algorithm is likely to insert it amidst a lengthy cycle of Taylor Swift and Charlie XCX or whatever.

And so it is that ‘Grønn’ provides our introduction to Superføkk, and it may be brief (in comparative terms’, but it packs plenty in. It’s jazz in that cacophonic sense, horns blaring and doing so simultaneously in all directions – not smooth or noodly, but an instant riot – before an extended atmospheric post-rock passage in the middle before everything goes off at once, giving us an expansive post-rock surge topped with the most extravagant sax break. The twelve-minute ‘River Igjennom’ is remarkably light and easy going for the most part, but around three minutes in, the levels of tension explode with frenetic drumming and strains of the most demented fretwork colliding with crazed sax chaos, and it culminates on some kind of huge prog-like grand finale which on the one hand seems entirely incongruous, but on the other, perfectly fitting. I can’t say I’m entirely into it. And then there’s ‘Piggeple’, another twelve minute multi-segmented opus.

Around the mid-point, it drops down to a spare bass, squalling synth, and processed-sounding vocals, and it’s only after this that things really seem to kick off, with a locked-in drum beat, throbbing, insistent bass, and some crunky guitar dischord. Finally, the noise-rock element is freed! And they do go all-out in the final minutes.

When they write that ‘Superføkk is neither background listening nor pop music’, but that it’s ‘immediate and danceable, but also unhinged, hard-boiled, improvised, and idiosyncratic’, they’re mostly accurate. There are some deep bass-driven grooves buried in the mix here, but the chances of me actually dancing it any of it are non-existent.

Recent weeks and months have delivered some truly outstanding – not to mention angry, bleak, nihilistic, and highly political – noise rock releases, perhaps most notably from Chat Pile, Kings Sans, and Remote Viewing, and each has hit hard and resonated in a deep and powerful way. Superføkk (which continually reminds me of Superbock, which is great stuff) lands differently. Not only is it largely instrumental, its noise-rock elements are blended – and at times buried low – amidst an array of experimentalism, and an emphasis on the warped jazz leanings of the composition. But, being as hectic as it is, it’s no less tense that the aforementioned noise-rock works. In fact, there are moments which are little short of dizzying, and you wonder if your brain might burst.

AA