The New York Times

Fe-Mail and Carlos Giffoni

Static is probably the most pedestrian sound on "Northern Stains"
(Important), the product of a recent encounter between Carlos Giffoni,
an electronic improviser, and Fe-Mail, a noise-proficient Norwegian
electro-duo. Mr. Giffoni met his collaborators — Maja Ratkje, a
respected avant-garde vocalist, and Hild Sofie Tafjord, who plays
French horn — at the No Fun Fest, a smorgasbord of atonality he
organizes annually in Brooklyn. Recorded in Oslo, the album has a
predictably wide textural palette, rich in abrasive properties. But it
rarely feels random. On a minute-and-a-half track called "Come, You
Are," a windshield-spray succession of splotches, burbles and bleeps
only partly obscures a distinctly cardiac rhythm. Its pattern is
regular but hardly metronomic — it seems to speed up as the track
builds — and its dimensions are incredibly close. Hear it on
headphones, and you might momentarily think the heartbeat is your own.
Nate Chinen.