The Danish musician Goodiepal aka Kristian Vester is probably best known for his series of “inverted brand” 7-inch picture discs he composed and self-released a few years ago. Vester was then working as a sound designer for various megacorporations such as Nokia, Hitachi and Carlsberg, and used sounds designed by him for their ads in his “dub” versions, complete with the corporations’ logos printed on the picture discs. The results on this series of megacorporation records sounded nevertheless very much like his other output: a dizzying, perplexing mixture of Faroe Islands folk tunes, childlike melodies, subtle digital treatments, and more. “Was this a critique? Was this sabotage? Was this a way to take back something that he did not want to get away? Was it just a theatrical gesture?” asked the jury of the prestigious Ars Electronica award when granting him an honorary mention in 2002. Goodiepal told in an interview published in The Wire magazine later the same year, as if answering to these questions: “I am MTV, quiz shows, Queen and Microsoft on the inside, or at least I am a product of that. My music represents the rise of New Europe, and I hope it speaks a language of origin, big companies, expanding, computing, banishment, and fatal numbness.”
Now Vester’s heady days of working for the branding and advertizing industry are over. He says he has moved to Faroe Islands, where he works as a nurse in an old people’s home, while continuing to tour actively. “A genuine eccentric” are the words most often heard describing his live appearances, where he plays vinyl records and Faroe folk instruments and puts on display various small, inexplicable objects built by himself, such as mechanical birds and miniature models of planets.
> http://www.datanom.com/mainpal/page/references.html
Goodiepal at the Avanto Nightclub in Gloria on Saturday, November 20th.
