Metal, art, and music

This album is made from sounds recorded in the workshop of Arne Magnus Johnsrød; sounds coming out out processes when metal in different forms, types and qualitites is shaped and reshaped into finished works of art. Likewise, the sounds are shaped and reshaped into finished sound objects with an independent existence as art objects; these too, like the metal objects, with little or no obvious similarity to the material – metal or sound – that was the starting point of the processes.

Since the finished metal objects are not shown here, the options for imagining possible connections between sound and objects – or sound processes and metal processes – are entirely up to the listener. Since some of the metal objects were finished after the sound compositions, one can also imagine influences from the sound to the metal objects. We – Arne Magnus Johnsrød og Tellef Kvifte – can assure you that any such imagined connection will be purely coincidental, and not intended by any of us.

Compositions: Tellef Kvifte

Foto: Arne Magnus Johnsrød

Recording, mix, mastering: Tellef Kvifte

The artists

Tellef Kvifte and Arne Magnus Johnsrød Department are both professors at the University College of Southeast Norway, Department of Traditional Arts and Traditional Music, located in Rauland, Telemark. Both left positions in larger departments in Oslo to take part in the inspiring environment at the department in Rauland, where the quality requirements for practical and theoretical skill competence are seen as equally important.

Hi-res audio files at BandCamp!


  1. Testing Some Tools
  2. Hard Metal Work
  3. A Never Ending Process
  4. On the Other Hand


Arne Magnus Johnsrød

Arne Magnus is interested in expression crossing media and genres - like metal and music. Another combination is microbiology and metal art; he has been pioneering efforts in using bacteria to color metals in complex ways, like in the cover for the Art Metal album.

Tellef Kvifte (1947-)

Traditional musician, jazz musician, music producer, music researcher. Tellef plays sjøfløyte, saxophones, piano and keyboard, laptop and bagpipes. And a little Hardanger fiddle. He has been on the Norwegian music scene for over 50 years, and has been involved in many different groups, including Universitetets storband, Slinkombas, TradArr, Oslo Musica Antiqua, Chateau Neuf spellemannslag, North Sea Music, LuckyLoop, Friensemblet and Nunatak.