We got this record with a note attached to it in the mail the other day. Signed ‘Codd';

Over thirty years has now past since the bastard child Calculush was born outside a shed near Slemdal in the turbid suburbs of Oslo, Norway, by an unidentified woman. He was then left to die in the woods near Gaustad Mental Hospital.

Luckily for us, someone found him that day. While looking for a tree to pee on in the woods after walking around the area with a patient few minutes earlier, a psychiatrist named Svein-Odd ‘Sodd’ Gundersen found him lying wrapped in a bundle. The until then childless psychiatrist immediately got what he himself considered a very bright idea, albeit it was of course an idea for a shady experiment.

He saved Calculush from certain death, but didn’t tell anyone. He gave him a room in his own basement. He always kept the room locked, and brought Calculush up as if he was his own child. This included a lot of solitude except for the weekly home-schooling, as ‘Sodd’ himself also had been home-schooled by his own parents. This started when Calculush reached a proper age for education, and went on for many years.

Still knowing nothing about the outside world, Calculush started to ask ‘Sodd’ many, many questions. Most of them was very frustrating for the mad psychiatrist, as it was merely about music. ‘Sodd’ hated music boundless, except Beethovens fifth symphony. He played it once for Calculush in a young age with educational purposes only, which he later regretted badly.

The psychiatrists idea was simple. He wanted to find out if he could make a copy of his own knowledge, put it inside a ‘blank’ persons mind, and see what he would become. He was of course hoping for a copy of himself, but came to the conclusion that he had failed on Calculush tenth birthday. He suddenly heard rythmic noises from the basement, stormed down the stairway, unlocked the door, and found Calculush drumming on the table. He then threw him out of the house, and Calculush, who never had met one single living person before, found himself walking down the streets alone – looking into a very uncertain future.

Now, twenty years later, after living as a shy and timid person, simply drumming for money in the streets of Oslo among other things, Calculush finally releases his debut album as a hip-hop producer. The album contains six instrumentals, which has little or nothing to do with his weird upbringing – it’s just Calculush’s way to tell us that he did manage to get a good life in the end, doing what he loves the most. Artwork by Vidar Otterholm.