Important Records keeps their recent string of excellent minimal drone albums intact with this long-neglected gem from the distant past.  Originally released back in 1970 as Was?? on a split with psych legend Bo Anders Persson (Pärson Sound), What?? has woefully only re-surfaced once in the ensuing four decades (in 1997 on Jim O'Rourke and David Grubbs' Dexter's Cigar imprint).  While it sounds quite contemporary today, I cannot begin to imagine how it was originally received, as it is essentially nothing less than an uncomfortably dissonant rejection of nearly every major aspect of Western music (composed at the height of rock's supremacy, no less).
Though it took three years to ultimately get released, Rabe originally composed this piece in the summer of 1967, which is quite noteworthy for a couple of reasons.  While several other experimental visionaries (Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and all of the early electronic composers) were already somewhat established, none of them had recorded anything quite like this.  Also, while Sweden was definitely a very happening place musically around that time, making proto-industrial electronic drone music was most definitely not the zeitgeist.  Rabe was basically an isolated vanguard of one, a fact which is even more remarkable given that he began his career as a dixieland/swing trombonist.
Folke did share some common ground with his more psych-minded countrymen though, as much of his inspiration arose from an interest in Indian music.  The difference is that Rabe was far more interested in ideas of monotony, repetition, and the actual qualities of sound than in more overt borrowing (like buying a sitar).  Recorded using the now-primitive electronic gear at Swedish Radio, Folke's stuttering harmonics and queasy haze of overtones bear absolutely no timbral relation to Indian classical music at all.  Certainly not the original piece, anyway, which sounds like a hypnotic, otherworldly hum hovering above a bed of purring machinery.
The 1999 reissue added a half-speed version though, which is considerably more drone-like and easier on the ears.  Of the two, I prefer the slowed-down version as a listening experience, as the periodic clouds of dissonant harmonizing tones do not feel nearly as harsh or tense at a lower pitch.  Rabe was right to choose the more radical and challenging normal-speed version for the original release though, as it is much stronger artistically (the half-speed version's softened edges blunt its impact).  Greatness and listenability do not always coincide.
Unsurprisingly, the ensuing 40+ years of other drone and minimal music that followed in the wake of What?? serve to dull its impact as well–this reissue is unlikely to blow any minds or kick down any doors of perception in 2013.  It still holds up as a very good album though and packs significantly more bite than I would have expected (though I wish it did not ultimately resolve with a major chord).  I admittedly prefer some of Important's more contemporary minimal drone albums to this one, but the gulf is not a wide one at all–What?? fits quite comfortably into Radigue/Eleh/Hennix pantheon of classics.
 
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