Early Releases
In 1983 Pedersen launched the one-man project Hospital Blimp, which would later become When. The debut album Drowning but Learning, was released in 1987, with When's trademark collage/cut-up technique already apparent.
In 1988 When released Death in the Blue Lake, inspired by Norwegian author André Bjerke's psychological horror novel of the same name. The album had a strong atmosphere of fear and mourning, and was quite popular in Norwegian black metal circles. An excerpt from the album's A-side was commissioned as an intro to Satyricon's Dark Medieval Times "Walk the path of sorrows". The B-side of the album is an amalgamation of ethnic music, blues harmonica, coughing, psychedelic pop and glissandi effects. Today it is almost impossible to track down a copy of the album.
Black, White & Grey, When's third album, conjured up images of war and urban decay. Chris Cutler (Henry Cow, Art Bears, etc.), who contributed to the album, was also a central inspiration. The album was released on Cutler's RéR Megacorp in 1990.
1992 saw the release of Svartedauen (Norwegian for "The Black Death"), a 38-minute musical description of the ravages of the bubonic plague in Norway around 1349. The album borrows elements from Norwegian folk music, and features a host of disturbing sounds: hearses, moans of the dying, rats, flagellants' whips and a scythe being sharpened, to name but a few.
On 1994's Prefab Wreckage, When slowly started moving from the more abstract soundtracks of the earlier albums and towards a more song-oriented sound. The inner sleeve is a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, one of the album's inspirations.
In 1997 When released Gynt, which according to the liner notes is a "satiric play on Edward Grieg's Peer Gynt. Inspired by Henrik Ibsen." As Pedersen says: "I tried to put irony into the music. There is a lot of humour in When's music, it's not bloody serious all the time."
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