Af Alexander Julin Mortensen – foto: Emil Hornstrup Jakobsen

SØS Gunver Ryberg har markeret sig i adskillige kunstneriske kontekster over de seneste år. Hun har skrevet musik til bl.a. computerspil, film, forestillinger og performancekunst. Og så har hun udgivet EP’er og et album, der med god grund er nået langt ud over de danske grænser. Sidste år spillede hun bl.a. til et arrangement i Manchester kurateret af Aphex Twin og udgav albummet “Entangled” via det tyske selskab Avian, der også har udsendt The Empire Line samt en længere række udgivelser fra Shifted og SHXCXCHCXSH. 

Hendes seneste EP, “WHYT030”, udkom i slutningen af maj via engelske AD93 (tidl. Whities) og byder på seks kompositioner, der pendulerer mellem at være frenetiske og mere lavmælte. I begge tilfælde føles musikken dog både intens og ildevarslende: Overordnet set er det en nærmest faretruende stemning, der kendetegner “WHYT030”. Ryberg fortæller, at udgivelsen for hende “handler om skabelse og destruktion, men særligt som en forudsætning for nye visioner og nye begyndelser”. Og det giver umiddelbart også rigtig god mening at høre “WHYT030” gennem dette nærmest procesfilosofiske prisme: Som en musik, der er i konstant forandring; en forandring, som også er en forudsætning for, at musikken ikke ophører.

I anledning af udgivelsen bringer Passive/Aggressive et interview med Ryberg, hvor hun bl.a. fortæller om arbejdsprocessen bag den, musikkens temaer samt den inspiration, hun drager fra andre kunstformer.

P/A: Hvordan vil du beskrive “WHYT 030” sammenlignet med sidste års album, “Entangled”?

SGR: “”Entangled” er skabt i 2019, hvor “WHYT 030” er numre, som jeg skabte tilbage i 2011, 2012, 2014 og et track er fra 2019. De har fulgt mig gennem årene, og indimellem har jeg spillet dem live. Da Nic Tasker, som står for AD93, valgte dem til udgivelsen, var jeg glad for, at de kom videre. Processen med de to udgivelser har været meget forskellig. “Entangled” er opstået ud fra live sets med udgangspunkt i min trommemaskine og nogle live takes fra modular og kyma, hvor “WHYT 030” er kompositioner, der er skabt i computeren og senere overført til hardware synths og trommemaskiner, hvor det var muligt.”

P/A: Du har adskillige gange komponeret musik til andre kunstformer. Hvordan har dit arbejde med at producere for bl.a. teater, film, performancekunst og spil påvirket din tilgang til at komponere musik mere overordnet?

SGR: “For mig er det meget naturligt at udtrykke min musik igennem flere medier sideløbende med mine koncerter og udgivelser. I samarbejdsproduktioner holder jeg fast i mit musikalske udtryk og ser det kun som en yderligere udvikling af mit udtryk. Der er en researchproces i hvert projekt ud i filosofi, litteratur, kunst, videnskab, verdenshistorien etc. At være i samarbejde og kollektivt belyse en problematik fra forskellige vinkler gør mig mere hel som komponist og menneske, oplever jeg. Musik er for mig intensiteten i lydens klang, bevægelse, emotionalitet, spiritualitet. Jeg arbejder ikke inden for en genre, men ud fra universelle grundfølelser. Jeg komponerer ikke i strukturer som dem, man kender fra musikkens verden. Jeg forholder mig til musikken som et levende materiale, jeg formgiver. Hvert nummer har sin egen form og er sit eget eksperiment. Tracket “Mirage Of Spiral Wavelengths” på “WHYT 030” er startet ud fra en field recording, hvor computeren omdanner optagelsen til midi. Derfra gik jeg i gang med at komponere. ”In The Core” er lavet til en danseforestilling i 2012. ”Flux” er oprindeligt også lavet til en danseforestilling, og så har jeg ombearbejdet den til udgivelsen”. 

P/A: Hvordan inspirerer andre kunstformer i sig selv din tilgang til musik? Er der noget bestemt fra teatret, film eller performance-kunsten, der har påvirket din musik?

SGR: “Andre kunstformer giver mig andre måder at opleve eller være med og i musikken. Jeg skaber komposition, form, lydmaterialet og koncepter ud fra forskellige vinkler. Egentlig føler jeg, at de principper om skabelse fra kunsten er mere lig min egen tilgang. Jeg kom også til den elektroniske musik fra lydkunsten og mit arbejde med installationer. At komponere oplever jeg som en skulptur, jeg formgiver og bliver ved med at bearbejde. At gå på en udstilling og fordybe mig i værker, som giver en refleksion over komposition, form, materialitet, koncept, livet og samfundet, er den bedste inspiration for mig musikalsk i øjeblikket.”

P/A: “WHYT 030” handler efter sigende bl.a. om forholdet mellem skabelse og destruktion. Kan du uddybe, hvordan det kommer til udtryk i din musik, eller hvordan det påvirkede din proces med at lave den? 

SGR: “Det handler om skabelse og destruktion, men særligt som en forudsætning for nye visioner og nye begyndelser. Numrene har haft forskellige versioner, siden jeg oprindeligt skabte dem. Årene er gået. Livet og samfundet ændrer sig. Jeg har haft mange forskellige oplevelser med disse tracks, når jeg har spillet dem live. Skabelsen, destruktionen og nye visioner er for mig mere den universelle grundfølelse af det grundvilkår, at vi alle bliver til og forgår. At alt er flygtigt – i flux – og enhver begyndelse indvarsler også en fremtidig bortgang. Det er op til lytteren, hvad de oplever. Vi lever i en tid, hvor det er tydeligt, at nogle gamle strukturer må brydes ned for at give plads til nye begyndelser. Det gælder både Covid19, klimasituationen, opgøret med den indgroede racisme og de strukturer i samfundet, som vedligeholder ubalancer i vores samfund. Min musik relaterer ikke direkte til disse begivenheder, men opholder sig ved grundfølelsen af forbundet mellem skabelse og destruktion, som kan føde nye visioner. Udgivelsen har været planlagt i over et år, og musikken er skabt i løbet af det sidste årti. Musikken vibrerer omkring ændringerne.

P/A: På coveret til “WHYT 030” har du fået trykt en tekst forfattet af den danske filosof Jon Auring Grimm. Hvordan relaterer den sig til din musik og dens tematikker?

SGR: “Jeg ønskede at reflektere over musikken med en forfatter, som kunne hjælpe mig med at sætte ord på mine tanker og proces.  Det var vigtigt for mig, at det var med én, der ikke ville låse mig fast i genrer eller for entydige referencer, og som har en stor musikforståelse. Musikken har dybere lag, og jeg havde brug for sparring til at udfolde det i ord. Derfor var det fantastisk at tale med Jon. Vi havde nogle samtaler, som hjalp mig til at konkretisere i ord, hvad musikken er for mig, og derved kunne jeg også finde frem til de endelige titler. Jon skrev en tekst efter vores samtale, og jeg sendte den til AD 93 som inspiration til coveret sammen med mine egne tanker. Kunstnerne bag coveret, Alex McCullough og Noah Baker, endte med at gøre det til en del af coveret. For mig er udgivelsen om forandringsproces og flux. Om skabelse, destruktion og visioner.

Teksten er Jon Auring Grimms tekst om hvert track og er inspireret af Heraklits citat “The sun is new every day”. Et af hans fragmenter lyder: “Man kan ikke bade to gange i den samme flod” – for det vand, man stiger op af, flyder videre, så næste gang bader man i noget andet vand. I den ustandselige forandring finder alting sin modsætning. Herved opstår den spænding, der skaber noget nyt, der så igen finder sin modsætning.”

Info: “WHYT30” udkom i slutningen af maj på AD 93.

Marcela Lucatelli “Anew” (self-released, 2020) – review by Macon Holt

“Anew” is the latest album from the Copenhagen-based, Brazillian composer/vocalist/concept engineer (to borrow Kodwo Eshun’s term) Marcela Lucatelli. The record sees her taking her expertise in extended vocal techniques as a way to perform an improvisational exploration of a computer programming manual while providing herself with piano accompaniment. But the facts of the record seem to be beside the point and belie just how challenging, enjoyable, funny and uncannily poignant this experimental record can be. And a lot of this capacity has to do with where it seems Lucatelli positions herself in relation to her work and how she allows this esoteric material to transform her. 

When I asked Lucatelli about the compositional methodology that underpinned the record, she told me that, for her, part of it had to do with the construction of the contrivance from which this suite emerged. Here she was, a Brazillian composer and vocalist, trained mostly in the prestigious conservatories of Denmark, sitting down in front of a piano to make an album of vocal music derived from this technical and obscure text. For her, it is all the lines of associations. The webbed networks of meaning that unfurl from the collision of elements are all captured in her music. This is what craves attention in Lucatelli’s work. So indeed, what are we to make of this coming together of person, training, text and techniques? 

To regard it as simply a critical comment upon the state of our lives in our technology-saturated society would be to impose an alienating logic upon the music that fails to fully engage with the happenstance of how all its constituent parts came together. And doing so would also neglect how, throughout her oeuvre, Lucatelli has shown herself to be much more than just a critic of the world before her but also an empathetic and engaged listener to the hum of human and non-human foibles alike. 

For example, her solo performance piece from 2019, “Run, Run, Run” sees her inhabiting, to use Holger Schulze’s term, the sonic personas of various pop hits that share the title “Run, Run, Run”. And whether these personas are a Statue of Liberty struggling to hold it together through a troublingly late onset of the oral stage, a monk whose inability to light a candle releases the demonic within him, one-of-the-guys at the social club whose laughter gives out as the void it was covering over starts its gaseous escape into the room, a sci-fi lounge singer who suddenly has to negotiate with everyone on the room to survive as time races on, or the tyrannosaurus rex that discovered paleo-beatboxing, Lucatelli approaches the inhabitants of her sound worlds with nuance. This is not to say her personas are spared criticism, only that it never comes for free.

With her capacity to draw out these complex characters and highlight their absurdities in only a few moments, the most fascinating thing about Lucatelli’s new record is where it places structure, which sounds like a hopelessly technical reading but it is actually what makes it super exciting. Because these personas imply worlds within which they fit or don’t, with systems of control and liberation and the narratives of lives lived well, or just lived in the face of no other options. 

While it’s not so much structure in the sense of how we understand the music’s temporal arch that I want to attend to here, it is worth mentioning if only to illustrate the cohesive nature of these improvised compositions. One need only listen to the first minute of music on the record to realise how subtly Lucatelli’s control of formal structure through improvisation is. In the opening of the first track—addressed to the legendary vocal composer Meredith Monk, with whom Lucatelli had corresponded as a teenager—“Pequena Abertura (To Meredith)”, we get what feels like a false start of dissonant chords and strained humming that eventually provides a certain semblance of stability. This is then taken apart by panicked half-whispered ramblings. Finally, the hum returns more consonant than before but also defeated in a way. The gentle chords of the outro feel like a gesture of requiem as the subtle tension of the harmony just slightly resembles the timbre of the initial hum.

As elegant as this is—and it is just one of many examples of such structural cohesion—it’s not what makes Lucatelli’s work as a composer/improviser remarkable. It’s the fact that she is, as Kodwo Eshun might put it, a concept engineer that makes her work on this album stand out. 

So, over and above the musicological structure we can find the narrative structures complexly woven through the work in the evocations produced as the contrivances under these compositions comes into contact with the inflexions co-produced with the text as Lucatelli articulates it. Every utterance is a situated personality. With each articulation of the word “define”, on the track of the same name, for example, we are placed in a different first-person position. Before us is a manual for computer programming that puts forth the possibility of a closed, coherent universal language. An edifice that crumbles as it comes into contact with any creature that would attempt to use it. Each verbal articulation sees characters are born, grown into adulthood and make the reasonable compromises that have led them to be staring, at a loss for comprehension, at this manual and screaming (if only inside) in desperation at this utterly alienating terminology. 

But this is but one story. There are a great many others within each piece. Just take for example “This Can Happen”, which is based on a phrase that is at once innocuous and yet laden with potential as the antecedent of “this” shifts with each singing. This minor technical achievement, this minor error, this romance, this tragedy, this joy, this despair, this disappointment, this seduction, this frustration, this catastrophe, this resignation can all happen, and they all exceed what the manual predicts. 

“Solely Solutions” takes us on a longer, more stable journey with only two personas that I can detect. At first, we follow someone ensnared in the kind of madness expected by the logic of the manual as if it were a matter of course. We are then pulled deeper in as digital artefacts in the sound blur the line between the operator and the system they ostensibly manage. And then we zoom out on the word “likewise” and reveal a world that considers this kind of productive madness to be normal. 

The penultimate track is the heart-rending “There is no use”. Lucatelli sings “There is no use to precalculate” over and over. At first, it is a mournful ballad in the vein of some kind of American minimalism but this is quickly sped through to something more intense. As the hammering on the keys increases and Lucatelli’s vocal becomes more frantic as it ascends through the octaves—eventually reaching those hights associated with the work of Meredith Monk—the sense of resignation with which the track started and that has permeated the characters of this album is recontextualized as being constitutive of a much larger system. And that system hums merrily along with or without our active commitment to it. Indeed, it feeds on our resignation, and the programming manual, and all that it implies, was just a means by which to harvest it. 

On “Anew”, Lucatelli has taken this computer programming manual as an artefact, like an anthropologist would, of the collective fictions we call our world. In turn, she has constructed her own sonic fiction from it. But in her retelling of the stories that constitute our day to day lives, we have failed to notice the absurdity of everything that bores and frustrates us. And as such we have not yet learned to grasp the intoxicating joy of following where that absurdity may lead. 

Info: “Anew” was released on July 3rd 2020. Marcela Lucatelli’s new music theatre piece, “There’s a load to it”, will premiere at Ultima Festival in Oslo on September 18th performed by Pinquins Percussion.

Festival of Endless Gratitude, Koncertkirken, Copenhagen, September 10-13 – live report by Wieland Rambke

For the 13th year now, Festival Of Endless Gratitude opened its doors for an adventurous audience. What today is a festival celebrating experimental music from around the globe has gone through a long history of changes now: Originally a festival with a focus on New Weird America and outsider folk music, FOEG has gradually expanded into a true feast for those who enjoy sonic expeditions into wildly different directions.

For long, the organizers were uncertain whether or not the festival might at all be held under the current set of Covid-19 rules. But luckily, Festival Of Endless Gratitude finally came about. They were forced to scale down, though: Traditionally held at KPH Volume, this year’s edition of FOEG found itself at Koncertkirken in Nørrebro. And yes, it is weirdly funny when an event is held at a secularized church, only to be opened with a sort of quick sermon on the regulations regarding Corona: Thou shalt remain in your assigned seat. Thou shalt follow the arrows on the floor. Thou shalt not loiter at the bar. Well, what can you say, 2020 certainly is a special year. The smell of disinfectant has daily life for us all. Who would have thought?

As always, FOEG has chosen artists who for the most part are operating under the radar, artists dedicated to realizing their vision on their own terms, artists who have nothing to prove and all to give. The common aspect for the artists assembled is an unbridled love for the possibilities of music.

Blake Hargreaves opened the festival with a set of miniatures played on the churches’ own organ. He has been performing research into the properties of church organs across the world for a while now, bringing out their individual quirks, and combining his findings into semi-improvised performances. At times somber, at times humorous, these miniatures played out between deep, rumbling drones, and refreshing sprinkles of high-register notes. Trees swaying in the breeze were projected onto the walls, and sometimes I felt reminded of the old 90s role-playing games I used to play as a kid, what with the conjunction of mystical notes from the organ together with the projection of trees where you could see every pixel. Maybe I was just playing too much as a child. You can’t blame me though: „Secret of Mana“ was a really good game!

Later, guitarist Raphael Rogiński played healing music from the Jewish tradition of 18th Century Ukraine and Poland. The gentle instrumentals had the esoteric, yet very concrete purpose of rekindling the life energy of the ailing. Re-interpreting traditions means to keep traditions alive, and this project is not dedicated to mere preservation: Instead, it is giving new life to the rich musical tradition that he has chosen to work from. It made me dream.

By the time that Bankerot entered the stage to perform his solo work „Vampyr“, we were deep into the night: Elegic, romantic and melancholic, like vampires themselves are, these compositions work really well as a soundtrack to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent classic „Vampyr“ from 1932. I tried it out when I got back home, playing the album while watching the film, and I can only recommend you try it out yourself. The two work really well together.

Lamin Fofana began the second evening with a dense set of ominous and ghostly tones. Taking a DJ’s approach to his performance, he was mixing his own musical stems with heavily-processed samples of jazz music and other „secret records“ as he called them, choosing not to disclose them in a chat we had after the gig. Heavy on delays, the performance was contracting and expanding in time. A sequence of scattered drum hits coalesced into a rhythm section that seemed to stumble around itself, echoing the often loose, yet very tense feel of free-jazz drumming. He later complained about some screw-ups during the concert, saying that not having played live in 6 months had hampered his performance, but that wasn’t obvious to the listener: In fact, the voice sample he used that had accidentally turned out garbled and truncated during the concert was a perfect fit for a set of cryptic sequences that refused to stay in one place for too long.

With his interpretation of „Trio om tiden der gik“, originally a composition for recorder, cello and piano by Danish avantgarde composer Henning Christiansen, Anders Lauge Meldgaard has undertaken a meticulous process of transcribing the original piece into a composition for 12 instruments, entitled „12 instrumenter til Henning“. Meldgaard chose to let each instrument play at a different tempo, creating a flurry of notes brimming with energy, refracting the original composition into individual strands like light broken up by a prism. This was complemented nicely by a projection of the notation that had been processed through a kaleidoscopic algorithm. Performed by Adam Woer on the flute with Anders Bach and Anders Lauge Meldgaard helming the electronics, the result was a tight performance with a unique charm.

The night drew to an end with Minais B, who played a somber and dreamy set of drones and arpeggios on organ and synthesizers, drawing inspiration from traditional Danish hymns and church music.

As a whole, the festival had a tendency towards ghostly and meditative music, as exemplified by the feverish compositions of Saturday’s first artist, Marja Ahti: Warped tones featured extensively. I heard lots of modulated sine waves and complex noise spectra together with natural field recordings. Sonic texture is a focal point of her body of work. A diffuse and dread-filled atmosphere unfolded; Ahti’s music creates the paradox of claustrophobic landscapes.

Lieven Martens seems to apply similar methods, but to a wholly different end: Employing sampling and recording techniques like an instrument, his music is a wondrous and intimate excursion into the more blissful forms of ambient, and his performance here was no exception.

It was time for what undeniably was the biggest name on this years line-up: Manuel Göttsching, the famed composer who originally made a name for himself as the guitarist of seminal krautrock outfit Ash Ra Tempel. Together with the Danish guitar sextet Cirklen, he performed a reworked version of his legendary 1974 record, „Inventions for Electric Guitar“. The composition, released in 1975, was originally played and recorded by Göttsching alone. In the composition, tape delay features heavily not as an audio effect, but as a compositional tool: Individually played notes are layered with the echoes of the notes played before, gradually creating chords. „Inventions…“ is a game of adding and removing notes in an ever-going cycle. And by virtue of this inherently gamelike aspect, the piece lends itself naturally to be played in a group.

For the performance with Cirklen at FOEG, the original notation had been expanded and reworked for 7 guitars. Instead of the tape delay apparatus, it was the players themselves who picked up on each others parts, overlapping and replaying their notes, processing the original piece through a form of instantaneous, crossreferential network. This opened up the piece for a more free-form interpretation: Instead of notes merely being echoed, all players applied varying techniques to their playing, with bent notes and palm-muted strings creating ever-more complex layers, chords and variations, embellishing each others playing with ever merely falling into repetition.

„Inventions“ provides a basic structure to work from, where every performance becomes unique. Instead of a tight and rigid notation, „Inventions“ is a framework. And beyond the technical, it is open for intuition and spontaneity. It was obvious that Göttsching and Cirklen have performed this together before and, thus, have sharpened their understanding of each other. Every member in this performance enjoyed the full trust of their peers. This collective strength created a performance of pure magic.

Gate Hand, consisting of Claus Haxholm and Francesca Burattelli, was something I was looking forward to: Haxholm is a household name within the Danish music underground. For more than a decade now he has produced a steady flow of releases, from black metal and dungeon synth to poetry-infused sound art ventures all the way to his heavy-hitting electronic music work under the name Assembler. Gate Hand is a joint project with musician and performance artist Francesca Burattelli. The duo played a highly suggestive blend of drones and jagged beats. Vocals were plentiful, from humming to screaming. I felt reminded of Thought Gang, the musical child of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti: Not so much by superficial similarities, but rather since both formations are composed of two individuals from very different backgrounds who clearly know how to communicate with each other to create a third, shared space. Both acts excel at a form of intuitive story-telling, and they share a sensitivity for all things gothic and industrial; not as music genres, but in terms of imagery and emotions evoked.

The final day of FOEG was opened by composer Sandra Boss, who performed a live-rendition of her work „Luft“. Using a self-built organ apparatus driven by MIDI-controlled motors and airtubes, she played „Luft“ in a new form, different from the original release, but equally as captivating. When the motors rev up, they become part of the composition itself. „Luft“ („Air“) is clearly the topic of this piece, where short bursts of notes and long, drawn-out drones are charging the room with a mesmerizing atmosphere.

As Katrine Grarup Elbo closed the festival with „Slutsang“, we were presented with a circle of songs for 5 voices that Elbo accompanied on the violin. Later, a piano joined in. The lyrics were based on fragments by Danish poet Julie Mendel, while the vocal parts drew heavily on Nordic folklore. Lots of frozen reverberations and looped sequences adorned this performance of quietly longing songs, with Elbo’s violin playing sickly-sweet miniatures that at times would be dispelled by gut-wrenching screeches from her choice instrument. And thus, a festival of adventurous exploration came to an end.

When I talked to Manuel Göttsching about his concert, he related what it was like growing up in post-war West Germany where the 50s were a time of denial and silence. Culturally, this was the high-period of Schlager and Heimatfilm, sentimental productions that channelled and communicated absolutely nothing, and whose sole purpose was to entertain in the most harmless way possible. Platitudes became the standard, and there was no place for confrontation or exploration. Films and music of that time evoked a drowsy world of safety and security, with a particular fondness for alpine backdrops. Kitsch ruled everything, and rock and roll in West Germany had no identity of its own, instead only trying to emulate the American idols: Tame and pale copies of the originals of the U.S. And the U.K. delivered the illusion of originality, yet it was never more than a bloodless simulation. This atmosphere denied reality and the world itself – it was administered escapism. It was this suffocating atmosphere that Manuel Göttsching grew up in, and it was from this context that a new generation of young Germans would go all-in for experimentation, opening up the windows of their minds to let in the fresh air of a new day. This generation found new and unknown paths for itself, creating their own work based on what was uniquely their own vision, instead of merely chasing the next prescribed fad. And still in the 70s, West Germany lacked any fundamental business structure for rock music, and it was precisely this lack which had made the free explorations of the so-called Krautrock acts possible.

Funnily enough, Manuel Göttsching re-interpreted this very term in the interview: „Kraut“ as a German word means weed, or plant life that grows uncontrolled, and that is how he defined the era of 1970s rock music in Germany: As a wild forest where things came about organically, without any need for justification, free from mercantile motivations. From the beginning of rock and roll with Elvis Presley, American and British acts had been under the tight control of their managers. It wasn’t until Jimi Hendrix had started his own independent studio in New York that he would finally gain the freedom he had sought for many years, yet the interests of his shrewd management still pushed him from concert to concert. Likewise, by their third album, the Doors found themselves locked into a grinding process of manufacturing songs in the studio to keep up with their contractual obligations. Groups from America and Great Britain had to produce for a defined market, and for the commercial interests of record executives.

There was no such market or business network in Germany at the time, and Manuel Göttsching remembers this as an egalitarian period of freely flowing creativity and exploration. Roadies would be managers would be agents, and I couldn’t help but see a similar spirit in Festival Of Endless Gratitude: A festival driven by nothing else but a great love for great music.

Esther “Esther” (Textur, 2020) – review by Macon Holt

The second release from the Copenhagen based label Textur is the self-titled EP by Esther; a collaboration between producers Martin Messell and Andreas Høegh. Over the six tracks, the duo reconstitute the audio of live multi-instrumental improvisation into pieces of glitch infused ambience.

On many tracks, the process is completely obscured by the production but as the record progresses this veil is slowly lifted to reveal some of the acoustic origins of the sounds. It is kind of like a beatless expression or summary of the aesthetic journey taken by the likes of artists such as Boards of Canada. 

There is a glacial quality to the music that has, in a very welcome way, been accelerated. All the shifts are gradual but they seem to be regulated by a sense of unarticulated motion that gives the tracks a determined sense of motion that crackles with excitement. This impression is one supported by the group’s press release for the record which states that: “Conceptually, the music isn’t carried by anything but the simple, spontaneous desire to create music and an almost childish fascination with electronically manipulated sounds and the toys that shape them.” And while I partially buy that with reference to a track like “Retina” which seems to be running through all that is possible in terms of digital manipulation in a kind of joyful call and response escalation between the two producers, I think it sells much of the record short.  

For example, the underlying harmonic movement in the bass on the track “Zelda” gives all the shimmering detail on top a sense that something more meaningful, perhaps even sadder, is being articulated. It is a simple progression, but its relentlessness and the amount of space it fills up compared to all that surrounds it imparts a kind of fragility on the other musical material. There is something significant going on here but what, exactly, is unclear.

Similarly on the next track, the enigmatically titled “Pixel Smear”, the tremolo disintegration of the chord progression begins to reveal something beneath the surface. However, the reluctant tension of the release curve of these chords suggests that whatever is down there wishes to remain contained. We hear this conflicting motivation again in the insistence and dissonance of the counter melodies that cut through the lead line synth on “Since We Talked”. This is further compounded on this track through the subtle nostalgia evoked by the seaside samples that murmur under the instrumental material.  

These would seem to be elements of this record that work against the stated intentions of the musicians in creating it. Evident on every track are just too many carefully articulated decisions for it to be the case that they were motivated only by the simple joy of creation. And the richly layered sounds, chocked full of subtle sonic references and evocative samples that just carry too much associative power with them to merely be the artists’ product simply following their bliss. Indeed, it is the tension on the EP between some kind of shimmering surface joy and underlying complication of the stuttering breaks, soured detuned synths and harmonic counter-narratives that make these soundscapes ache. There is a sadness to the joy foregrounded on Esther’s debut release that has either slipped past the duo that made it or that they would rather ignore or run from. But that desire to run has to be worked through rather than succumbed to. Because, just as they have been able to investigate the hidden depths of the acoustic material they worked with, the way they have put it all together has produced a suite of sound art with a beguiling and, at times, painful subtext that it is worth dwelling in and upon. 

Info: Esther’s debut release was released by Textur in the beginning of August.

Essay af Mikkel Sönnichsen

På det seneste har jeg lagt mærke til byens lyde. Jeg bor ud til en vej, og jeg opholder mig aldrig på min altan, for der er for meget larm fra trafikken. Når jeg går ud på gaden, accepterer jeg larmen, for den er del af den by, jeg bor i, men jeg undrer mig også over, hvorfor det er så beroligende at lytte til havet eller skoven, når det har den modsatte effekt at lytte til byen.

Overalt er det jo bare luft, der vibrerer, men i skoven fylder vibrationerne mig med følelsen af fred, mens der i byen skabes en ubalance i mig. Hvis man kunne slukke for lydene i byen, ville jeg gøre det indimellem, for jeg er sikker på, at jeg ville opleve samme ro, som rammer mig, når jeg slukker en emhætte.

Den mytiske pianist Glenn Gould fandt ud af, at det var lettere for ham at lære et nyt stykke musik, hvis han øvede med en forstyrrende lydkilde ved siden af sit klaver. Det opdagede han en dag, der blev tændt en støvsuger i det rum, hvor han øvede en fuga af Mozart. Støvsugerens larm gjorde det umuligt at høre de stille passager i fugaen, mens de højlydte passager lød, som spillede han med hovedet under vand. Selvom han ikke kunne høre meget af, hvad han spillede, var han ikke i tvivl om, at det lød bedre. Han kunne med sin krop mærke, hvordan han spillede bedre. Akustiske associationer, som knyttede sig til berøringerne af klaverets tangenter, gjorde, at han opdagede, at det var langt mere stimulerende at lytte til musikken med sit indre øre. Efter denne oplevelse øvede han i mange år med en forstyrrende lydkilde – en Beatles-plade eller tv’et, der viste en western – ved siden af sit instrument.

Jeg har kun kendt til boligpriser, der steg i byen og faldt på landet. Der hvor jeg er vokset op, vil 10 familier kunne finde et sted at bo for de samme penge, som det koster én familie at bo i storbyen. Mange i min generation skal finde sig til rette i et voksenliv, hvor økonomisk absurditet er en realitet, og selvom den nærliggende løsning er at flytte væk fra byen, bliver jeg her alligevel. Jeg tror, en af grundene er, at byens larm har samme effekt på mig, som støvsugeren havde på Glenn Gould. Jeg får ofte idéer, når jeg cykler på arbejde eller går en tur. Når jeg træder ud på gaden, oplever jeg at være omgivet af lyd, og formuleringen af mine tanker bliver overdøvet. Der er ikke længere nogen indre monolog, og jeg begynder at lytte til mig selv med mit indre øre i stedet. Trykket udefra skubber mig derind, hvor jeg kommer i kontakt med den del af min kreativitet, der hele tiden arbejder i underbevidstheden. Jeg lytter pludselig til en indre sandhed, der fortæller mig langt mere om den verden, jeg lever i, end jeg umiddelbart selv troede, jeg vidste. En sandhed, der er formuleret med følelser, billeder og dufte frem for ord.

I den første del af mit musikliv spillede jeg trommer. I den næste skiftede jeg til elektronisk musik og skrev og komponerede i samspil med maskiner i stedet for mennesker. Det var byen, der var skyld i dette. I byen er alting altid til forhandling. Der opstår ny musik, nye restauranter, nye idéer, hurtigere end jeg kan nå at forstå, og jeg flytter hele tiden selv med disse strømninger, bevidst og ubevidst. Min identitet er i automatisk udvikling, mens byen bygger sig selv op og bryder sig selv ned igen. Det var oplevelser i byen, der gav mig inspiration til at lave meget af den musik, jeg har udgivet de sidste par år, men jeg kan mærke, at jeg er på vej hen til en nyt sted. Når jeg tænder for støvsugeren, ser jeg billeder af et menneske, der spiller trommer. Jeg kan mærke, hvordan musik kan manifestere sig omkring dette billede. Jeg kan mærke, at hvis jeg får billedet til at blive til virkelighed, vil nye billeder opstå, og disse billeder vil guide mig i retning af ny musik.

Hvis man ikke selv har prøvet at skabe kunst, har man ofte en idé om, at inspiration fører til produktivitet. Desværre er det ikke altid sådan. Inspiration kan også føre til frustration, fordi man ikke kan virkeliggøre det, man er inspireret til at opnå. Nogle gange ender det med, at man giver op. Andre gange fortsætter man. Hvis man vælger at lytte til sin inspiration, laver man som kunstner en aftale med sig selv om at følge den til dørs. At kæmpe for at få den lille flamme, som alle store idéer starter med at være, til at blive til et gigantisk bål. Men man må beskytte idéen mod vind og vejr fra virkeligheden omkring den. Man må lægge sig selv imellem verden og idéen, for at idéen ikke skal dø. Man omkredser idéen med sig selv og lader éns eget helbred blive den konto, man betaler fra, for at få idéen til at blive levende. Og når det lykkes, har man skabt noget, der kan leve for evigt, lang tid efter man ikke selv er her længere.

Bliver man katalysator for tilstrækkeligt mange gode idéer, bliver man til sidst selv en idé. Man bliver en myte, og alt, man har rørt, bliver en historie i sig selv. Glenn Gould vil for altid blive husket for sine indspilninger – både bag klaveret og de banebrydende radioprogrammer, han lavede – men på et museum i Canada kan man også se den stol, han sad på, når han spillede klaver. Lige meget hvor i verden han rejste hen, spillede han alle koncerter i hele sit liv fra kanten af den samme stol. Det var en almindelig spisebordsstol, som han havde savet benene af. Den stod så lavt på gulvet, at hans ansigt næsten flugtede med tangenterne på klaveret. Stofsædet på stolen var slidt væk, og den blev holdt sammen af tape og ståltråd. Stolen har, ligesom musikken, overlevet kunstneren, men den måde, han sad på, og den klang, der kom ud af den måde at sidde på, vil blive husket i lige så lang tid, som vi bosætter os i byer, mens vi længes efter at bo i naturen.

Info: Mikkel Sönnichsen har produceret og udgivet musik som third wife og er medejer af spillestedet Øen på Nørrebro.

Af Alexander Julin Mortensen

Bjarke Rasmussen har under sit musikalske alias Grøn udgivet bånd- og vinyl-udgivelser siden 2013. Selvom flere af dem varierer i stil og stemning, kan man overordnet godt betegne projektet som minimalistisk og ambient. Der er tale om et underspillet og meget umiddelbart udtryk, hvilket man alene i år har kunnet høre på fire forskellige udgivelser, heriblandt via danske Infinite Waves, som Rasmussen også selv driver.

På papiret er Grøn et meget ordinært ambient-projekt, der inkorporerer klingende klaver og cello-strøg i de sfæriske lydflader på flere af sine udgivelser. Alligevel er der meget at komme efter i Grøns musik, bl.a. på det seneste album, “Aldrig mere vinter”, der er indspillet i Blågårds Kirke og mastereret af Lawrence English. Med albummet understreger Rasmussen klart, at det ikke er alene er originaliteten, der afgør, hvorvidt musik er interessant eller dragende. Ambient og minimalistisk musik med cello og klaver er som nævnt hørt før, men det ændrer ikke på, at musikken på “Aldrig mere vinter” i den grad rammer mig.

“Aldrig mere vinter” føles på mærkværdig vis som et meget varmt værk, der skaber et rum, jeg har haft lyst til at vende tilbage til og udforske. Mærkværdigheden – eller med andre ord min fascination – består netop i, at jeg ikke havde forventet, at en sådan varme kunne opstå af et lydbillede, der samtidigt føles enormt skrøbeligt. Samtidig overrasker det mig, at der er så meget at udforske i musikken. For hvordan kan det være tilfældet, når musikken netop er så enkel og blottet? Der er jo netop ikke tale om et væld af auditive lag, der dækker over og skjuler hinanden, et tårnhøjt tempo eller uforudsigelige kompositoriske krumspring. Mit bedste bud må være, at det skyldes, at “Aldrig mere vinter” netop illustrerer, hvordan en helhed ofte er mere end summen af sine enkeltdele. 

I anledning af albumudgivelsen bringer P/A her et interview med Grøn.

P/A: På “Aldrig mere vinter” vender du efter flere udgivelser tilbage til dit oprindelige musikalske udgangspunkt, netop 4-spors båndoptageren. Hvorfor var det interessant for dig?

BR: “Det var faktisk min gode ven Lasse, der en aften, efter jeg havde spillet noget af min nye musik for ham, fortalte mig, at han syntes, min musik hang bedre sammen, dengang jeg arbejdede med bånd. Han har altid været dejlig ærlig om min musik. Så tanken om at tage båndoptageren frem igen hang kun i mit hoved i få dage, før jeg børstede støvet af mine båndoptagere igen.

I nogle år havde jeg arbejdet mig igennem en masse forskellige synthesizere, samplere, sequencere og var til sidst endt i noget, der skulle være mit endelige værktøj: modular-synthesizeren. Alt var synkroniseret, kontrolleret og patchet i et virvar af kabler. Til sidst brugte jeg snarere tid på at finde nye arbejdsmetoder end på at få optaget noget eller lavet noget færdigt. Så det var på mange måder befriende at vende tilbage til de fire spor, som båndoptageren havde. Alle de mange led, der pludselig blev fjernet, gav mig plads til at lytte meget mere til den musik, jeg lavede. Samtidig har båndet den kvalitet, at det på en måde arbejder for én – eller med én. Der er ingen “undo”-knap, og man bliver til tider nødt til atfølge maskinens flow. Det kan være sundt i en kreativ proces.”

P/A: Der hersker en meget intens skrøbelighed over musikken på “Aldrig mere vinter”, som jeg oplever den. Kan du sige noget nærmere om, hvilken stemning du har ønsket at skabe på albummet?

BR: “Jeg ved ikke, om en del af skrøbeligheden måske kommer fra båndoptagerens lyd, men jeg har bevidst arbejdet med flere lag af gentagelser, der arbejder med hinanden. Det har krævet en masse luft i hvert lag for at give plads til, at hvert element kan flette sig sammen med de andre. Samtidig har jeg med vilje ikke fjernet den støj, der naturligt kommer fra at optage på båndene. Det er igen et af de steder, hvor jeg har overgivet mig til mediet og ladet det blive en del af kompositionerne.”

P/A: Du har indspillet “Aldrig mere vinter” i Blågårds Kirke i København. Har stedets atmosfære på nogen måde påvirket musikken?

BR: “Jeg har altid været utroligt glad for rumklang og klange generelt. Så det er jo helt fantastisk at få lov at arbejde i så stort et rum med så meget rumklang. Jeg har haft en del sessions i kirken i løbet af det sidste halvandet års tid. At arbejde i så store rum minder lidt om arbejdet med bånd – man får et eller andet foræret, som man ikke selv er herre over. De forskellige frekvenser lyder anderledes forskellige steder i rummet, og hele huset bliver på den måde en del af musikken. Der er virkelig mange små lyde, der også bliver forstærket, som man bedst lægger mærke til, når man er der alene. Lyde udefra, lyde indefra og ikke mindst lyden af én selv.”

P/A: Albummets titel – “Aldrig mere vinter” – er valgt på baggrund af håbet om den endeløse sommer, du havde som barn, samt som en kritisk erkendelse af vinteren som en årstid, hvis eksistens trues som en konsekvens af klimaforandringer. Har den højaktuelle klimakrise og dine egne barndomsminder også været en inspirationskilde i selve arbejdsprocessen med musikken?

BR: “Jeg ved ikke, om det er, fordi jeg er halvvejs gennem 30’erne og derfor er begyndt at kigge tilbage på tiden, “da jeg var ung…” Men vinteren er bestemt ikke den samme som for bare 10 år siden. Selvom jeg igennem årene begyndte at holde mere og mere af vinteren, husker jeg det som en lidt klaustrofobisk følelse, når vinteren stod for døren.

I titelnummeret har jeg prøvet at beskrive en af de første frostklare vinteraftener, når efteråret bliver til vinter. Sådan en kold aften, hvor luften nærmest føles som et mentolbolsje i lungerne, og det knirker helt sprødt under éns sko. Det er, som om gadelamperne lukker én inde i éns eget rum og lader alle andre på gaden være i deres eget rum. Alle éns tanker eller bekymringer bliver placeret i hver deres små celler og lagt på frost, til foråret kommer igen. Vinteren er for mig en pause og et sted, jeg trækker vejret. Derfor er jeg selvfølgelig bange for, at den er på vej væk.”

P/A: 2020 har budt på adskillige udgivelser fra dig. Ud over “Aldrig mere vinter” har du også udgivet båndene “We Are Forever”, “Introvert musik”, 8”-udgivelsen “Someone Like You” samt “Folded Expressions”, der byder på en række kunstneres genfortolkninger af nogle af dine egne indspilninger. Opererer du med klart adskilte arbejdsprocesser fra start af, eller er det først senere hen i processen, at du ved, hvilke kompositioner der skal bruges til hvilke udgivelser?

BR: “Det er meget forskelligt, og jeg har det sidste års tid prøvet nogle nye metoder af. Men på “Aldrig mere vinter” har jeg først lavet en række numre for så at prøve dem af live. Derefter kasseret nogle og tilføjet nogle nye. Det minder meget om den proces, jeg arbejdede efter i de teenage-rockbands, jeg spillede i. En gammel vane.

Arbejdet med “Introvert musik” og “Folded Expressions” er derimod indspilninger fra en session, jeg havde i KoncertKirken under lockdown. Her indspillede jeg en masse improvisationer på klaver, og derefter optog jeg nogle mindre bidder af cello-stykker til de fleste af numrene, som jeg så kunne arbejde videre med på et senere tidspunkt.

Siden der var lockdown, tænkte jeg, folk sikkert havde tid til at samarbejde lidt. Så jeg sendte en håndfuld af numrene fra den session ud til gode venner og bad dem færdiggøre dem. Det var enormt spændende at høre, hvordan folk havde arbejdet med materialet, og det gav mig nogle gode ideer til, hvordan jeg selv kunne arbejde videre med min musik. Jeg har altid været ret dårlig til at improvisere og arbejde sammen med andre i musikalske projekter, så det var meget lærerigt. Numrene udkom på bånd tilbage i juni. Udgivelsen hed “Folded Expressions”, fordi hele samarbejdet mindede mig om de tegninger, man lavede, da man var lille, på et stykke foldet papir. En anden fik papiret og så kun en lille del af din tegning ogskulle tegne videre, folde papiret igen osv.

En anden håndfuld af numrene arbejdede jeg selv videre med – det udkom på bånd i august med titlen “Introvert Musik”. Jeg spillede senere en cellokoncert over klaverstykkerne og elementer fra “Folded Expressions”, hvilket jeg helt ærligt synes var ret sjovt i konteksten af lockdown, da det pludselig muliggjorde kreativt samarbejde præsenteret i en live-kontekst på tværs af grænser i Alices gårdhave. Båndet bliver genudgivet på vinyl på portugisiske Eastern Nurseries og lander nok i slutningen af november.”

P/A: “Aldrig mere vinter” akkompagneres af en række videoer, der er udarbejdet af Selini Halvadaki, og som dækker hele albummets spilletid. Kan du uddybe, hvorfor Halvadakis udtryk og arbejdsform netop tiltalte dig? Hvordan komplementerer lige netop hendes videoer din musik på “Aldrig mere vinter”?

BR: “Hele projektet startede i foråret 2019, hvor jeg kunne mærke, at musikken til albummet var ved at være klar. På det tidspunkt havde jeg et skrivebord ude i et øvelokale på Mayhem, i et rum uden vinduer, så da foråret kom, følte jeg en stærk trang til at komme ud i det gode vejr, og det var en oplagt mulighed at cykle, mens jeg lyttede til mine indspilninger. Det hele begyndte at forme sig i mit hovede, så jeg begyndte at optage en masse video. Det endte med at blive til godt to timers video efter at have sorteret det værste fra.

Selvom jeg godt kan klippe video til husbehov, var der ingen tvivl om, at jeg havde brug for én, der kunne sætte det hele sammen og arbejde videre med materialet. Jeg har tit hørt Selini fortælle med passion om film, både som kunstner og kurator, og derfor var det oplagt at arbejde med hende. Jeg vidste, at hun ville forstå materialet (som alt sammen er optaget med min telefon) og forbindelsen mellem de scener, jeg havde filmet. 

I løbet af lockdown blev tanken om at kunne bruge videoen til koncerter blæst lidt ud af hovedet. Derfor har jeg også lavet en online-version af albummet, hvor man kan se hele videoen og lytte til musikken. Kernen i det projekt er en tidslinje, der er formet som en cirkel, og fungerer som en navigator til at orientere sig i videoen. Det er blevet til et stort loop, hvor idéen er, at man ikke skal tænke så meget på tid, for på den måde at minde om arbejdet med de båndsløjfer, jeg har lavet pladen med.”

Info: “Aldrig mere vinter” udkom d. 16. oktober. Selini Halvadakis visuelle bidrag til albummet kan opleves via http://aldrigmerevinter.net/

Feature by Macon Holt

Behind the auspicious campuses of The University of Copenhagen and the national broadcaster, Denmark’s Radio, just far enough along an unassuming main road that stretches into what those who dwell on the mainland might call, deep Amager, we find one of the newest independent venues for artistic and musical residencies and documentation distribution, Polychrome.

The building, which could easily be mistaken for purely a domestic residence has always been a hybrid. Previously, it had been the home, shop front and kiln of a ceramicist but now it is both the family of home of the artists Jason Dungan and Maria Zahle and their children. The two rooms at the front of the house is the location of Polychrome, a new initiative founded by Dungan in 2020 as a place for artists, musicians, writers, dancers, and performers, to develop their practice in short form residencies.

“Really notable is the absence of the kind of institutional frames that can make this type of exchange feel already stale. And what becomes apparent is that Polychrome is a venue that allows for art to be connected to the world in process and for ideas to move more seamlessly between people and places.”

The first room is dedicated to the resident artists’ projects. Normally it is blank canvas and, for what it may lack in size and resources, it makes up for in freedom of use. It also has an oddly surreal situation, with its large single pane glass window and glass panel door, and its view out onto an oddly desolate main road. In many ways, this tension between being a sanctuary for artistic research & development, and only being millimetres of glass away from the day-to-day traffic of life in the “late capitalist utopia” of Copenhagen, fits perfectly with the work on display in the room on the day that I visited.

Artist and dancer, Felia Gram-Hanssen and Tore Balslev, who have been working together for a while, had spent the week at Polychrome working on a project entitled “Kritisk Zone”. The title is a reference to critical zone science, which studies the impact on the planet of everything that takes place between the ground just below the earth’s surface to the top of forest canopies. It describes the area in which certain events can render the planet uninhabitable. Balslev and Gram-Hanssen had used the occasion of their situation on Amager to investigate an unusual folding of this critical zone as some of the earth that had recently been excavated in the process of the recent metro expansions was currently resting on the nearby island of Prøvestenen. Decades under Copenhagen had left this earth saturated with gaseous chemicals that need to seep out into the atmosphere before it is able to be used for anything else. And, the artists tell me, I’ll be able to hear this seeping later when they present their work to a select, Covid compliant audience.

It is after a few minutes of chatting about their work that Jason Dungan appears in the adjacent room being led by his dog, who’s name I didn’t quite catch. After we talk a little more about the conceptual underpinning of the “Kritisk Zone” project, Dungan shows me around the adjacent room—now replete with drinks and nibbles for the upcoming performance—which serves as Polychome’s combined shop and archive. Around the room are artefacts of the nordic independent and experimental music scene; a great deal of vinyl but also experimental releases, such as the vacuum sealed CD by An Gella, “Perma”, from frequent Polychrome collaborators, the music platform, Anyines.

Dungan tells me that this archive/shop was part of his ambition for the Polychrome: to be able to display work produced by the scene in Copenhagen and across the nordic countries that so often disappears into the ether shortly after its release. But while this is an important part of the project, the real drive for Dungan was making a space in which one could focus on the processes that go into making this kind of work. 

Veteran artists of numerous international scenes, Dungan and Zahle had previously tried to develop a pace for exhibitions and performance works in a converted kiosk on Amagerbrogade called Kiosk 7. And despite the kind of success that made it clear that such a space for interdisciplinary artistic development and network expansion was desired by the scene, the project was ultimately hampered by the kind of NIMBYism (Not In My BackYard) that haunts and hobbles so many creative projects in Copenhagen. Fortunately, this is not a worry for Polychrome, as the detached house with its spacious back garden is completely under Dungan and Zahle’s control. This has so far allowed them to make events at Polychrome that other venues may find tricky to pull off, such as all night listening parties and release events for their own Polychrome label, which recently co-released the DEAP record by Aske and Pernille Zidore.

All this being said, Dungan is determined that arts spaces like Polychrome need to be a part of the community in which they are situated. And despite the Covid crisis restrictions, he has attempted to build these kinds of inroads into the neighbourhood with some success. Many of the residents nearby have attended the events put on in the space through the more relaxed of this past Covid summer, and he has even started connecting with the nearby church. Indeed the way things are on top of each other is an important part of this project, for Dungan. As we drank coffee in his family’s kitchen, one door away from the main Polychrome rooms, he told me how important it is for him to make no secret of the fact that artistic practice is an integrated part of his day-to-day life and that of the artists who use the space. And as if on cue, Zahle returns home with their young son and a negotiation ensues about which cookies are appropriate to eat. 

For Dungan, two structural concerns also run parallel to this desire to work with zero daylight between art and life. The first being the aforementioned autonomy the space has to explore creative projects and processes in whatever way they see fit. This also means he is able to provide a space for the kind of practitioners he is most interested in exploring and that are often the least supported, those whose work occupies spaces between disciplines: between art and poetry and music and dance. The kinds of practices that produce new ideas through their inability to be fixed in a category. The second concern is the space’s sustainability in the sense that it is not entirely dependent on the whims of the arts’ funding system. With the expenses of the space included with the house, Dungan is able to direct as much of the funding he raises as possible to paying the artists to work on their work. This means that as the level of support the space has access to fluctuates, as it may well do in the future, Polychrome may have to adjust the amount of artistic projects it hosts but it will continue to exist. In short, Polychrome is not one badly received application away from ceasing to be. 

“It is no secret that artistic practice is an integrated part of day-to-day life.”

As the moment of the performance approaches, we are moved back into the main room because the kitchen chairs are required for the small, covid-safe audience. During the performance of “Kritisk Zone”, Balslev and Gram Hanssen are stationed either side of a strip of fabric painted with something between a score and waves. Above this a film is projected composed of footage from their explorations of Prøvestenen. As Balslev stares across the alien landscape of eerie white earth that had previously rested under our feet, the popping and hissing sounds of the chemicals that had seeped into it over centuries of supporting human life take on a musical quality, which cross-fades into the slow improvisations in the room of physically present Balslev and Gram Hanssen, dancing and vocalising respectively. Around the room small sculptures of asphalt support tiny speakers, or just become signifying objects and their own. And in the corner, Dungan stands behind the camera documenting this culmination of a week’s work, which is itself only a small part of a much larger creative and collaborative process. 

Afterwards, there is a thrilling Q&A with artists that allows them to connect their work with wider discussion about the porousness of the improper separation between nature and civilisation. And in that exchange there is the thrill of seeing something rare; people working to figure out the world around them and trying to find new ways to share what they have learned. Really notable is the absence of the kind of institutional frames that can make this type of exchange feel already stale. And what becomes apparent is that Polychrome is a venue that allows for art to be connected to the world in process and for ideas to move more seamlessly between people and places; between aesthetic discourses, a family kitchen table and a train journey home. 

The third and final part of Polychrome series, “TRYK: samtaler om liv og kunst” featuring Ursula Reuter Christiansen and Benedikte Bjerre (and curated by Pernille Zidore and Maria Zahle), will take place on November 28th. Read more at www.polychrome.xyz

Af Lasse Skjold Bertelsen

I disse år gør en række pladeselskaber et agtværdigt og omsorgsfuldt arbejde med at genudgive gamle og glemte værker. Det er opløftende, at der stadig pågår et nysgerrigt gravearbejde med at finde det glemte eller at præsentere noget uhyre unikt på ny. Selv har jeg været utroligt taknemmelig for at kunne erhverve mig genudgivelser af kunstnere som Midori Takada med “Through the Looking Glass” (genudgivet i 2017) eller Beverly Glenn-Copeland, hvor især den helt fabelagtige eponyme plade fra 1970 har været et højdepunkt.

I Danmark har Frederiksberg Records været blandt dem, der tager dette arbejde med fortiden alvorligt, og jeg har tidligere haft fornøjelsen af deres genoptryk af den eminente folkesangerinde Suzanne Menzel, hvor manden bag knapperne var fantasten, multiinstrumentalisten og altmuligmanden Klaus Schønning.

Schønnings debut fra 1979, “Lydglimt”, er netop blevet genudgivet af Frederiksberg Records, og den er klart et genhør værd. Den er blevet kaldt den første danske new age-plade, og at lytte til “Lydglimt” er som at synke ned i et karbad med æteriske olier.

Der lå oprindeligt en konceptuel idé bag, da hele projektet både tog form først som kompositioner og som et learning-by-doing/DIY-gesamtkunstwerk. Schønning havde etableret et diasshow med overblændinger til liveopførsler, der efter en nødtørftig drejebog blev struktureret efter og sammenføjet med musikkens forløb og digressioner. Dette blev et kunstnerisk såvel som praktisk udgangspunkt, da Schønning fandt sig nogenlunde alene i en dansk sammenhæng, hvor både 70’ernes iltløse koldkrigstristesse og punkens taktfaste åndedræt begyndte at være eksempler på en zeitgeist, der var noget nær umulig at ignorere.

Pladen er altså atypisk for sin tid, for selvom hippiegrupper som fx Bifrost samtidig huserede med pastoral idyl og naturbesyngelse, var den dominerende niche blevet dansk punks betonfundamenterede blitzkrieg-lyd og storbyskildringer, der løbende havde indfundet sig i form af Sods’ energi, Lost Kids’ tyggegummipop eller No Knox’ overgreb på deres instrumenter.

“Lydglimt” er alt andet end det. Selve titlen indkapsler det synæstetiske blik ind i naturen som noget omsluttende; en livmodertryg stemning, der i visse øjeblikke søger at indfange så evige motiver som fugles himmelflugt og solopgangen, der typisk er at finde i kirkekunsten. Overalt på pladen er der et væld af naturoptagelser, der veksler mellem at være ren kitsch og intenderede musikalske lag. Det er en genretro æstetisering af naturen, hvor de mange melodiske flader og kontraløb er det mest iøjnefaldende princip i kompositionernes opbygning. De nævnte lag er vandløbets rislen, fuglefløjt og bølgeskvulp, der som flora og faunas eget resonansrum er dér, hvor man finder de 13 skæringers ærinde: Det er den nysgerrige undersøgelse af lyd, som “Lydglimt” er og betræder som ny jord i slutningen af 70’ernes danske musikliv, hvor man derimod hurtigt vil kunne finde samtidige ligesindede som fx tyske Klaus Schulze i udlandet. 

Hele udgivelsen aspirerer til at være et værk i rockistisk forstand, og åbningsnummeret ”Solopgang” er en næsten emblematisk og varslende overture, hvor Schønnings forkærlighed for orgelpunkt-agtige melodistemmer virkelig træder i karakter. I det hele taget er der noget mærkbart ved pladens lige dele spraglede udtryk og de meget stabile melodier, der lyder som improvisatorisk fremsøgt af hånden på forskellige klaviaturer. 

Det er dog ikke tilfældet over hele linjen, og det er især på sin plads at fremhæve de melankolske klaviaturforløb ”Vandløbet” og ”Solnedgang”, der begge er stykker for et forstemt klaver, hvor sidstnævnte i sin sidste halvdel overtages af zigzaggende synthesizers med uhyggelig lystighed og næsten spinet-agtig staccatolyd. I disse kompositioner finder man en sørgmodighed, der er pladens fremmeste forsøg på skønhedsdyrkelse.

Men overordnet er der tale om et katalog af næsten skizofrent sammensatte følelser. Især det teatralske kommer i spil i ”Tordenskyen”, hvor den afsluttende klang af metal både giver fornemmelsen af radioteatres simulering af tordenregn med blikplader og samtidig forskrækkede bombardementskonnotationer – både meget dansk og meget Dresden (1945). Og for at understrege sammensatheden kan det også nævnes, at Schønning aldrig har været bleg for at smide et funky riff i ind i sine produktioner og i dette tilfælde naturtableauer, hvilket i nogle tilfælde er sært fascinerende som i “Skovfragmenter” og i andre lettere enerverende.

Ved de fleste kompositioners roterende og fremadrettede opbygning er der gennemgående karaktertræk, der giver store dele af pladen et næsten selvlysende skær af soundtrackpotentiale, og med den næsten immanente skepsis over for ødelæggelsen af natur og klima ville pladen have været et godt bud på et score til senere samfundskritiske tegnefilm som fx “Strit og stumme” (1987) eller “Fuglekrigen i Kanøfleskoven” (1990), hvis ikke jazzmusikken og børnesangene havde stået filmmagerne Jannik Hastrup og Bent Hallers hjerter så nær.

Når alt kommer alt – og alt dette potentiale til trods – vokser pladen, nøjagtigt ligesom træerne, dog ikke ind i himlen, hvor udødeligheden findes, og mesterværker regerer. “Lydglimt” er først og fremmest et vægtigt bevis for, at dansk musikhistorie fortsat kan udforskes og afdækkes i en søgen efter særlinge og det helt særlige.

Info: “Lydglimt” blev genudgivet af Frederiksberg Records i slutningen af oktober.

This conversation took place as a live stream on Youtube, on the 19th February 2021. It is the first edition of a series of conversations brought to you by One Take Records and presented in collaboration with Passive/Aggressive. Edited by Greta Eacott.

Lil Data [Jack Armitage] is a live coder and instrument builder, who has released music on the UK record label and art collective PC Music – including his debut album Sup in 2014, and his latest album Folder Dot Zip in 2019.

Xanadune [Wilhelm Gustaf Ljunggren Dahl] is a computer music artist, who released his debut release Xanadune & Update Jammer as a split cassette on One Take Records in November 2020 with friend and fellow computer musician Update Jammer [Villads Posselt Mikkelsen].

One Take Records is a Copenhagen-based independent label run by Greta Eacott.

The conversation begins

Update Jammer: Ok, so Jack. The main thing to start with or point out with your is your connection to live coding and coding sounds, and I asked how it came to be that coding became your main compositional tool for creating computer music, and how you found your way into the live coding scene. if you’re part of a live coding scene now?

Lil Data: Thanks for starting us off with that question. I’m pretty sure my first encounter with it was around 2012-2013, I was in my final year of study at Leeds University and there was a new guy who’d joined the faculty at Leeds, called Alex McLean – and he’s the creator of a programming language called Tidal Cycles, and he joined because he’d just finished his PhD i think. and he had a postdoctoral position at Leeds, and I didn’t really know him or speak to him, but I just saw him hiding around in the school sometimes and I didn’t really know what he did. But he played a show in Leeds I think, so I got to see him perform with Tidal Cycles. And you know, he was sitting on the floor, with his shoes off, like in the crowd, with his keyboard and stuff and was typing words like Gabba or something like the names of different sounds. And then he was just creating these patterns that were so rich in terms of timing, and rhythm and patterns, and there was hardly any text on the screen, and that was just completely mind blowing for me. 

And at that point in my life I was really lacking in musical inspiration – I think I’d burnt out on audio workstation software and wasn’t really having fun making music anymore. When I first got into making music I was about 14, and it was pure fun, made lots of really terrible, but fun music. Fun to make, not to listen to actually. But so yeah, I kind of lost the fun with traditional music making tools and then I saw this live coding thing and I was like WOW I have to learn that. And it took me like 3 or 4 years.

First of all it took me a couple of months to even install the software, and I know that people still have trouble with today so that’s why I want to mention that. Even when I started it took a long time even to just install the software, and then I played my first Algorave in December 2015 in a venue in Dalston, East London called Power Lunches which is sadly no longer existing,  Rest In Peace, Power Lunches. And I was absolutely terrible, I was so bad I could barely… I was so terrified and nervous, I wasn’t improvising anything or even making good music at all. It was just some really basic stuff, and I was just like sweating and I felt like I was going to melt or something. So it was kind of in a way a really horrible experience but that kind of decreased over time and I got more fluent, I guess, with not just making weird complex stuff, because in a way that’s the easiest thing to do with live coding is to just type in a bunch of numbers and then some crazy stuff comes out, and that’s really exciting, but I really wanted to join up that world with pop and dance music, and music that I was enjoying in a live context or with friends. 

Because at that point I already had the first release that I did on PC Music as Lil Data was this EP called Sup, and that was all made before I really learned live coding, but I wanted to continue developing that sound but with the live coding. So it took a long time to do that but it was a good project or a context in which to develop the skills. Because it was always like the goal was to make something that could fit onto a normal line-up, because you know, you mentioned the algorave scene which is really unique and a precious community I think. Pretty different to how dance music scenes work in a lot of ways, really kind of fresh. But I also wanted to play on line-ups where there was no live coding or where I wasn’t being invited because of live coding, it was just wanting to hear my music. I always tried to have those two worlds to play in. And that is what has driven the development of what I’ve been doing with live coding, making remixes of really simple pop songs and stuff using live coding, is really fun but also represents what I’ve been trying to do with it and I don’t really know what’ll happen with it next. I think I’m ready to destroy my practice again, in the same way that I did 8 or 9 years ago.

UJ: It seems to me also, being not that familiar with live coding, but checking some stuff out. Of course now that I’m looking into your work. It also seems to me like the coding aspect of the music is also as much an aesthetic, as it is the tool you use for making music. It plays a huge part in the visual.

LD: Yeah, for sure.

UJ: It’s also very dominated by the tool.

LD: Yeah, that’s right. And that’s something that I’ve always tried to work with on one level, because you can’t just pretend it’s not there. But try and be fluent enough that I can say what I’m trying to say and not be completely dominated by the presentation of it. I think it goes back to just having fun because with live coding, you can’t really present it in a serious way because you’re always going to mess up. There’s always going to be bugs, or your laptops just going to die sometimes or stuff just happens that means that you can’t really be all that serious about it. But anyway I even just try to take that further and imagine things like what’s the equivalent of a really over the top guitar solo, but for a live coder. Because that’s funny to me. The idea of doing a guitar solo is like, I’d never do that, but I’d do it if it was entertaining. So like, what’s the equivalent of that in a live coding sense or other stage drama type stuff, like how do you fit that into a live coding context because when you do that people are so surprised. Initially, if people don’t know it they’re surprised by live coding anyway, but then if you do some kind of joke, or you start messing around in a silly way with it as well then that kind of humanises it for me I think, and it breaks that barrier you get from this very strong presentation.

Initially, if people don’t know it they are surprised by live coding anyway, but then if you do some kind of joke, or you start messing around in a silly way with it as well then that kind of humanises it for me I think, and it breaks that barrier you get from this very strong presentation

Lil Data

But, I listened to your really lovely record a lot this week and fun was probably the main thing that stood out to me. I just hear that.. It makes me think ‘God.. I’m not having enough fun’ you know in music making, because I can just hear that you guys are having so much fun and I guess I’d really be interested to turn the question over to you and ask you about your music making and, I don’t know if you’re making music together as well or you just made your own music but have been friends for a long time or.. I don’t know anything so I’d be really interested to hear the background.

UJ: Yeah, for sure.  

Xanadune: I guess it’s just a mixture of all the things you just said. We’ve been friends for a long time and we have made music together on many occasions but it’s just been parallel..

UJ: Yeah, it’s been very parallel. I think musically speaking we basically grew up together because when we first met we were both more rock types, but then when we first met when we were 14 or 15..

XD: 14 or 15 yeah. 

UJ: We started bonding over going to record stores and looking in the cheapest bins and stuff like that. Growing up on music like kitaro & dungeon synth and stuff like that.

XD: Loads of dungeon synth

LD: What is dungeon synth? I don’t think I’ve come across this as a specific.. Is it a genre?

XD: I guess it’s just kind of this.. 

UJ: .. It’s like an off-shoot of dark ambient.. I guess people would say. The early nineties or even the late eighties, alongside with black metal. It was some of the off-shoot projects of the black metal bands. They started buying these nineties workstation keyboards

XD: Like very cheap Casios.. 

UJ: Yeah Casios and also Wavestation and things like that. And composing these very medieval fantasy inspired epic sound journeys that you would.. I guess in the traditional community would play them along with their Dungeons & Dragons campaigns and stuff like that.

XD: A lot of Dungeon Synth projects are very driven by, not necessarily a strict narrative, but the feeling of a narrative is very heavy. 

UJ: And then in these recent years it’s become very popular right?

XD: Yeah, very popular.

UJ: It’s had a resurgence on the internet. 

XD: Yeah, in 2016 it got very big again. 

UJ: Yeah, I would say it really influenced that sound that is in Copenhagen right now, to some extent. But yeah, I guess we grew up on this really goofy synthesizer music I would say. 

LD: hehe 

UJ: It’s true it’s one of the biggest inspirations for the stuff that we made together, but also separately. Yeah, as you said, just having fun with it but also trying to push ourselves towards something that might not be the coolest sound or the hippest thing to do. Which is, for me personally, I think when you make music and you want to make something that is.. you want to future proof something or.. make something that could be a classic in 20 years, you always have to deviate from the stuff that is cool right now, your local scene. 

In Copenhagen, everyone is making ambient soundscapes but to make something that is future proof you have to go for the goofy synth stuff for example, the kitaro records that nobody wants and their selling for like 1€ per record in the record stores. And that’s always a battle within myself when I make music because there is always an urge or an instinct maybe even.. To go for the hip stuff and the contemporary stuff that your friends are making.

XD: Or maybe the stuff that you’ve already made for a long time..

UJ: Yeah for sure. But it’s always very important for me at least to go with the un-cool. The un-cool styles or sounds. Yeah, the goofy stuff or whatever you’d like to call it.

XD: Yeah, I think that’s also been a very vital part of our musical journey together because every time.. well not every time.. but a lot of instances where we’ve sat down and made music together, it’s also been very coloured by where we are at in our music making, and what music we like which is also, as you say.. The best thing you can do for yourself is do the thing that you might not think is hip at the moment.. Or things that you might not find to be aesthetically pleasing to the music you’re doing right now. So I think that’s been a pretty good thing, at least for the music we do, that we’ve made a lot .. not the same music.. but followed the same style sometimes and then you can kind of agree on evolving it or just.. like you said, just destroying it and making something completely different. At least that is how I’ve seen it a lot of times for when we’ve made music together, or not together.. It’s not like we’re making the same music either.. 

LD: Yeah, I guess when I heard your record I could really imagine why Greta [One Take Records] wanted to put us together, a little bit. And I think that kind of goofiness is definitely something that I’ve worked with a lot as well. But it’s just so interesting that I didn’t even know about this dungeon synth thing.. But I think it’s maybe because the goofiness that I’ve been playing with comes from a technological era of midi and cheap digital instruments. My reference point with it was always like.. browsing the web in the 90’s basically. That was really my reference and I don’t know if you guys even have any memories of that?

UJ: Yeah, I mean we’re a lot younger so.. There’s definitely the comparison because I think we’re inspired a lot by people, musically speaking, who were browsing the web in the 90’s – and we’re making music based on that. So we’re like the next step, the generation after that, that gets inspired in turn.

XD: I think also, a lot of the music.. there is of course right now a lot of music on the internet, and people who are making music on the internet and stuff going on on the internet.. So maybe the reason that a lot of musicians from your generation are so inspired by these internet deep-dives, and internet explorations is that, probably it’s something that was a little bit newer. And I think that it’s very expected of us to do a lot of internet deep-dives and base a lot of our stuff on that, and that’s maybe why.

UJ: That’s another thing that we should try to destroy.

XD: Yeah, definitely. 

UJ: And getting off the internet is definitely a priority.  And always has been over the last years. Yeah, at least trying to break up with that. And I think for me personally, or the scene that we are in, musically speaking, that’s definitely where the most interesting stuff appears, when you get off the internet and go back to other media for example.

LD: So it’s kind of like a full cycle, because you’ve become interested in this genre and revived it but in doing so you’ve created a real physical community in real space, and then that has now become its own thing, and then you want to follow where that goes.

Now it has switched around, so if you want to go to the new frontier you have to get off the internet and do some disturbing underground stuff in real life that no-one on the internet will know about.

Update Jammer

UJ: Yeah, for sure. And I can imagine that maybe to some extent it was the same feeling that media artists had when they were pioneering on the internet for example, that it was a free space, or a new space. Where it was the new frontier where they could do anything they wanted to do. But now it has switched around, so if you want to go to the new frontier you have to get off the internet and do some disturbing underground stuff in real life that no-one on the internet will know about. Like, nobody at Discogs will know about, or something like that. That’s where the new frontier is, for us at least.

XD: Yes, I think that is very true.

LD: So how does that translate for you guys when you are.. Do you perform together or do you imagine performing any of this work you’ve done for this record for One Take Records, or is the idea of live something that would take a completely different process?

XD: I guess it depends, because we’ve performed live many times but not so much as our Xanadune & Update Jammer projects, but at least with you [Update Jammer], one of the last concerts you played there were almost no computers involved.

UJ: Yeah that’s the same point definitely, to try to take this stuff that is so rooted in the computer and the internet both technically and aesthetically – to take it out of the computer and – it sounds a bit grandiose to say breathe new life into it but like.. do it in a different way – that would maybe make it more exciting also live. For both the performer and the audience. 

XD: I think there’s been so many years now of Ableton performances live, and that’s also the picture that I am also trying to corrupt. The picture of this computer music concert as being only a person who’s deeply inside the computer and that’s all you see. Just like you have, with being on the internet, I think I’m scared of not performing with my computer – and that’s what I’m trying to get away from. 

And you know.. a composition is always a composition right. Your composition doesn’t have to be an Ableton Live production, so that’s maybe one of the things I want to strive away from the most.

I think most people who you’ll ask right now in Copenhagen, if you ask them what their last computer music concert was like , it was probably someone with a computer in front of them with Ableton on it or something.. It’s deeply rooted. 

LD: Yeah, I guess that presents a lot of problems. The music on this record [Xanadune & Update Jammer OT22,2020] is very tightly programmed and complex and intricate and mixed in very interesting ways, and there’s dialogue sometimes, and then sometimes it’s very quiet and ambient and then sometimes it’s quite dark. So it’s just addressing this problem for you, does that mean that you have to make entirely different music? Or would you be looking to deconstruct what you have at the moment and find a way to make it feel more present on stage? 

XD: I think as I said before, you know a composition will always just be a composition right, these are just sounds that we’ve chosen from some plugins that we’ve had on our computer, and as happy as I am about the sounds.. it’s just always interesting to destroy it and then you try it in a different realm. You can do anything with it that you want, and I think that is maybe the problem that I was talking about is that, that’s how we see, we just see it as an Ableton project. 

LD: One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is just fantasising about shows that could happen eventually.. and that kind of keeps me going a little bit. 

And I was just wondering, at the moment do you have a kind of show or performance in mind that you feel would create the kind of tension that you’re looking for and address the problems you’re talking about. 

UJ: Lately I’ve been trying to take everything out of the computer, and destroy everything. So I would like to go completely from scratch. And maybe doing something that is not so, grandiose, that it can get on the computer, because you have so many options to deal with and you have all the tools at your disposal. So going completely down to basics – and going for a smaller sound I guess.. But it’s not anything so specific so far I guess. 

I’m working completely without a computer right now, I destroyed my computer.. And we’ll see how I do, hehe. It’s kind of up in the air right now.

LD: If you had to perform in one months time, and it was going to be a really cool show and you were excited about it and there with no problems with public health or anything.. what would you do?

UJ: I think what you should do as a computer musician, or what would be very interesting for most computer musicians is letting your own computer go, if you’re computer based and then going to your friends houses and using their computers. That’s basically what I’m doing right now. 

Yeah, and I think that would be so cool to bring just all my friends who have this editing software up on stage .. I could imagine a line of them, with their editing software and then you get all the options, and all the nit-picking, because I always get very OCD with the audio editing and this kind of software. Then you take it out of your own hands, and just focus on the more creative stuff I guess. But it also creates a very interesting dynamic I think because it depends on your set-up, but I think a lot of computer musicians are very used to working alone, just on their software. But once you put it in someone else’s hands, it creates this pretty interesting dynamic.

LD: So like, swapping laptops? 

UJ: Yeah.

LD: That already makes me feel kind of terrified, so it must be a good idea. 

XD: I think that’s maybe one of the problems I’m having a lot with being dependent on my Ableton software and my softwares in general is it gets to this nit-picking point.

UJ: Yeah, it can get so unproductive.

XD: I very often find myself in a spot where I’ve sat down for a long period of time and there’s been no drive.. The composition hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s been nit-picking on these minimal production bugs that I find in a track. 

LD: So with the record on One Take, how much does that represent fighting with the computer, or fighting with the nit-picking.

XD: I don’t think it’s that representative of that mindset. Because, I think a lot of the tracks, the production on it was very nit-picky, and was very OCD.

UJ: Yeah, and I think as I said before, it’s always this battle within yourself. Fighting against the urge to go with the sound of the times, or to lose yourself programming the MIDI clips of whatever.. 

And personally speaking for my side of the tape, I think that most of the tracks were from 2018 to early 2019, and I feel like I’m getting better with fighting the urge to go the easy route. I definitely fight more against that now, and I think that’s also definitely something you can see in the music. Because my side [of the tape] is this very, as you said, tight, sequenced dance electronics sound, and I think it would definitely sound different if I did it now. And I think, with the stuff I have going in my hands, and I feel I’m at a completely different place. Musically.. and I guess I just have different stuff in my hands now. 

XD: If I hear one of the tracks that we’ve put on our tape, I don’t feel like I’d want to produce something like that again, because also, my tracks.. Some of them are a couple years old too. 

UJ: So in that respect it’s also like a timeline of our musical journey together. Which sounds kind of corny, but that’s a good light to put it in, I guess. Which is why I also think it works as a split-tape.

XD: Yeah, it works really well. It was a good way for us to do that.

LD: So you kind of captured a moment where.. It seems very maximalist. Like you chose the extreme in every decision that you could make. And is that also about using all of the computer’s abilities as well? 

UJ: Yeah, it’s probably come out of the problems that we talked about before. And I guess that’s mostly one of the nice things about coding, and coding in a live situation that you’re so much more restricted in the moment that you’re doing it.

LD: Yeah, you’re restricted in some ways and then you’re free in other ways. In lots of different ways.. So it’s not really something that I could easily or quickly summarise..

UJ: But the possibility that your computer crashes or that you mistype a line, a sequence or something, and everything is in your production. 

LD: But then on the other hand you can very quickly change the structure of everything with one function, in a way that is just not possible with an Ableton project or something. 

So… it’s not all pain… Although there’s definitely also a lot of pain.

UJ: But, it’s good with the pain. 

XD: But do you still think it lacks unpredictability? 

LD: I think that really comes down to your own custom set-up because you can make it completely pre-determined if you want. Or you can set it up so that you’re very unlikely to have anything go wrong but for me that really takes all of the fun out of it, and I don’t, for example practice that much. Because if I practice too much I’m already bored by the time I get on stage. And I can’t get into it. So there’s the perfect amount of practice where you know roughly what you are going to do but there’s enough unexplored territory that you can get lost in it when you actually perform. 

On a basic level, you’re always attracted to the thing that you don’t have access to, and with live coding the main thing that I’ve never managed to get full access to is tactility and detailed timbre, the quality of sound.

Lil Data

XD: You said before that you were looking at ways that you could destroy your practice right now. 

Do you think maybe finding your own practice would be influenced by taking away some of the safety that you know that you have in your live coding, because after all you have quite a lot of years of practice in your praxis – so what do you think it could be, the thing that removes the safety?

LD: That’s a really good question. On a basic level, you’re always attracted to the thing that you don’t have access to, and with live coding the main thing that I’ve never managed to get full access to is tactility and detailed timbre, the quality of sound.

Because live coding is very event driven, in a MIDI kind of way. Mostly you’re just triggering events that play notes or samples and so on.. And then obviously, for your body, you’re very much locked into a very small physical space and you can’t really communicate very much with an audience, in your body language.. and your hands can’t do much apart from be in front of you. 

So I really want to.. I guess in a similar way to last time where I wanted to move away from audio workstations but keep the music, the silliness of the music, and the fun. And this time I think I want to somehow find a way to take with me the algorithmic expression, which I think is really unique, and I wouldn’t want to lose that. 

The ability to control time using algorithms is somehow part of me now. But I want to have a much more tactile hands on relationship with the sound, and I want to be able to do more with my body, and that’s definitely quite a big challenge because I’m quite an uncoordinated person, and you know I started out playing guitar, but I stopped because I don’t have very good fine motor skills or… I’m just not that kind of person. But that’s what I’m attracted to now.

I’ve been doing a PhD the last five years and have been building new physical interfaces for ways of manipulating sounds that are more tactile and hands on. 

So, it’s not very concrete for me yet.. 

But I can picture it .. 

Having some kind of devices that maybe are attached to my hands, or they’re fixed on my body and I touch the devices as they’re fixed on my body, and then I’m free to move around and there would be no screen anywhere, so that I can make eye contact with the audience. But somehow still be doing some kind of live coding, making algorithmic music. So I don’t really know how that can even exist at this point, how do you write code without text or any visual representation and so on. 

So that’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I think I’ll need to build lots of prototypes of something. Which is kind of what I was saying about fantasising about shows that might be possible. 

I want to have a much more tactile hands on relationship with the sound, and I want to be able to do more with my body, and that’s definitely quite a big challenge … Having some kind of devices that maybe are attached to my hands, or they are fixed on my body and I touch the devices as they’re fixed on my body, and then I’m free to move around and there would be no screen anywhere, so that I can make eye contact with the audience. But somehow still be doing some kind of live coding, making algorithmic music. So I don’t really know how that can even exist at this point, how do you write code without text or any visual representation?

Lil Data

UJ: So your practice is also evolving into instrument building?

LD: Yeah, my degree in Leeds was about music technology and electronics and then I was working for this company called ROLI, that make this Seaboard instrument for a couple of years and after that I started on the PhD, and that has mostly been about the idea of subtlety and detail in digital musical instruments and how do you take digital making processes and make them more like handcrafting processes. 

XD: It’s also very much what music on your laptop can do to you, it can make you feel like you’re not holding it, or it’s not physical. It can distance you from what you’re making.

LD: It’s funny though because for me, over time, the algorithm has definitely become something that I feel in quite a deep way, but it’s not in a corporeal way. 

It’s not like this algorithm is in this hand, and this algorithm is in this hand or something. 

It’s inside somewhere, but it’s not something that directly relates to my physical body, so I almost want to find ways of letting it express itself. The music within…

XD & UJ: hehe

The conversation ends

Thank you to Xanadune, Update Jammer and Lil Data for being a part of this first edition of One Take Records in conversation with... If you’d like to know more about the artists, you can follow them and their work:
Lil Data
Xanadune 
Update Jammer

The following is an excerpt from our newly released Festskrift IV. A collection of reflections around the phenomenon of RHYTHM – written, illustrated and recorded by musicians, graphic designers, DJ’s and multidisciplinary artists.

Petra Skibsted is a Copenhagen- and Berlin-based techno artist who releases and performs under the moniker Peachlyfe. Their contribution to Festskrift IV consist of both the written component presented here and an auditive part available in our Sounds Archive here.

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Cast: Person 1, Person 2 

It is early morning. We look to the sea where the sun is not yet rising. To the left the sky is a thousand shades of red and blue. To the right it is still dark, and the moon is easily visible. Two people of no particular creed are sitting on a blanket halfway on the grass, halfway in the sand. They look radiant. 

Person 1: Hey sibling!

Person 2: Yes friend?

1: I’ve been thinking a lot lately.

2: About what, hun? 

1: About water… I am severely confused about it, and I would love to have your opinion. How do you feel about it? 

2: Hmmm. That is a difficult ques- tion I think… I have mixed feelings. What type of water are you talking about? 

1: I understand what you say. There are many kinds of course. Let’s start with the water we drink. How does that sit with you? 

2: Ooh I love drinkable water! I would say my favourite is sparkling water. Have you ever felt that sensation on your tongue? The sound when you open the bottle, the cute drop- lets on the outside on a warm summers day? Ooh and that feel when you finally get to quench your thirst after a four hour danceathon! Sheesh, that is one of my favorite things. 

1: That does sound like fun, but have you ever had a drink from a creek? When you go for a hike, in the beautiful nature, you look around – oh a deer, “hi dear” you whisper, not to frighten it. You hear the gentle sound of a swift flowing creek. “oh perfect, I just felt a thirst, let me find that creek”. You find it, easily, and get on your knees. “Could I have a tiny zip of you?” you ask, and of course it’s all good, have as much as you want! Ah that is one of my favorite things. 

2: It seems we feel differently about this. That is OK. 

1: Indeed, but now that I mention nature, what do you think about rain? 

2: Rain is quite lovable I think, at least around here. It can be a bit annoying if you’re out for a walk, but then you just get under a tree and listen to the beautiful sound. Of course I’m talking from a privileged point. It is one of the most important things of our ecosystem, but in some places it is also devastatingly dangerous. 

1: Did you know that it rains on other planets? 

2: What do you mean? There is no water on other planets – at least not enough for it to rain. 

1: Yeah, I know! It rains, just not water. Some scientists from NASA think that on Saturn it rains diamonds. 

2: You’re kidding, I’m sure. Right? 

1: No no, for real! I don’t remember it 100% accurately but Saturn’s intense lightning storms can cause the methane molecules in its atmosphere to break up, leaving carbon atoms to float freely and start falling to the ground. They then transform into graphite as they travel through Saturn’s dense, layered atmosphere and eventually get pressurized into tiny diamond pieces. But about 36.000 kilometers in, things get too hot and the diamonds decompose into a mushy liquid. 

2: That is fascinating. I have no words. 

1: So how do you feel about lakes? 

2: Lakes of diamonds?

1: No, silly, lakes of water of course! I need to know what you think. 

2: Hmm, I am conflicted I think. Lakes can be beautiful and you can have a refres- hing dip on a warm day, but they can also be full of death! This scares me. Plants naturally grow in and around lakes, but sometimes lakes and ponds can get an overgrowth of plants, algae, or bacteria. In many cases, humans are responsible. Chemicals that are used on lawns and in agricul- ture (like nitrogen and potassium) wash into our water systems. Once there, plants and algae have a feast on this “food”. Sometimes overgrowths of cyanobacteria can make the water scummy and turn it a blue-green color. Cyanobacteria produce compounds that impact the taste and odor of water, make fish unpalatable, and produce toxins that affect human health. Scientists are still stu- dying the causes of these blooms. 

1: This is scary and makes me sad. Why would anyone want to kill a beautiful lake? I’ve always been fascinated by lakes. Especial- ly bottomless ones! They are so full of mystery, magic, and poetry. I like the fact that there are places in the world humans can’t go. It seems that everything humans touch looses its magic. Not that we shouldn’t be here, but we shouldn’t be everywhere if you ask me. The day there are no more places untouched by humans, that is the day there is no more magic in the world. I hope it never happens, but I guess this is why there is much less magic now than before. Did you know that there is a lake in Romania called The Eagles Lake or The Bottomless Lake where eagles can grow younger if they drink the water? This is excit- ing to me. I wish I was a forever young eagle. 

2: Oh yes, lover, wouldn’t it be wonderful to just sore? 

Our main characters sit for a while without speaking, listening to the waves quietly crashing on the beach. They hold hands and look to each other. It is like everything around them comes to life, not threatening them, but still, it feels urgent that this moment and these surroundings are not to be taken for granted. 

1: Ugh skat, isn’t that the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard? It is almost unbearable! 

2: Oh baby, I was just about to say how I love the sea in so many ways! It’s like it just understands what’s important. The sea is endlessly monotone but still forever moving. It understands the need to change, the need to be liquid. The rhythm of water is the ultimate music to me. The sea becomes whole in unity with its surroundings—like and unlike themself—but what is for sure is that there is no status quo with the sea. I feel that the rhythm of the sea is infinitely repetitive yet strangely unique. The transience of it is fascinating. 

1: Like trillions of sentients coming together with the rest of the elements as one huge brute force only to disperse into different units, every time just for an instant. 

2: Exactly! They are planning how to punish us for our abuse and at the same time reward us with their awesome presence and grant us their life-giving knowledge. It is quite confusing. 

1: I think we think alike, regent! Some say the sea is quiet, but I think not. I hear a different song every time I submerge myself in the water. I hear songs of unity and I hear bal- lads about its unrelenting revenge. We might not understand it’s way of communicating but that doesn’t mean it’s dumber than us. More like the opposite. 

2: I’ll drink to that. The sea shows no mercy. The sea kills all its enemies with swift force, and nurtures its kin with parental love. It is strange, I love the sea, yet I know it will kill me. 

1: That is not so strange I think, fren. It is as with The Invisible Gods. We only love them because they can kill us. 

2: Amen 

The sky is slowly lighting up both to the right and to the left, and the moon is no longer visible to the naked eye. Everything around our main charac- ters is quieting down, yet the sky seems to be on fire. One thousand fireballs are colliding in the sky and projecting immense heat on our friends. They lie flat on the ground, wishing they could become one with their surroundings. 

1: I wish we could be more like liquid 

2: That would be a treat right now! 

1: Just to become one with each other, and slither downwards. Down beneath the grass, the dirt and join our siblings down below! It would be a treat, but we can only imagine. 

2: It is strange and unfair. We consist of up to 60% water yet we are not 60% percent as wise as water and we are certainly not liquid. 

1: I think maybe we should refrain from talking about fairness. We are not owed anything from this world. 

2: You are right. I am only sad I am not liquid. 

1: But you are something else. I think we should not envy the water, but strive to adopt its good qualities. Not try to be it, but be like it. 

2: Sometimes I have water coming out of my ear piercing. 

1: 2: What do you mean? Sometimes, when I’m maybe doing laundry, or working, or something else, water just drips out of the piercing hole for no apparent reason. 

1: I’m sure it has its reasons.

2:

2: Hey friend! 

1:  Yes, sibling? 

2:  How beautiful was the show we just witnessed? 

1: Ooh, it was very beautiful indeed. Very beautiful indeed. I think I have never felt anything like it, but I will definitely feel something more intense in the future.

Sources:
1. https://www.usgs.gov/centers/kswsc/science/cyanobacterial-blue- green-algal-blooms-tastes-odors-and-toxins-0?qt-science_center_ objects=0#qt-science_center_objects
2. https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/why-are-some-lakes-full-algae-and-thick- plants?qt-news_science_products=0#qt-news_science_products
3. https://slate.com/technology/2012/12/space-weather-tornadoes-dust- storms-hurricanes-acid-rain-on-other-planets-and-moons.html
4. https://wikipedia.com

Info: Due to COVID-19 we will have none/minimal distribution and have decided to make the publication free until further notice. The publication can be ordered by sending us your address at info@passiveaggressive.dk or by subscribing to patreon.com/pasaggressive – you just have to pay for the delivery, or you can pick up the publication at a few safe spots in Copenhagen.

Dette er et uddrag fra vores nyligt udgivne Festskrift IV. En samling refleksioner over fænomenet RYTME – skrevet, illustreret og indspillet af musikere, grafiske designere, DJs og interdisciplinære kunstnere.

Lisbeth Diers er en dansk percussionist/trommeslager og komponist. Hun har været aktiv siden slutningen af 1980’erne og medvirket på over 90 udgivelser.

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Dette er ikke et element som er ord.
Det er noget andet!
Jeg prøver at forklare med ord… men det er ordløst.
Det skal mærkes, ikke italesættes. 

Og dog,
jeg prøver… 

Fokus!
Du skal give alt til rytmen.

Når jeg er i rytme,
er jeg i flow, i en tilstand hvor jeg kun eksisterer for rytmen,
det er at være bærer af det kropslige og ordløse sprog. 

Forsøger vi at åbne os for de universelle kræfter,
er rytmen i os selv
selve kontakten til det universelle.
Urkraften. 

Det er det særegne ved en musikers “time”, som gør hendes/hans rytme interessant at høre på,
det er det som kan bevæge hjertet. 

I den indre personlige “time”, i den rytmiske præcision af eleganthed, frækhed, harskhed, vitalitet og dynamik spænder swinget sig ud! Musikerens guld, musikerens talerør til menneskets inderste følelser.
I læren om egen “time” findes muligheden for at dykke dybere ind i rummet af rytmen.
Tilgå det rum som ligger mellem spillede slag og usynlige mikro-bevægelser.
Det magiske sted hvor selve swinget bor, hvor frækhed og flabethed er tilladt, hvor elegance, “forfinethed” og forfængelighed er tilladt. Hvor hengivenhed, koncentration og fokus er en flydende størrelse. En tilstand hvor kroppen fyldes af hormoner og signaler fra hjernen, som fortæller at man er i flow. En tilstand som er helt særlig og en stor del af den drivkraft, som ligger bag arbejdet. En følelse som man helt fantastisk kan opleve med musikere, som arbejder på samme niveau. Hvor dette samspil deles med de mennesker, som oplever den. 

Inde i rytmen findes noget elastisk, som kan udvide sig, og give mulighed for bevægelse og dynamisk arrangering inde i pulsen. Her kan spændet opstå og udviklingen og muligheden for at lære noget nyt være tilstede. 

Rytmen er individuel
Rytmen er personlig
Rytmen er intuitiv
Rytmen laver et aftryk af sjælen
Rytmen er rumlig bevægelig
Rytmen er kommunikation
Rytmen er delikat
Rytmens sprog tør at føle
og gå i interaktion med andre rytmer, modrytmer, medrytme —
rytmers rytmes møde med andres rytmer.
Menneskers nysgerrighed overfor hinanden,
åbenhed overfor det man kender og det man ikke kender. 

Man kan altid mærke når rytmen bevæger sig i et fælles–fællesskab, som er bygget op på en personlig frasering som et spejl, som vender sig i interesse for andre rytmebæreres “time”,
andre menneskers særegne rytme.
For enhver musiker er mødet med en andens rytme der hvor ens egen “time” spiller sammen med et andet menneskes indre puls. 

Lisbeth Diers
Perkussionist/komponist. Jazzmusiker. 

Info: Grundet COVID-19 har vi ingen/minimal distribution, så vi har gjort udgivelsen gratis indtil videre. Bestil ved at sende din postadresse til info@passiveaggressive.dk eller ved at abonnere på patreon.com/pasaggressive – betal kun for frimærkerne eller hent på 2-3 sikre spots i København.