Rune Glerup
15
Addictive Elegance
Rune Glerup: »Perhaps Thus the End«
A string quartet consists of four players, and a clarinet quintet five, though the Danish composer Rune Glerup (b. 1981)’s newly recorded works for both ensembles would have you believe their ranks are vastly undercounted. The recipient of last year’s Nordic Council Music Prize for his violin concerto Om lys og lethed (About Light and Lightness), Glerup writes pieces for chamber and orchestra that are often characterized by their multidimensionality: a sonic idea will persistently recur in altered guises, for a sense that one is feeling around different facets of a physical form. Yet the two works on Perhaps Thus the End – brought to life by the impeccable Quatour Diotima and clarinetist Jonas Frølund – are just as potent a demonstration of expansive interiority as they are of surface area.
In the titular string quartet, whose seven movements are named for lines from Beckett’s late prose work Stirrings Still, long tones and galloping motives are seamlessly shuffled amongst the ensemble, generating such a sonority that the group seems to have doubled in size. The language is sometimes mechanical but never automatic, bending rather into balletic shapes. Glerup is a careful manager of texture, finding grace in unintuitive sounds through skillful layering – to speak merely of how, in a later movement, a harmonic pizzicato punctuates the string equivalent of vocal fry before the group pivots suddenly into stillness.
On the unexpectedly addictive »Still Leaning Towards this Machine«, which is surely among the few times a contemporary clarinet quintet has received that distinction, electronics magnify the ensemble through a subtle stuttering resonance. As a result, across three spunky movements, the group is occasionally transmuted into a sort of paranormal accordion. It’s a wonderfully weird effect that, just as weirdly, the score seems to deliver with a straight face – just one more satisfying surprise among many others on this excellent record.
© PR
»What is music to me? Here’s a quote from Nietzsche: ‘The people dancing all seemed crazy to the people who couldn’t hear the music.’«
Salim Washington is a saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, academic, and activist from Detroit who has been highly active on the American jazz scene since the 1970s, and also in South Africa, where he became a central figure. The spirit of John Coltrane hovers over his music, which carries both spiritual and social dimensions.
© Aske Jørgensen
»Music for us is the perfect language that we love to speak. A language where it is the individual's feelings and imagination that determine what is right and wrong. Everyone can speak the language. You don't have to be able to write or understand, but just listen. Some music requires that you listen carefully and maybe hear it several times. A bit like when you talk to someone from Norway or Sweden, you also have to listen a little extra.«
DØGNKIOSK is a Danish punk rock band with roots in Silkeborg. The band consists of bassist and singer Anders Ejner, who has been active on the Danish underground scene for several decades. Musically, DØGNKIOSK moves in a field between classic Danish punk and alternative rock. In the spring of 2026, the band will release their second album, Tæt på kanten.
© Bastian Zimmermann
It is difficult to comprehend that Andreas Engström is no longer with us. Just a couple of months ago, he wrote – as he had done so many times before – with an ambitious proposal: he wanted to review a box set of twenty releases by Dror Feiler. In the same message, he mentioned plans to come to Aarhus for the recently concluded Spor Festival.
The Escape From a Hotel That May Not Exist
RÖM: »Whispering Dub«
Ladies and gentlemen, we’re deep underground – indeed, all the way to France. This EP is the latest conceptual release from French electronic producer Romain Martin, who works under the name RÖM in the borderland between ambient and techno. Whispering Dub unfolds across five tracks, drawing heavily on dub while telling a story about an escape from a fictional hotel. Escomel’s background in African percussion studies and his fondness for analog gear surface in the mysterious sonic textures and the stark contrast between arranged percussion and dubbed-out echoes, underscoring the concept’s tension between mysticism and reality.
»Oilbird« opens in dystopian ambient before sliding into the rhythmic »Eastern Temple«, which constantly shifts between filtered synths, frantic percussion, and sudden breakbeats. Things cohere more fully on the title track, which blends minimal techno into the mix and stands out by maintaining a steady pulse, while echo-laden drums cast an unsettling atmosphere within the dance framework. On the closing »Hotel Amnesia«, the narrator awakens again in a collage of the record’s electronic tendencies, questioning their own existence in the album’s only use of vocals.
Whispering Dub isn’t wildly groundbreaking or bizarre enough to push the senses into extreme reactions. But as a well-produced and effective piece of electronic music, it invites the listener into a compelling game of whispers.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek
A Trumpet, Two Illusions and a Fjord
Kasper Tranberg / Mesmer
© PR
The stage was set for a special experience on Wednesday evening at KU.BE on Frederiksberg. In the borderland between tradition and joyful madness stood birthday celebrant Kasper Tranberg, blowing his trumpet. What emerged was an insistent blend of jazz and avant-garde, laced with understated humor and delivered by a virtuoso with a calm, unmistakably Danish presence. With a wry sense of ease, he made even the most complex passages surprisingly accessible.
Tranberg presented excerpts from 12 Melodic Illusions for Solo Improviser and Melodic Illusions for Sextet with both devotion and a glint in his eye. He demonstrated how the trumpet can stand alone while still conveying abstract emotional states. Sharp trills dissolved into growling undertones, merging with the resonance of the room. At times, he employed backing tracks, creating duets with himself.
The evening’s main attraction was the trio Mesmer – Emil Jensen, Victor Dybbroe, and Anders Filipsen – who performed works from their new piece Terrain Vague II, developed through several residencies in Northern Jutland. The three compositions moved within a field of electroacoustics, contemporary music, and analogue improvisation, carrying a distinctly cinematic and nature-infused sensibility. The sonic plunges into the Limfjord were particularly striking: Dybbroe’s metal percussion and Filipsen’s lapping synth textures carved out a dark, magnetic space. In the piece inspired by Aalborg Harbour, Jensen’s trumpet cut through with long, mist-laden tones, like signals drifting in from distant ships. The result was both enchanting and, at times, deeply inspiring. It was a concert that, for now, refuses to loosen its grip on me.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek