Saturday night at Huset’s Xenon stage was a true laboratory of sound, body, and technology. Two vastly different artists explored the expressive possibilities within sound and performance art. First, the Icelandic composer Sól Ey presented her performance Hreyfð («she is moved« in Islandic) wearing a suit equipped with microphones, speakers, and gyroscopes, her movements were transformed into sound. Through slow, deliberate motions, Ey tuned into different frequencies. Each gesture created a new auditory universe – ranging from soft, ethereal tones with the finest textures to distorted and aggressive noises, from cosmic whispers to fragmented radio signals that reminded me of NASA’s Voyager recordings. In complete silence, the audience observed Ey as she explored the sounds of outer space.

Afterward, the Japanese drummer Ryosuke Kiyasu stepped forward like a sonic warrior. With nothing but a snare drum, a table, and a microphone, he unleashed a relentless 30-minute sonic assault. He screamed, pounded, and perspired. He used both his own body and drumsticks. The audience held their breath as Kiyasu attacked his snare drum like a man determined to break through the limits of sound from within. And when he finally collapsed onto the floor, the room erupted in cheers.

While Sól Ey wove an intricate dialogue between technology and movement, Ryosuke Kiyasu launched a frontal attack on the material’s resistance. Both confronted the boundaries of sound with uncompromising dedication, demonstrating that sound art is not just about playing – but about transformation.

In 2022, the Indonesian group Juarta Putra turned the Roskilde Festival upside down and captivated a large audience with a trance dance called reak. In the documentary Cosmic Balance, director Andreas Johnsen takes us back to the time just before, to Putra's hometown of Cinunuk in West Java, Indonesia. Through 24-year-old Anggi Nugraha, we are introduced to reak and how both the young and the old, to the sound of booming drums, distorted tarompet (a reed wind instrument resembling an oboe), and reciting song, surrender to the ancestors who visit them in their wild trances. Anggi himself, who has just become the leader of the reak group, is haunted by his stern grandfather, who orders that traditions must be preserved and upheld.

However, Anggi is unsure about his new role. He is not of the bloodline of the predecessor Abah or any of the other members in the group, but he grew up in the village among the musicians after his parents, for unknown reasons, left him there. We also meet Anggi's girlfriend, whom he wants to marry, but whom he has not received his parents' approval to marry for the same reason. Anggi is a sensitive and sympathetic young man, whom one can only wish the best for. He himself seeks help from a fortune-teller, who gives him the strength to travel to Denmark and to marry his chosen one. How the marriage will turn out is unknown, but the journey to Roskilde is a clear success. 

The film's soundtrack works predominantly well with field recordings and the group's own music. Less fitting are the passages with lyrical piano and strings accompanying the trance scenes from Cinunuk, which come across as unnecessarily staged. This does not change the fact that Cosmic Balance gives a sympathetic and fascinating portrait of music that, on the one hand, fits perfectly with the global and diverse profile of the Roskilde Festival, but which also comes from a world so distant from the inferno of Roskilde that one can hardly see where the ends meet. But they do, that night at Roskilde.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek