In brieflive

Cortini – the Electronic John Williams

Alessandro Cortini

Alessandro Cortini is best known as a member of Nine Inch Nails, and as I discreetly listened in on conversations before the concert, it was clear that several people had shown up because of the connection to the famous band and its noisy, confrontational music – music that is worlds apart from the feather-light ambient universe that characterises most of Cortini’s solo work.

At ALICE, however, we were presented with a very different side of Cortini: Cortini the film composer. The artist was positioned far out at the edge of the stage, where he could tinker with his synthesizers in peace without stealing attention from the film projected onto the back wall of the stage. Contrasting, tactile images slowly sliding into and out of one another. Abstract, amorphous shapes that at times resembled misty memories from the real world: raindrops on a car window, a city seen from above, stars in the night sky; tar, metal shavings, crushed crystal.

Cortini reminded me of a kind of electronic John Williams, enveloping the images in an unusually grand, almost symphonic universe that elevated the black-and-white light forms into hieroglyphs of infinite wisdom. The atmosphere was so sacral and gripping that, with closed eyes, one could easily forget that Cortini was not singing Michelangelo’s paintings from behind the organ in the Sistine Chapel, but instead setting analogue synth tones to what looked like an image of a granite block. Some of the Nine Inch Nails fans, I could hear, were slightly confused by the emotionally charged, almost romantic aesthetic, but I myself truly admired Cortini for his uncompromising maximalism. There was no affected distance or feigned coolness – only pure, unadulterated musical beauty.

Playlist

02.01

My name is Thomas Morgan – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music is all of life in sound.«

Thomas Morgan is a double bass player based in New York. He has recorded and toured all over the world as a member of Paul Motian’s bands, the John Abercrombie Quartet, Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Tomasz Stanko New York Quartet, Bill Frisell Trio, Jakob Bro Trio w. Joey Baron among many others. He has also collaborated with Dan Tepfer, Craig Taborn and Masabumi Kikuchi, and released albums with Bill Frisell, Small Town; Maria Laurette Friis, Colors, and with Jakob Bro/Joe Lovano, Once Around The Room. In November 2025 he stepped forward with his first solo project, Around You Is a Forest (Loveland Music). The record is built around WOODS, a virtual string instrument Morgan designed in SuperCollider that evokes the sound of plucked and struck string instruments – West African lute-harps, Asian zithers, the Hungarian cimbalom, marimbas – while operating according to generative code that Morgan shaped into a living, evolving instrument.

Playlist

20.12

My name is Lars Hannibal – would you like to see my playlist?

Lars Hannibal. © Søren Solkær

»Making a playlist is not an easy task for me. Music occupies most of my waking hours. It is a condition that began to grow when I was a teenager. If I am not playing myself, or working with the music I release or compose, music is still present, reaching out to me. I have always found it difficult to experience music in boxes or genres, so I listen very broadly and take pleasure in any music I can feel and that moves me. Music is a condition of life, and expressing oneself through music is a gift – but being able to experience music with openness is perhaps an even greater gift. I have chosen a list in which the guitar plays a part.«

Lars Hannibal began – like many others of his generation – playing folk and rock guitar at the age of fifteen. But when he heard the Spanish guitar master Andrés Segovia perform the gavotte from Bach’s Partita in E major, his musical life took a new direction, and he decided to devote himself to the classical guitar.

Since the early 1970s, Lars Hannibal has also composed songs and instrumental works. Today he performs primarily as a member of the Petri/Hannibal Duo and works alongside this as managing director of the record label OUR Recordings, which he founded together with Michala Petri in 2006, as well as a consultant for Edition Borup-Jørgensen.

In briefrelease

15.12

Uncompromising Vignettes of Silence and Sighs

Hildur Guðnadóttir: »Where to From«

Deutsche Grammophon, 31.10

Simon Heggum

It seemed to come like a bolt from the blue when the Icelandic cellist and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir broke the sound barrier with an uncompromising, inward-looking sound situated between contemporary classical and experimental music – most widely recognised through her suffocating soundtracks for Chernobyl and Joker.

Yet on her Deutsche Grammophon debut Where to From, it is the personal spaces we are invited into. The instrumentation is pared right back to a chamber ensemble, voices, and extended passages of near-absolute silence. The result is often achingly beautiful – and deeply affecting.

The work unfolds in small vignettes, rarely lasting more than a couple of minutes, before vocals are introduced in the album’s second half – most notably in »Make Space« and the exquisite a cappella hymn »I Hold Close«. The equally beautiful »Melody of Not Knowing« explores the cello’s darkest registers, striking blue midnight tones in the echo of the heart, especially as it glides into »All Along«, where voice and strings merge.

Where to From is a powerfully mood-saturated work that moves effortlessly between chamber music and neoclassicism, finding its uncompromising character in the quietest, most intimate sighs between human and instrument. It is neither too little nor too much – always precisely measured. And for that very reason, Guðnadóttir remains such a compelling musical presence.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

In briefrelease

09.12

Minimalism for Patient Ears

Lukas Lauermann: »Varve«

col legno, 24.10

Marta Bo

Varve – from the Danish varv – refers to the annual layers of sediment, a quiet geological archive of time’s passage. Lukas Lauermann’s album carries this meaning into its very sonic core. Here, organ and vocal samples taken from worn cassette tapes meet an inquisitive, almost ascetic cello that moves like fine strokes across a flickering, dust-filled soundscape.

The cello is restrained but never passive. It slips in and out of the cassette’s white noise, of fragmented voices and the organ’s gentle currents of air, until all elements ultimately merge into a single, organic texture. Lauermann himself describes the music as a depiction of irregularities, and it is precisely in these small shifts that Varve finds its quiet strength. The album’s idea of sonic sedimentation becomes an image of our longing to reconnect with nature’s tempo. The compositional motifs seem repetitive, yet they never repeat themselves entirely; they build layer upon layer, like organic growth. As a listener, one becomes witness to microscopic changes slowly unfolding – a process that can bring about an almost meditative state.

Varve is an album for those who prefer listening experiences at an unhurried pace; for those who find Hans Zimmer too grandiose and would rather follow the patient growth of grass than an orchestra’s emotional climaxes.

Playlist

05.12

My name is Gintė Preisaitė – would you like to see my playlist?

Gintė Preisaitė

»Music for me is the purest transformation of any energy hiding inside. Through the sound it can become anything we need. It is a form of a bond and connection, it's subtle and it is direct at the same time. For me it was always the biggest exploration machine I could learn about myself, people and environments.«

Gintė Preisaitė is a Lithuanian artist based in Copenhagen who works across piano, electronics, composition and improvisation. Classically trained, she has moved steadily toward electronics, noise, free improvisation and jazz, performing in numerous constellations in recent years.

Working with prepared acoustic instruments, electronics and tape, she bridges her classical background with contemporary sonic experimentation. Through shifting timbres, textures, collaged melodies and percussive figures, she seeks to push acoustic and electronic sound into a space that feels both personal and deeply connected.

Last year she released the EP Spring Mass under the name Baraboro, followed this September by Kaiko, her trio release with Amalie Dahl and Jan Philipp Treen. She is currently developing a new project under her own name for release next year. Gintė performs widely as both a solo artist and a member of various ensembles in Copenhagen and abroad.