in briefrelease

Myths From a Dying Sea

Wanderwelle: »Ghosts Beneath the Brine«

The ocean as Cape Lonesome, as a graveyard where at midnight the mythical, the real, and the endangered rise from the dead: this is the sonic world of Ghosts Beneath the Brine, the new album by Amsterdam-based experimental duo Wanderwelle.

Across eight tracks suspended between elegy and requiem, the album navigates the reality of climate change and species extinction while invoking the mythology of creatures of the deep. To sound the crisis, Wanderwelle chose not to record melting icebergs or raging wildfires. Instead, they submerged cymbals – small, bowl-shaped metal plates used since ancient rituals – in saltwater for extended periods. As the metal degraded, its sound grew darker, more fragile, more unstable, releasing ghostly overtones.

Those tones drift through the album like the critically endangered albatross – to which the sixth track is dedicated – spreading its 3.5-metre wingspan like a ghost across vast, indifferent skies. Layered with reverb and sounds evoking lamenting, whimpering animal voices, the pieces carry titles that weave myth and ecological reality: »The Seabishop's Sermon« (named after a creature allegedly caught in the Baltic Sea in 1513), »Empty Net or Dissolving Souls«. The message is clear: sharks and oysters risk becoming as mythical as sea monsters once were, if destruction continues.

And yet this is precisely where the album's beauty becomes its limitation. Ghosts Beneath the Brine sounds hauntingly gorgeous – but like the sublime spectacle of a shipwreck witnessed from a safe distance, it invites us to shudder rather than act. More ghost train than alarm bell, it offers catharsis where the moment calls for urgency.

playlist

18.06

We are Selvhenter – would you like to see our playlist?

»Music, for us, is a fusion of different consciousnesses into a single shared focal point.«

The band Selvhenter was founded in 2010 by trombonist Maria Bertel, saxophonist Sonja LaBianca, violinist Maria Diekmann, and drummers Jaleh Negari and Anja Jacobsen. In 2017, Maria Diekmann left the group, and Selvhenter continued as a quartet.

Selvhenter’s sound is driven by a deep fascination with sonic textures, rhythmic displacements and polyrhythms, acoustic and electronic melodies, hard-hitting compositional choices, improvised beauty, and a sheer joy of creating and performing music. Selvhenter has played concerts both in Denmark and internationally. The group is also the nucleus of the artist collective Eget Værelse, which houses the members’ solo projects as well as collaborations such as Valby Vokalgruppe, SOLW, Nina Garcia & Maria Bertel, and G.E.K.

playlist

09.06

My name is Håkon Guttormsen – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music for me remembers.«

Håkon Guttormsen is a Norwegian composer and trumpeter living in Copenhagen. He is educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and the Royal Academy of Rhythmic Music. He primarily composes scores for ensembles as well as music drama and opera. He is currently working on a work for solo violin and electronics for ILK Music’s concert series during CPH Jazz 2026 and on his first symphonic work, which will premiere at the academy in 2027. He is a member of nyMusik’s composer group in Norway and a board member of UNM Denmark.

in brieflive

07.06

Deadly Serious Play at Louisiana

Simon Steen-Andersen, Håkon Stene, Tanja Orning: »Nye klange på Louisiana – Portrætkoncert med Simon Steen Andersen«

Louisiana, 06.06

Henrik Marstal

New Sounds at Louisiana is an initiative in which the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art has invited the record label Dacapo and the music publisher Edition S to curate concerts featuring living composers. Simon Steen-Andersen was the first composer in the series, and he seized the opportunity to assemble a programme that was not only overwhelming and exhilarating, but also deeply unsettling. Lasting an hour, the concert unfolded as a continuous sequence in which each work flowed seamlessly into the next, forming a single extended statement of at least part of the composer’s artistic practice and philosophy.

Combining video and live performance, the concert served as a manifestation of several of Steen-Andersen’s key artistic strategies. Central among them are techniques of estrangement and defamiliarisation, exemplified by Asthma (2017) for accordion, air pumps, and video, a work that explores and interrogates human breathing in all its positive and negative dimensions. Amid the many grotesque and humorous scenes – accompanied by Håkon Stene’s brilliant Foley-style soundtrack of air noises, sound effects, and spoken commentary – a brief clip of brutal police violence suddenly appears. In it, an officer methodically sprays pepper spray into the faces of handcuffed demonstrators. In that instant, everything else no longer seems quite so funny, and the crooked smile freezes.

The concert was a veritable sensory bombardment. Presenting all the works attacca undoubtedly created a powerful sense of flow, but it also left the audience almost saturated with impressions. Even so, the subsequent conversation between Simon Steen-Andersen and music critic and author Thomas Michelsen felt far too brief. Yet the composer succeeded in making his point: everything he does, he said, is a form of »deadly serious play.« Exactly.

playlist

06.06

My name is Troels H. Sørensen – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music for me is a constant movement (in me). It is a constantly changing song in my head. Music can be calming and uplifting, and it can give me answers that I didn’t know existed. Music guides me through life – whether it is the biggest and best moments of my life, or difficult periods. Music is also a community where new thoughts and ideas can come to life. Community is not a competition, but a way to move forward together.«

Troels H. Sørensen is the booking and program manager at the Skråen venue in North Jutland. He is a former manager at 1000Fryd. Together with Casper Clasen, he runs the Lasher Agency and is responsible for the Lasher Fest festival, among other things. Sørensen plays in the band Vægtløs and has previously been in various bands from the Aalborg underground and has released records through his cooperative record label 5FeetUnder Records.

playlist

30.05

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

»Music for me is osmotic refuge.«

Jungstötter is the solo project of Berlin-based songwriter and musician Fabian Altstötter, whose sounds linger in lyrical softness and formal fragmentation. Using voice as a centre point, as an axis that hinges off an assembly of instrumental experimentation, his work pulls together shifting lyric compositions with textured layering, and whispered moments of release.

Jungstötter has released two albums on [PIAS], and has played shows across Europe, at renowned venues and festivals includingVolksbühne, Silent Green and the Zeiss Major Planetarium (all Berlin), Kampnagel (Hamburg), the Nuremberg State Museum of Art and Design, Palac Akropolis (Prague), Desertshore Festival (Vienna), and more. He’s supported acclaimed acts including Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy, Arcade Fire) and Petra Hermanova.