in brieflive

20.03.2025

The Power of Trance: A Journey from Indonesia to Roskilde

Andreas Johnsen: »Cosmic Balance«

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

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.