The Shadow of a Soundtrack

As is often the case with soundtracks, musician and composer Søren Gemmer and the Greenlandic-Danish visual artist Jessie Kleemann tread a fine line on Lone Wolf Runner, whose music was originally written as the soundtrack to Kleemann’s performances of the same name in 2023 at the National Museum. How much of the original purpose (here, Kleemann’s performances) can and should be taken out of the equation for an album release to make sense?

In the PR material, the album is presented, among other things, as a postcolonial critique and an exploration of transcultural questions, which at first glance seems highly compelling – not least in light of the current geopolitical situation in which Greenland suddenly finds itself at the center. On a purely musical level, however, the release is not as gripping as one might have hoped. It lacks a stronger anchoring in a sense of purpose behind the music. Without having experienced Kleemann’s original performance, my impression is that the absence of precisely this aspect has left gaps too large for the otherwise, in many ways, intriguing music to fill on its own. Lone Wolf Runner is filled with references and hints of drama and storytelling that never quite come into their own.

There are nevertheless many interesting and exciting moments: Kleemann’s poetic voice, shifting not only between Greenlandic and Danish, but also between heavily vocoder-processed and seemingly untreated vocals. The atonal, hesitant, yet beautiful piano melodies in, among others, »The Dancer« and »Marble«, which create calm moments infused with tension. The industrial »The Skin«, halfway through the album, plants doubt about which direction the music is leading the listener. But in the end, Lone Wolf Runner lacks precisely what was cut away in the album’s process of becoming: a performance that can bind it all together.