in briefrelease

A Strange Instrument, a Familiar Sound

Mike Sheridan: «Touch«

There is something almost dogmatic about Mike Sheridan’s latest album, Touch. Everything leads back to the Cristal Baschet – a peculiar instrument from the 1950s in which sound is produced by running wet fingers over glass rods, setting metal resonators into vibration. No strings, no keys, just glass, water, skin and friction, slowly making the metal sing.

The Cristal Baschet is not merely an instrument on Touch. It is the album cover, the subject of the press photos, and almost the very argument for the album’s existence.

It recalls the material fetishism found in the American duo Matmos, whose music is often built around a single material or sound source: metal on Metallic Life Review (2025), plastic on Plastic Anniversary (2019), a washing machine on Ultimate Care II (2016). What is interesting about such constraints is that they ought to force the music somewhere it otherwise might not be able to go.

While listening to Touch, a question therefore begins to press itself forward: Which of these sounds could not have existed without a Cristal Baschet?

There are glassy tones that hang in the air and slowly change texture. Thin, cutting vibrations. Metallic surfaces that flutter, ripple, open and close. A constant sense of droning resonance; of something vibrating just on the other side of the audible.

Sheridan’s layering is meticulous. There is a precision to the mix, an almost surgical sense of the distance between the different textures. The best moments occur when the surface is disturbed: something that scratches at or short-circuits the otherwise tightly controlled resonance. On »BOW / GROUND«, for instance, deep bass pulses suddenly enter, creating a different physical quality – crackling, heavy, like something hitting the floor.

But Touch is first and foremost a well-produced ambient album. It moves through different degrees of the same state, changing nuance without ever truly changing its skin. That is not necessarily a weakness. There is something consistent, almost meditative, in Sheridan’s insistence. But the longer one remains in the same sonic state, the more one begins to miss what ought to be the Cristal Baschet’s particular possibility.

This is where the disappointment lies: in the gap between the instrument’s strangeness and the music’s conventional appearance. The sounds have been assimilated into a familiar ambient vocabulary, where the extraordinary instrument ends up producing something surprisingly familiar. You can hear that something unusual is happening at the source of the sound. But you cannot necessarily hear why it had to be this particular instrument. Had one not been told that a rare, almost otherworldly acoustic sculpture was standing in the room, one would hardly have guessed it.

in briefrelease

04.04.2025

Explosive Jazz Builds Up and Burns Down

Amalie Dahl: »Breaking/Building Habits«

Sauajazz, 04.04

Kristoffer Møllegaard

From the very first downbeat, I sense a special energy – saxophonist and composer Amalie Dahl, in interplay with vibraphonist Viktoria Søndergaard, guitarist Viktor Bomstad, and drummer Tore Ljøkelsøy, unfolds a unique balance between calm and restrained wildness. Take, for instance, the album’s second track, which opens at a lingering tempo with a duet between Søndergaard’s vibraphone and Dahl’s saxophone. At times their playing merges into harmonic dialogue; at others, the interaction is disrupted by contrasting movements. Like a conversation, the instruments alternate between gentle suggestions and lively outbursts. It is a joy to listen to music that flows so effortlessly. Halfway through, Bomstad suddenly kicks the door open with his guitar, hurling himself into the conversation with explosive force. Where moments earlier I was savouring the finely tuned interplay between Søndergaard and Dahl, I am now overwhelmed by the flaming, noise-rock chaos Bomstad ignites – and I love every second of it.

All three tracks on the album are thus imbued with sheer joy of playing, confident compositions, and impressively free excursions. The listener is kept on the edge of their seat, knowing that at any moment the four musicians can cause an otherwise cosy passage to detonate. With Breaking/Building Habits, Dahl and her collaborators exemplify the unique vitality of partially composed, partially improvised jazz. They build up and burn down, again and again – and as a listener, there is nothing to do but surrender to their compelling show of force.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

in briefrelease

30.03.2025

Mathias Reumert Group Masters the Art of Playing with Sound

Mathias Reumert Group feat. Anna Caroline Olesen & Hsiao-Tung Yuan

KoncertKirken, 29.03

Sofus Preisel

Mathias Reumert Group is a playful and tightly knit percussion ensemble. This was already evident upon entering KoncertKirken: the long side of the hall was densely packed with an impressive arsenal of percussion instruments, ready to bring the space to life. The programme opened with a delightful performance of György Ligeti’s Síppal, Dobbal, Nádihegedüvel featuring soprano Anna Caroline Olesen. A work driven by humour and constantly shifting yet precisely placed sounds – harmonica, referee whistles, marimba, tubular bells, and much more. We were even fortunate enough to hear the final movement twice.

The early encore loosened up the otherwise somewhat conventional concert format – one piece followed by the next, and so on. In new-music ensembles, one increasingly encounters curatorial and conceptual frameworks for concerts. Perhaps this is a development from which this curious ensemble could benefit?

The concert concluded with Chiung-Ying Chang’s Solar Myth – a piece of music theatre rooted in Taiwanese culture, where prop and instrument became one. Three masked beings played softly on a bass drum, initiating what felt like a ritual. But the ritual was abruptly disrupted when a fourth percussionist stepped forward, offering resistance through the tones of a marimba. The three beings responded with sharp, piercing cracks from their bright red fans – but the marimba did not yield. What followed was an explosive soundscape of metallic percussion, bright, clattering, and dancing. The dramaturgy seemed shaped by a deep understanding of the nature of music itself. Enchanting. One left KoncertKirken a little taller, happier, and more playful.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

in briefrelease

27.03.2025

The Cello Within the Comfort Zone

Josefine Opsahl: »Cytropia«

Neue Meister, 31.01

Henrik Friis

There are twelve tracks on Josefine Opsahl’s album Cytropia, each with the duration of a rock song. Remarkably, there is a straight line from the first to the last – both in timbre, rhythm, melody, atmosphere, and playing. The ears are embraced by a gentle melancholy created by small cello figures in long sequences, with a slow-moving cello melody on top. Some parts in minor, others more open.

She is receiving quite a lot of praise these days for her many projects – an opera and a ballet – alongside her work as a cellist-composer, and it must almost be due to the highly accessible, cohesive, and dreamy sound she consistently delivers. I must admit that I have become somewhat skeptical along the way. Both as a musician and as a composer, I wish she would challenge herself with new approaches and new visions for the stories her music should tell. On Cytropia, we approach a constant state of uniform sound, evoking thoughts of the deliberate inertia of New Age composers.

There are quite beautiful moments along the way. The track »Cyborg« is crystal-clear in its surface. A piece like »Leaverecalls«, in its mechanics, the American minimalism of Philip Glass. But once again, one misses displacements and rhythmic additions that could challenge the static soundscape. The last hundred years of experimentation have expanded the battlefield of cello playing. Opsahl draws on some of these experiences to create her own small mechanical accompaniments for herself. Yet, the setup with a sequencer and a cello seems limiting in allowing Opsahl to explore timbres and ideas where the gravity of melancholy can truly be felt.

playlist

26.03.2025

We are NEKO3 – would you like to see our playlist?

»Music is like an ancient mineral, containing a history of wisdom reaching over centuries, stratifying and evolving into new forms. It is like a black hole, wrapping around us and allowing us to temporarily escape the noise of the world.

An emotional safe zone, a place for solace, a bringer of light, a unifying factor. It is us.«

NEKO3 is a Copenhagen-based experimental music group consisting of: Fei Nie, Lorenzo Colombo and Kalle Hakosalo. The group is working towards the creation of a new musical language, flexibly moving between various performance media and artistic expressions. Continuously collaborating with composers and other creators of art, it seeks to integrate music and other forms of art into one conceptual whole.

NEKO3 has performed at Festival Internacional de la Imagen, SONICA Glasgow, cresc... Biennale, Time Of Music, Rondò, MINU festival, Copenhagen Light Festival, Unerhörte Musik and Spor Festival. They have been featured as soloists with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and the Aarhus Sinfonietta, and given workshops and presentations at ie. Standford University, the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, University of California San Diego and Kungliga Musikhögskolan (SE). The ensemble has recorded multiple EP’s and released their first full length album Angel Death Traps in collaboration with Alexander Schubert in 2024.

in briefrelease

23.03.2025

New Central American Tales

Xenia Xamanek: »Germinate [Imprint] Wilt [Stay]«

Scorpio Red Records, 14.03

Henrik Friis

There is plenty of space around the many different sounds and voices narrating Central American horror stories on Honduran-Danish artist Xenia Xamanek’s album Germinate. The words »germinate« and »wilt« appear in the title, serving as fitting markers for the blossoming, bubbling, futuristic, and slightly eerie soundscape. A handful of voices fill the ears with mechanical, intense connections, swirling impressions of nature and language into the brain.

The album is a rare reinvention of the oratorio, the 18th-century religious opera genre featuring sung text fragments and wordless music. A significant departure from the dance floors Xamanek used to curate. Here, singers and an electro-acoustic soundscape tell stories through two simple, word-heavy recitatives, two arias with chanting narration, and electronic soundscapes.

There’s a calmness in Xenia Xamanek’s approach that can become utterly addictive. The material from their ancestral storytelling – and perhaps even the chanting narrative style – sets a scene that feels both warm and familiar. Yet at the same time, it turns original and alien as the calm of the words is challenged by dense patterns of simple sonic elements interacting with each other.

Oratorios in the 18th century lasted three hours and can easily feel distant and irrelevant today. But Xamanek’s album, rooted in the cuentos y leyendas de Honduras they heard in their childhood, offers three-quarters of an hour of presence – one that unexpectedly points forward.