in brief

27.04.2021

Syv lydsøjler og en varulv

Poul Ruders: »Dream Catcher«

Bjarke Mogensen er solist på det nye album, hvor »Sound and Simplicity« er indspillet for første gang. © Nikolaj Lund

Det nye værk på albummet, akkordeonkoncerten Sound and Simplicity (2018), består af syv satser. Eller »lydsøjler«, som Ruders kalder dem.

Satserne har forskellige udgangspunkter, for eksempel lyder den første, »Rain«, med sit stærkt vekslende sammenspil mellem Bjarke Mogensens akkordeon og Odense Symfoniorkester som at bevæge sig igennem en by, hvor regnen rammer de forskellige overflader og skaber klange af varierende længde og intensitet.

Anden sats, »Trance«, smider al melodik og tematik over bord for over fire minutter at lade en Ges-dur bevæge sig tre oktaver op – og man keder sig aldrig. De to sidste satser, »Twilight« og »Wolf Moon«, er som taget ud af en gammel horrorfilm. I »Twilight« leger akkordeonet i hele sit register, hvor jeg flere gange reelt er i tvivl om, om lyden bliver dubbet af et orgel eller kor, selvom det ‘kun’ er orkestret, der farver klangene på subtile måder. Satsen slutter af med et varulvehyl, arrangeret for basun.

Vekselvirkningen mellem at udforske mulighederne for forskellig sound i konstellationen orkester og akkordeon, mens man holder sig til ret simple virkemidler, gør Sound and Simplicity til et virkelig vellykket værk, hvoraf hver sats tåler genlytninger.

playlist

03.04

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

»Music is a deep, but not serious, spiritual practice, in which creator, collaborator, and consumer alike are their own personal pope.«

James Black (b. 1990) is a composer, performer, and artistic director of Klang Festival – Copenhagen Experimental Music. Originally from Bristol, England, they moved to Copenhagen in 2013. Black's works have attracted a large amount of attention both nationally and internationally for their signature combination of artistic courage and vulnerability, described by the Danish Arts Council as »a universe of real madness where everything goes«. Their work is a deep and personal exploration of topics such as religion, loss, and queer identity, that is unafraid to be stupid or serious in any direction.

playlist

02.04

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

»Music is just something for me.«

Christian Juncker is a Danish musician and songwriter who has released a number of Danish-language albums. He debuted in 1995 with the band Bloom. Together with his friend Jakob Groth Bastiansen, he formed the duo Juncker in 2002. He is also behind the Christmas carol »Luk julefreden ind« from 2024.

playlist

01.04

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

»Music, for me, reveals the emptiness of boundaries and definitions – in consciousness, in space, and in music itself.«

Idan Elmalem is an oud player and composer working across world and popular music, now presenting his debut instrumental EP and live performance project. Following years of collaboration within the Israeli music scene, he turns toward a more personal and intimate musical voice, blending traditional oud with a contemporary sensibility. Influenced by his studies with master Nissim Dakwar, Elmalem’s music explores the space between tradition and innovation. His debut EP, Time, features three live-recorded pieces that move between past, present, and future, combining classical Arabic and Persian elements with jazz, minimalism, and cinematic sound. Based in Tel Aviv, Elmalem draws on his Moroccan-Danish heritage in his work. He is a graduate of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Ethnomusicology at the University of Haifa, alongside his work as a player and composer.

31.03

Local Forces Behind New Electronic Festival in Aalborg

On May 29, the Aalborg-based collective Datahaven9000 takes over the venue Skråen, transforming its main hall into a concentrated one-day festival of electronic music. The event is part of the concert series Bystanders #3, where the stage is handed over to local scenes rather than the venue’s in-house programming.

in briefrelease

30.03

Inside the Belly of an Alien Sonic Organism

Ideologic Organ / La Becque Editions, 27.03

Nikola Nedeljkovic Gøttsche

Two of contemporary music’s most uncompromising material thinkers meet on Music for Intersecting Planes: the American organist Kali Malone and the French cellist Leila Bordreuil. Malone works with oversaturated blocks of sound and sonic mass as a sustained pressure, while Bordreuil seeks friction – her cello a recalcitrant organism that creaks and resists.

What they share is an ascetic attention to the specificity of their instruments. The organ and the cello are pushed to their outer limits, where recognizability dissolves and overtones emerge like hidden entities.

The title pieces, »Intersecting Planes I» and »II«, unfold as undulating ruptures of sound: animalistic, almost elephantine cries that surge forward and recede again. Only rarely can the sound be identified as organ or cello. (»Pilots in the Night« comes closest to a familiar balance between the organ’s gravity and the cello’s resistance.) Otherwise, the music moves within a field between the metallic and the electronic, as if the sound originates neither from strings nor pipes.

It is not mass that is being explored here, but rather a kind of hollowness: an airiness that is not light, but permeated by an indeterminate resonance – something ancient, almost ceremonial. The album holds something far more porous and open than Malone and Bordreuil’s earlier works. The sound appears as a concave form, bending inward, like an absence of material. The sonic landscape carries its own dissolution within it as an inherent delay – as if the music exists, first and foremost, as the erosion of something one thought one heard.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek