in brief

02.11.2022

Stolt metal fra Mongoliet

The Hu – Train

»Hu hu hu hu hu!« Publikum kaldte på det mongolske band, som trådte på scenen med vind i håret, publikumskontakt og stolthed over at være krigere, rytterfolk. Shamanistiske, sprængfulde af maskulin stamina og med strubesangens lange vibratovokaler og sangteknikker, der kunne få Lemmy Klimister til at tage hatten af fra det hinsides.

Traditionelle mongolske streng- og bueinstrumenter, tunge trommer, selvsikker elguitar, træfløjte og jødeharpe gik op i en højere enhed med mowhawks, undercuts, tung metal, syrerock og psychobilly. Nummeret »Gjenkis Khan« åbnede med stille bastoner, hæs vokal, bløde strøg over strengene og siden en eksplosion på rytmegruppen. Så udsyret metal og headbanging i »Wolf Totem«, tunge meditative droner i »Black Thunder« og den shamanistiske »Shoog Shoog«, der blev omsat til heavy.

Det var en stilsikker hitparade fra et band, der holdt energien samtlige sekunder i halvanden time. Aftenens sidste ekstranummer var en hyldest til heltene i Metallica, og således forlod The Hu scenen efter at have spillet »Sad But True« med mongolsk tekst og otte mand høj instrumentering.

Koncerten var en påmindelse om musikkens dialektik, hvordan kunsten ikke har grænser, kun broer. Ingen stjæler hinandens kultur, men hylder den, og inspirationen flyder frem og tilbage på tværs af verdensdele og årtusinder.

I anledning af Music City Aarhus 2022 bringer Seismograf en serie artikler om musik og lydkunst i Aarhus.

playlist

27.05

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

27.05

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

26.05

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.

in briefrelease

25.05

Ecstasy After the Party

Olof Dreijer: »Loud Bloom«

dh2, 08.05

Nikola Nedeljkovic Gøttsche

With the debut album Loud Bloom, Olof Dreijer – best known from The Knife – comes across as someone who never quite realised the party was over. Or perhaps realised it before everyone else did.

For years, club music has been absorbed into popular culture and its aesthetic vocabulary – imported into the pop song as energy, irony, and texture through artists like Charli XCX, PC Music, and the entire hyperpop complex. On Loud Bloom, the opposite happens. This is not club music disguised as pop, but pop music subjected to the temporality of the club: circular, lingering, and uninterested in quick release.

Dreijer understands something essential about repetition – the melodies are catchy without being insistent. »Rosa Rugosa«, »Plastic Camelia«, and »Cassia« are instantly memorable, yet the melodies never harden into slogans. The sonic palette is airy and almost devoid of chordal surfaces. Steel drums, gleaming synth figures, pitched tom-toms, and sub-bass drift lyrically through the music, while castanets and cowbells flicker at the edges. Even the vocals function more as texture than as centre.

The album feels constantly in motion, as though its melodies are being refracted through prisms that continuously produce new luminous surfaces. On »Lantana«, tones drift away from their point of departure like blurred watercolours – not quite microtonal, but with a sense of intonation as something fluid. Precisely for that reason, one occasionally misses an element of estrangement. In The Knife, Karin Dreijer’s voice functioned as a disturbing counterforce – androgynous, childlike, threatening. On Loud Bloom, the sonic world is more homogeneous and smoothed out.

Still, the album feels like an heir to the half-clubbed, half-pop kaleidoscopic computer music of the mid-2010s – albums such as Our Love by Caribou and In Colour by Jamie xx – music that dared to be melodic without the safety net of irony. Dreijer’s music believes in ecstasy as a gentle experience. It is music meant for dancing, yet somehow shy at the very thought of celebration.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

in briefrelease

21.05

Artificial Intelligence on Autoplay

Slopcore: »Simon Littauer«

Slopcore, 12.02

Thomas Bøgevald Bjørnsten

The logic of automation has long been part of modern music production. But what happens when it no longer merely assists, but takes over the creative process and artistic execution itself? Simon Littauer’s Slopcore is one of the latest attempts to answer that question. The sound of the AI-driven project is not radical as such, but it is interesting because Slopcore is several things at once: both a concrete take on an artistic practice shaped by recent developments in AI, and a symptom of the all-encompassing data models currently being debated so intensely.

Slopcore mimics the logic of a familiar streaming platform, except that the music here is generated in real time, with the audio stream continuously adapting to the listener’s behaviour, allowing users to proactively like the output or skip ahead whenever they want. The simple interface – featuring play, pause, and a heart icon – is accompanied by a pointillistic waveform that visually emphasises how Slopcore’s aesthetic winds its way through recognisable electronic terrains of house, 2000s electronica, IDM, techno, drum’n’bass, ambient synth textures, etc. etc. Most of it is rhythmically, harmonically, and melodically coherent, without being overly experimental.

As an AI-boosted extension of Littauer’s broader musical practice – which already contains strong aleatoric and algorithmic elements – the whole thing makes perfect sense. AI is not disappearing as a technology, and the parallels to Spotify’s growing AI ambitions or platforms like Suno are obvious enough. Littauer’s position as an established electronic musician becomes entangled in a deeply commercial and opaque data architecture (read: Google’s). And the title clearly references – perhaps ironically – the concept of »AI slop«, the term used to describe the generic, soulless overproduction of images and sound flooding digital platforms. Beyond being an entertaining listening experience, Slopcore can also be seen as a relevant – perhaps, in the current climate, even courageous – contribution to an ongoing and confusing debate about artistic integrity and authenticity in a cultural world that cannot decide whether it wants to resist or simply log in.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek