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

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