Grand Miniature Worlds
In Naldjorlak French composer Éliane Radigue takes us on a journey of microscopic proportions as a seemingly simple musical situation reminiscent of her earlier work for synthesizers unfolds. Naldjorlak is a work for unaccompanied cello and Radigue’s first composition for acoustic instruments and relies on a verbal communication between composer and performer. Cellist Charles Curtis, hones in on just one note for the duration of the piece, however, this premise which at first can strike the listener as simple is anything but.
What 91 year-old Radigue is asking of her listener is to be present and it might come as no great surprise that she has been a practicing Buddhist since the 1970's. To experience Radigue’s music you need to be able to follow sound to its silence, and that is a mental state. Naldjorlak is an invitation to deep listening. What do you hear when you stop in your tracks and begin truly listening as Charles Curtis drones on? Curtis is right at home in Radigue’s investigation of sound and his playing reminds us that without a great performer a great work of sound art does not exist. Had there been a score we could have mused that the work itself exists for the reader to experience through reading, but given the fact that composer and soloist have worked verbally it is more difficult to imagine this piece without its performer and so it’s difficult to fully know when we are hearing Radigue and when we hear Curtis.
Curtis brings Naldjorlak to life so subtly that it’s easy to think that he is doing nothing. It sounds deceptively simple at first but if you take the time to actually experience the pace of the droning you will notice that not only are the two versions offered on this release vastly different in character and expressivity. They aren’t really drones with its implicit monotony, rather they are microscopic worlds of constantly changing textures of sound, and it is the way Curtis so masterfully mediates Radigue’s ideas that makes these recordings from Los Angeles and Paris so captivating.
Soap Horse Kept a Tight Rein – Maybe Too Tight
K Bech – known from the rock band Shiny Darkly – opened Saturday night’s concert at Alice with a raw, unpolished melancholy. A sense of Copenhagen-style urban gloom was palpable, yet the slightly nervous set never really took off. Despite a promising setup of violin, guitar, and electronic tracks, the sensitive lyrics remained more hints than breakthroughs.
Soap Horse then took the stage and truly ignited the evening with an authentic chicken-picking riff. The country-rooted guitar technique was just one example of the musical abundance running through the band, which has just released its debut EP Tooth Inside a Tooth.
Nothing seemed accidental. From the rust-red gothic tapestry to the carefully chosen instrumentation – violin, saxophone, and pedal steel alongside guitar, bass, and drums – every detail added to a deliberate aesthetic. The sound was dark and alluring, in sharp contrast to frontman Hans Gustav Björklund Moulvad’s shock of white hair and intense stage presence.
The songs were crafted with a refined sense of balance. Simple, repetitive motifs were passed between the instruments, and when massive noise walls and shimmering colors broke through, the already blurred borders of indie rock stretched even further. Moulvad commanded the whole with ease, moving charismatically between the music’s many layers. And yet, I found myself wishing Soap Horse would let go completely. The weightless intermezzos – where the unusual lineup could have truly unfolded – were too often pulled back by a steady drumbeat, returning the music to a safe ground. Soap Horse displayed remarkable control and a firm grasp of both their sonic universe and their audience. Perhaps all that’s left is to prove they dare to loosen their grip.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek
A One-Way Ticket To Illiyeen, Please!
Illiyeen is visual artist Eliyah Mesayer’s fictional state for the stateless, a group to which the artist herself belonged until just a few years ago. Since 2019, she has continuously added national symbols in Illiyeen’s characteristic black color, and today the state has its own postal service, national anthem, uniform, navy – and a steadily expanding list of collaborators.
It’s a clever concept, at once tightly defined and completely open. Because the state is nomadic and collective, it can arise anywhere and include a wider circle of like-minded artists, such as Angel Wei from Haloplus+ and the poet Zahna Siham Benamour. It is a state of mind.
At Den Frie, it was the drum duo Thicket – Adam »CCsquele« Nielsen and Dan Kjær Nielsen – who performed from opposite sides of a split drum kit. Through an improvised drum solo so energetic that drumsticks flew through the air, they explored the shared rhythm that emerged, broke apart, and shifted character along the way. A fitting symbol of Illiyeen’s community: a constant negotiation and coordination of tempo and movement.
Along the way, the toms gave way to a recorded sound piece, a spherical electronic composition with subdued spoken word woven into the soundscape. The work originated from an earlier installation but was extended for the occasion, with added acoustic elements recorded by Cæcilie Trier and Xenia Xamanek. It carried a mournful, sensitive vibe that stood in sharp contrast to the thundering intensity of the drums. Mesayer’s poetic, black-clad universe and Thicket’s simultaneously tight and improvisational energy bursts blended perfectly into a community one longed to be part of.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielzcarek
Gąsiorek Never Looks Back
Polish-born Szymon Gąsiorek has done it again – created a cornucopia of an album that both overwhelms and delights with its endless wealth of eclectic ideas, styles, and sound sources. As is often the case with this kind of release, where each track has its own distinct identity, personal favorites quickly emerge.
One clear favorite announces itself right away. The opening track, »TAK TAK NIE NIE«, explodes with an energy reminiscent of early Boredoms – a heavy dose of noise rock with shouted vocals, electric guitar, saxophone, gunshots, screams, synths, piano, and more. The third track, »STRACH LĘK NIEPOKÓJ«, also shines with a zeuhl-like momentum driven by militaristic vocals, insistent drums, jagged guitar, and saxophone. And even beyond the most immediately impressive tracks, Polofuturyzm is so packed with highlights and playful surprises that even half of it would have sufficed. Take, for example, »90s [NADZIEJA]«, featuring a trancey synth quickly and effectively sabotaged by free jazz-style drums and saxophone, or »JEDNOKIERUNKOWY«, which sounds like classic disco polo thrown in a blender and mixed with pitch-shifted vocals and clubby keyboards. Not to forget the eight-second slapstick piano flourish on »RĘCE«.
Polofuturyzm is driven by a manic refusal to ever look back. The only constant is the absence of consistency. Gąsiorek has been here before, but it still feels just as radical and refreshing.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek
Composition for Stone Walls
The contrast is striking when, on the hottest day of the year, you step down from the green lawns of Søndermarken into the underground world of the Cisterns, Copenhagen’s old water reservoir. The humidity is high, the light sparse, and stalactites hang from the vaulted ceilings, casting shadows in the puddles on the floor. And then there is the sound: in the empty columned halls, the reverberation can last up to 17 seconds. Even the slightest scrape echoes down here.
Since 2016, the Cisterns have functioned as an exhibition space, and this year Jakob Kudsk Steensen has transformed the halls into an underwater landscape of video projections, sculptural objects, and a soundscape created by Lugh O’Neill featuring Bjarke Mogensen on accordion. Mogensen, who is performing this evening, has a versatile taste. Perhaps a bit too versatile, I think to myself as I read the evening’s program, which spans from Bach to folk melodies from Bornholm. It turns out to hold together better than one might expect. These are compositions that seem to stretch time itself, where long tones – amplified and extended by the reverberation – form a murky foundation for short, pearling attacks, like marble balls ricocheting off a stone wall.
A shimmering, sorrowful composition by Nick Martin, inspired by Michelangelo’s Pietà – marble again – is followed by a meditation on echo among the cliffs of Bornholm by Frederiksberg-based composer Martin Lohse. Another piece rises slender and sacred like high vaults, while Mogensen’s own Passage crackles, snaps, and crunches like stones being broken. Mogensen’s accordion is in constant dialogue with the space; he calls, and the dark colonnades answer back – or is it the other way around?
The audience sits petrified, completely absorbed in the sound, as Mogensen masterfully makes his instrument sound like everything from a rapid breath to a thunderclap. When we finally emerge, heavy clouds hang over Søndermarken, and the heat is gone. The park feels transformed. The contrast is tangible.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek
Kristine Tjøgersen Crafts Unreasonably Beautiful Eco-Poetry
The wildlife of nature is both beautiful and playful – especially in Kristine Tjøgersen’s music. At the center of her new album Night Lives is the wild, unpredictable life of the night beyond the human domain. The album was created as part of the Ernst von Siemens Prize, which Tjøgersen recently received as the first Norwegian composer ever to do so.
The album is a seven-movement sonic version extracted from a staged work premiered at the Ultima Festival in 2023, and it works perfectly well as a standalone, semi-acoustic version performed by the Cikada Ensemble. The music ranges from playful, experimental, rhythmical soundscapes—full of rattling and crackling instruments – to intense, pulsating passages. Tjøgersen possesses a uniquely sensitive understanding of instrumental timbre, allowing her to morph seamlessly between acoustic and electronic worlds, cultural environments, and eras. From a simple, extended flute solo to a dancing computer universe – without blinking an eye.
Forty to fifty years ago, it was called postmodernism when old music appeared in new compositions as reused material. Back then, it made sense because many people had a mental library of historical classical music, a reflective space in which all new music was interpreted. Today, audiences’ minds are different. For example, Kristine Tjøgersen can easily use a completely straightforward Baroque movement as the album’s conclusion – serving as a starting point for music that gradually thins out and dissolves into a stunningly beautiful utopian world of acoustic strings and synthesizer. Without making you feel she is negotiating your sense of past and present. Natural sounds, imitations of nature, harmonies, and entire sequences are simply building blocks in her personal experimental lab. And what a lab it is!
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek