© PR

Johanna Sulkunen is a Finnish experimental jazz vocalist, composer, and improviser based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has released and produced four critically acclaimed albums on her own name and several others in collaboration with others. She a part of the award-winning improv. vocal ensemble IKI. In 2018 she launched the experimental solo project Sonority, and ever since the symbiosis of vocals and electronics has been at the center of her career. She has co-operated, with iconic jazz & improv musicians as well as worked on various interdisciplinary projects, collaborating with dancers, poets, and filmmakers and with electronic musicians. Originally labeled as an exciting voice on the alternative jazz scene, Sulkunen has expanded her range of work to span everything from jazz to free improvisation, electronic music, neo-classical, and avantgarde. Her latest album Terra (2022) was nominated as the Jazz Album of the Year in Danish Music Awards. She is soon to release her next album, the third part of the trilogy Sonority. 

© Malthe Folke Ivarsson

»In his music, composer Allan Gravgaard Madsen tries to create a better version of himself.« 

Allan Gravgaard Madsen is a Danish composer based in Copenhagen. His most recent works include Träume nicht and Nachtmusik. He tries to create a better version of himself in his music – where his personality tends to be restless, chatty and has an active inner life, his music is controlled, simple and merciless in its expression. He is the recipient of the Carl Nielsen & Anne Marie Carl-Nielsens Hæderspris 2022.

in briefrelease
23.01.2022

Finnish Space Travel

Tomutonttu: »Hoshi«
© Tomutonttu: »Hoshi«
© Tomutonttu: »Hoshi«

The Finnish multimedia artist Jan Anderzén has, with the album Hoshi, released under the solo moniker Tomutonttu, created a true little star. Not only because »hoshi« literally means »star« in Japanese, but above all due to the music itself. There is something cosmic, yet infinitely minute, about the sonic worlds Anderzén conjures—like a galaxy reflected in a puddle, or a space journey in a rocket carved from a hollow tree trunk. Synths emit busy, warm blips and bloops, while ultra-short vocal and instrumental samples create a recognizable blur. At once artificial and organic – soft, rounded, jagged, crackling.

Anderzén approaches sound with a playfulness I simply adore. His music is strange in an incredibly comforting way. It places me in a kind of colorful, trance-like state, only interrupted when, several times over the course of the album, I find myself smiling in delight at a particularly great sound. The synths on »Katse osuu sähköön!« The choral samples on »Kesä oli äkkiä ohi!« Milo Linnovaara’s flute on »Malta lausua ‘AH’!« And many more. Hoshi is an album packed with microscopic moments that together form a frayed, exploding, radiant, idiosyncratic whole—a stellar moment of just under 38 minutes.