Goodiepal udstiller for tiden på Andersen’s Contemporary. Udstillingen tager udgangspunkt i hans nye bog El Camino Del Hardcore – Rejsen Til Nordens Indre og i dag spiller han på Blågårdens Bibliotek. Seismograf har mødt ham til et kort interview om musik, der ikke er der længere - om viden, der bare kopieres - og om hvordan kunst- og musikscenerne smelter sammen.

Du har udgivet en bog: El Camino Del Hardcore – Rejsen Til Nordens Indre. Hvad handler den om?

”Den handler om musik. Simpelthen.”

Hvordan?

”Den handler om alting - forstået på den måde, at jeg har jo skrevet alt hvad jeg ved i den bog. Så er der sikkert noget jeg ved, som jeg ikke har skrevet i bogen – og noget jeg ikke ved, som jeg også har skrevet i bogen. Den handler om hvad man kan gøre efter Radikal Computermusik – men den er jo skrevet mens jeg kørte rundt i store dele af verden på cykel, så det er også lidt en rejsebeskrivelse.

Der er skrevet utroligt meget musik ind i bogen, så man kunne godt kalde det samling nye værker. Men det, der er specielt ved de værker er, at mange af dem ikke længere er eksisterende. I bogen hører man hele tiden om værker, der af den ene eller den anden grund ikke længere findes – de er måske faldet sammen, eller forsvundet eller noget helt tredje. Det er fordi jeg mener, at de store komponister er døde. I dag er man nødt til at pakke sin musik ind på en anden måde, så derfor handler bogen også om at kryptere. Der er utrolig meget viden, der er krypteret i bogen.

Det hænger også sammen med at folk efterhånden bare citerer og citerer. Vi har Wikipedia som det bedste eksempel. Det er jo ikke svært at vide noget om kvantefysik, det kan man læse på Wikipedia – men det er svært at sige noget nyt om kvantefysik. For eksempel den der ’videnskunst’, der bliver lavet nu, den byder jo ikke på ny viden.”

Du har været væk et stykke tid og nu er du tilbage – hvorfor det?

”Jeg har altid kommet lidt tilbage - og jeg er heller ikke kommet mere tilbage end som så. Men nu har jeg jo en udstilling i Danmark på Andersen’s Contemporary. Bogen har sådan set været ude et stykke tid, men det kræver en udstilling i Danmark, før der er nogen der gider at forholde sig til, at jeg har lavet en bog. Faktisk har jeg været i Danmark ind imellem hele tiden. Jeg lå med et brækket ben i tre måneder i Danmark for et års tid siden.”

For mig at se har du i de senere år nærmet dig galleriscenen. Er det en mere interessant scene for dig end musikmiljøet?

”De hænger sammen. Det bliver sværere og sværere at skelne det ene fra det andet. Det er stadig musik det handler om. Jeg har beskæftiget med musik, der har været så højtravende, at den danske musikverden ikke gider at røre ved det. I rytmiske musikkredse har jeg nærmest været hadet – mens kunstkredsene har sagt: ”Nej, hvor spændende”. Så jeg er gået derhen hvor der har været interesse. På den måde er det jo virkelig rock’n’roll – jeg er bare taget derhen, hvor det næste gig har været. Men jeg kan da godt se på de folk der kom til udstillingsåbningen, at nu var det langt væk fra musikmiljøet. Nu var det kunstnerne og alle forfatterne – der var simpelthen ikke en komponist eller rytmisk musiker til stede. Og på den måde må jeg erkende, at mit popmusikertække er faldende.

Men der er sket en interessant udvikling over de sidste 15 år. For eksempel sidder der i dag rigtig mange på kunstakademierne, der arbejder med lyd, og i de seneste par år har der også været mange installatoriske ting på musikscenen. Så det er beskrivende for hvor det hele er ved at bevæge sig hen, og det er mere en tendens end det har noget med mig at gøre. Måske er to højttalere og konceptalbummets dage bare talte. Jeg synes langt de fleste musikere har referencer, der peger tilbage, og derfor peger på noget der i bund og grund er uopnåeligt. Og det er måske lidt svært for musikken at acceptere, at det er sådan. Men jeg er ikke den eneste, der beskæftiger sig med musik, som er røget over mod galleriscenen. Så i stedet for at tale om et personligt opgør, vil jeg hellere se det som en tendens. Der vil jo altid være en brydning de forskellige kunstarter imellem. Der er altid en ping-pong.”

I dag kl. 17 skal du så optræde på Blågårdens bibliotek – hvad kan vi forvente os af det?

”Jeg præsenterer bogen – og så spiller jeg nogle af de værker der ikke findes mere – som musik. Og så kan man vel låne bogen, nu man er på biblioteket.”

© PR

»How comforting, after so much menial self-investigation, to finally be told exactly what it is that you need. The delirious British post-punk outfit The Fall, in their song on the very subject, will have you convinced it’s a bit of Iggy Stooge, a reduced smoking habit, sex without having it, slippery shoes for your horrible feet; to that solid list, I’ll append an injunction to hear out a few minutes of other music, specifically chosen to corrupt your personal spacetime. And sure, drink water, wash your face, go outside – like that’s doing anything.« 

Jennifer Gersten is a violinist and writer from New York City. Her feature reporting, essays, and music criticism appear in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Rolling Stone and Seismograf, among other publications. A former tenured tutti violinist with Helsingborg Symfoniorkester (Sweden), Jennifer pursues solo and collaborative projects in new and improvised music in the US and Scandinavia, some of which earned her an honorable mention for Darmstadt Ferienkurse’s 2023 Kranichsteiner Musikpreis. 

in briefrelease
07.03.2025

A Daring Vision of Flute and Voice

© Samantha Riott
© Samantha Riott

So dextrous a musician is the flutist Laura Cocks that, at shows, their instrument occurs to the eye as merely another limb. A powerhouse New York-based collaborator and interpreter within new classical and experimental music, notably as director of the leading-edge new music group TAK Ensemble, Cocks now releases their first solo statement of improvised compositions with FATHM, an acrobatic intertwining of flute and voice that nods to strange and fleeting visions: among them, birds, string, seeds between the teeth. On FATHM, Cocks applies all the facility of their work as an interpreter of commissioned works – on extensive display in their last solo venture, 2022’s field anatomies – towards the development of an uninhibited, yet highly focused musical language. 

If the album’s mysterious tracklist reads as a sort of cryptogram, then listening to FATHM evokes a process of decoding, parsing the bounds between vocalization and instrument. The album’s opening track, »A thread held between your fingers«, finds Cocks as their own flickering shadow, simultaneously playing the flute and squealing in tones just slightly removed in pitch. »Illinois« is then reclaimed from Sufjan Stevens’ relentless grip as a furious mumble of half-blown notes with underlying trickles of voice. Cocks experiments further with these hoarse timbres on the three infinitive tracks: »To beget« and its later variations »To outstretch« and concluding track »To fly«, which trace the evolution of a dancelike triplet motif. »FAVN«, apparently a faithful depiction of an elephant with severe sleep apnea, may reconcile itself to the sensitive listener through its sheer commitment to the grotesque, while »A seed sucked between your teeth«, orbiting languidly around a major ninth, invites more celestial considerations. »A marsh wren« might take the titular bird as a point of departure, but it quickly imagines a species of its own, singing a song of bustle and snaps and smacks. On »YARN«, Cocks suggests another sort of animal song by making a counterpoint of mews and growls. The flutist’s skill with balancing these peculiar hybrids ultimately distinguishes FATHM as much as Cocks’ ferocious energy; this is an album as happy to shout as it is to slither. 

in brieflive
03.03.2025

Cosmic Resonance

Satellite Synthesizer – Ørntoft/Anker/Osgood/Snöleoparden
© Mia Mathilde Andersson
© Mia Mathilde Andersson

Against enemies in outer space, »music is the strongest weapon we have,« Mads Brügger recently stated here in Seismograf. Snöleopard and musical friends made this idea strikingly concrete by sending music directly from the Planetarium in Copenhagen out into space, targeting satellites between 500 and 35,000 kilometers away. The tones returned altered by delay, radio noise, and cosmic interference. On the large screen, the Earth’s surface – seen from a satellite – rolled by with all its illuminated cities, while Theis Ørntoft read from his forthcoming climate-conscious novel, delivering lines such as: »The day there is no more oil, the lights will go out in the world.« Meanwhile, we could see small green dots of confused satellites racing across the Earth’s beautiful curvature and hear Lotte Anker, Kresten Osgood, and Snöleopard free-jazzing on saxophone, drums, and sitar respectively.

The small crackling beep-sounds from the satellites’ resonance also generated music, but the most interesting moments came when the musicians received fragments of their own motifs back – thrown down from outer space – and a kind of internal interplay emerged. Is there something out there, or are we merely talking to ourselves?

Cosmic resonance filled the dome, but one could wish for more internal resonance. There is a beautiful trend in ensembles that include a poet, allowing many delightfully twisted formulations to surface, but the musicians must also interpret the words – enter into a musical exegesis, as they would with a traditional jazz singer – otherwise the music easily becomes background or secondary. As if each musician were a green satellite dot in their own orbital path. Many good ideas were in play – and music is not a weapon. But it does require internal resonance. Not only cosmic.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

in briefrelease
28.02.2025

A Clammy Kawaii Crescendo

Keiichiro Shibuya: »ANDROID OPERA MIRROR«
© PR

If the Japanese composer and musician Keiichiro Shibuya’s new album ANDROID OPERA MIRROR were to be summed up in a single word, that word would be »bombastic«. From the very first track, »MIRROR«, the listener is bombarded with gliding synth violins, brass, and a robotic voice intoning existential questions – ironically written by an AI.

There is something charmingly awkward about Shibuya’s pop-oriented, over-the-top compositions and the android vocal’s cloying kawaii factor. But before the album is halfway through, the constant pomposity begins to wear thin. »On Certainty«, with its ever-present strings and densely packed arrangements, rarely gives the music – or the listener – room to breathe. Shibuya and his android voice are saying an awful lot all the time, and it is so overwhelming that very little of it actually carries weight. When everything feels like an epic crescendo or the expected release from one, the effect is lost.

Taken individually, several of the tracks are otherwise quite compelling: »Midnight Swan (Android Opera ver.)«, which sounds like the opening theme to a dark and romantic anime, and the closing track »Scary Beauty (Vocal and Piano ver.)«, which shines precisely by trimming away the excess and focusing on the emotional core of the composition – an impact made far stronger by the simpler instrumentation. When the listener is not constantly overwhelmed, the romance, melancholy, and existential questions are allowed to make an impression. Unfortunately, ANDROID OPERA MIRROR is a listening experience that frustrates through its lack of subtlety – something it would otherwise have benefited greatly from.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

in brieflive
24.02.2025

Dido and Doom

Vinterjazz: Alice: Slim0
© Slim0

Doom was in the air when Slim0 took the stage on Saturday night at a sold-out Alice. In October, the band released the 17-track album FORGIVENESS—an album that takes a slow step into the riff-laden terrain of stoner rock. For this evening’s occasion, the Slim0 trio had been expanded with a lineup featuring Agnete Hannibal on cello, Aase Nielsen on saxophone, and Johan Polder on bass.

The sound exists somewhere between the English singer Dido, the drone-metal band Earth, and the drill trio Shooter Gang from Trillegården – an abstract comparison that hardly does justice to the uniqueness of the songs, as Slim0’s long referential tentacles stretch far beyond the music’s sharp contrasts. With its sacral-sounding choir and heavy drum passages, the single »Trenches« fit perfectly into the live setting. The darkness and the shifts between the three vocalists – from shared harmonies to growl – intensified the theatrical metal expression.

In a similar way, a nostalgic sigh arose when Dido’s catchy vocal lines from the hit »Thank You« emerged in the double cover »I Have But One Heart.« The perhaps lesser-known instrumental part, consisting of Earth’s »Coda Maestro in F Flat Minor«, turned the piece into a prime example of Slim0’s referential swamp brew. Although the many contrasts made for a rather epic concert, they also left me feeling somewhat conflicted. Conflicted because I genuinely enjoy Slim0’s heavy and fragmented universe, yet the lack of voluminous weight left me craving a more bone-rattling sound that could carve the sharp contrasts even more deeply. Hunger for more doom is certainly not a bad feeling, and I look forward to hearing the epic expression grow louder and even heavier.