Den københavnske duo Blaumes EP, excess air, er et feltstudie i vejrtrækningens fælles puls, der beroligende tager et dybt åndedrag. EP’ens luftige lyd er som en cyklisk udfoldelse af åndedrættets fysiske betingelser, og med hæse korstemmer og kvidrende tværfløjte snor de to kunstnere, Laura Zöschg (IT) og Mette Hommel (DK), sig rundt om åndedrættets helende og kunstneriske egenskaber.

Måske er det den underlige varme vinter eller de blomstrende skikkelser på coveret, men det er, som om excess air gemmer på en spinkel forårsstemning. De sparsomme instrumenter famler sig improviserende frem over de tre numre, og de mange korstemmer tilsætter en vedkommende fysisk fornemmelse af musikere, der arbejder, hvilket understreger en fornemmelse af spinkel spiring.

Det elektroniske, i form af vokaleffekter og musikprogrammet Ableton, er en vigtig del af Blaumes udtryk. Vokaleffekter virker ofte meget fremtrædende, men når den processerede vokal på nummeret »vivus tremus« driver over i en hæs raspen, opløses det kunstige skel mellem stemme og effekt, og det elektroniske bliver en åbenlys forlængelse af Blaumes fælles åndedræt.

Blaumes excess air er en dejligt levende EP. Det er musik, der har overskuddet til at strække sig langt fra et enkelt og nærliggende udgangspunkt, og med få simple virkemidler udgør Blaumes debut en kærkommen forårsbebuder.

On his new album, Snowblind, Jacob Kirkegaard shifts his focus away from revealing the hidden sounds of our surroundings to instead depict a psychological drama. The inspiration: The Swedish polar explorer Salomon August Andrée, who in 1897 set course for the North Pole in a hot air balloon – a reckless journey that cost him and two others their lives, blinded by snow and the pursuit of fame.

Through 11 icy tableaus, Kirkegaard paints a portrait of the anxiety and doubt Andrée must have felt when the balloon crashed onto the pack ice east of Svalbard. For two months, the three men continued on foot until they reached the desolate island of Kvitøya – where they died a few weeks later, possibly poisoned by undercooked polar bear meat. By then, nature had long since revealed its hostility.

You hear all this on Snowblind. First, the balloon takes off in an air current that elegantly balances on the edge of suffocating dark synths and a heartbeat rhythm, while a metallic screech – reminiscent of a heroic electric guitar – subtly signals doubt: Was Andrée a hero or a villain? Shortly after, we land in a vast nothingness of scraped metal. The shockwave transforms into mischievous, squelchy synth footsteps as desperation and hallucinations grow: Was that a ship's horn I heard? A lifeline?

But no. Silence wins. The icy water rattles like a hungry beast. The hardboiled psychological drama leaves no room for hope, only a chance to stare at your end right in the face. Had Kirkegaard been a truly ruthless portraitist, we might have descended even further into darkness and disorientation, but his weightless ambience still leaves its marks in the snow.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

På sit nye album, Snowblind, vender Jacob Kirkegaard blikket væk fra afsløringer af vores omverdens skjulte lyde for i stedet at skildre et psykologisk drama. Afsættet: den svenske polarfarer Salomon August Andrée, der i 1897 satte kurs mod Nordpolen i luftballon, en dumdristig færd, der kostede ham selv og to andre livet – forblændet af sne og jagten på berømmelse. 

I løbet af 11 isnende tableauer tegner Kirkegaard et portræt af den ængstelighed og tvivl, svenskeren må have følt, da ballonen styrtede ned på pakisen øst for Svalbard. I to måneder fortsatte de tre til fods, inden de nåede den øde ø Kvitøya – og døde få uger efter, muligvis forgiftet af underkogt isbjørnekød. Da havde naturen for længst afsløret sin fjendtlighed.

Det hører man på Snowblind. Først letter ballonen i en luftstrøm, der balancerer elegant på kanten af omklamrende mørkesynth og hjertebanken, mens en metallisk skurren a la heroisk elguitar subtilt signalerer tvivlen: Var Andrée helt eller skurk? Kort efter lander vi så i et stort ingenting af strøget metal. Granatchokket bliver til skælmske, svampede fodspor af synth, mens desperationen og hallucinationerne vokser: Var det et skibshorn, jeg hørte, en redningskrans?

Men nej, stilheden vinder, isvandet rasler som et sultent uhyre, det hårdkogte psykologiske drama levner ingen plads til håb, kun en chance for at stirre sit endeligt i øjnene. Havde Kirkegaard været en rigtig grum portrættør, kom vi endnu længere ned i mørket og desorienteringen, men hans letsvævende ambiens sætter nu også spor i sneen.

A string quartet consists of four players, and a clarinet quintet five, though the Danish composer Rune Glerup (b. 1981)’s newly recorded works for both ensembles would have you believe their ranks are vastly undercounted. The recipient of last year’s Nordic Council Music Prize for his violin concerto Om lys og lethed (About Light and Lightness), Glerup writes pieces for chamber and orchestra that are often characterized by their multidimensionality: a sonic idea will persistently recur in altered guises, for a sense that one is feeling around different facets of a physical form. Yet the two works on Perhaps Thus the End – brought to life by the impeccable Quatour Diotima and clarinetist Jonas Frølund – are just as potent a demonstration of expansive interiority as they are of surface area. 

In the titular string quartet, whose seven movements are named for lines from Beckett’s late prose work Stirrings Still, long tones and galloping motives are seamlessly shuffled amongst the ensemble, generating such a sonority that the group seems to have doubled in size. The language is sometimes mechanical but never automatic, bending rather into balletic shapes. Glerup is a careful manager of texture, finding grace in unintuitive sounds through skillful layering – to speak merely of how, in a later movement, a harmonic pizzicato punctuates the string equivalent of vocal fry before the group pivots suddenly into stillness. 

On the unexpectedly addictive »Still Leaning Towards this Machine«, which is surely among the few times a contemporary clarinet quintet has received that distinction, electronics magnify the ensemble through a subtle stuttering resonance. As a result, across three spunky movements, the group is occasionally transmuted into a sort of paranormal accordion. It’s a wonderfully weird effect that, just as weirdly, the score seems to deliver with a straight face – just one more satisfying surprise among many others on this excellent record.