Undead Transmissions – Mix and interview with h hartvig nielsen on “the shadow channel”

Danish composer, musician and performer h hartvig nielsen has since 2019 unfolded a transmissive, deconstructed universe of signal songs, melodies and messages being sent and received across time and space. At its centre is an unending longing for connection held as a walkie-talkie in the hand of character anybard. This compelling, intimate, sincere and deliberately confusing space of consciousness – a dramatic operatic rite full of formulas, impulse and interruptions – has really moved me and led me to think about loneliness, alienation and community as expressed, experienced and rehearsed through the invocation of the ensemble.  

I have talked to h hartvig nielsen about their latest album, “the shadow channel”, and the continuous exploration of anybard and their companions: a study based on telling stories while playing them, shifting positions, speculative thinking and radical curiosity allowing us to imagine or sense other systems not yet named. In addition to the interview, h hartvig nielsen has also made an exclusive mix with inspirations, which you can listen to below.

Now spellcaster has transformed to spellchestra consisting of Arte Carlander as stringstrum, Simin Stine Ramezanali as starmeem/meanstar, Mija Milovic as em, Stine Victoria Huyn as from the echo, Tettix Hexer as aeroborn, Oliver Laumann as measure and h hartvig nielsen as anybard. 

“There has been an ongoing longing, both fictional and real, towards the ensemble form, and anybard is now, finally, in the bard-guild of their dreams.”

P/A: “the shadow channel” is your third album as spellcaster and the final installment of the trilogy, following the story and desires of the main character, anybard. At this point, how do you relate to or understand anybard?

h hartvig nielsen: “anybard is now a committed heist organizer with their fellow hacker-bards. Throughout the shared narrative of the three albums and beyond, anybard has been a vessel for different ideas in my practice regarding stories, games, temporality, magic, opera… particularly the continued study of the bard/skald figure, its many properties and social functions in history and mythology, and how to utilize these functions in a modern, fragmented context.

I have been able to use this character exercise as its own generative story-engine and continue to do so. Also, crucially, there has been an ongoing longing, both fictional and real, towards the ensemble form, and anybard is now, finally, in the bard-guild of their dreams.”

“I have countless ideas for future long-distance walkie-talkie pieces.”

P/A: I’m deeply drawn to the walkie-talkie as an almost sacred object, how it seems to take on an archaeological quality within the album’s broken, futuristic atmosphere. I’m curious about your thoughts on the walkie-talkie as a connector across time and space. What kind of instrument is it for you, and for anybard?

hhn: “An instrument of transmission, a communication medium that automatically situates its signals in relation to place and time. When used musically and when recorded, I find that this situating property translates into the music.

As opposed to a standard vocal microphone for instance, that has an assumed sonic neutrality as a medium, the sound of the walkie talkie instantly makes aware of itself; that this is sound being transmitted on a signal across the radio field. The medium has an inherent distancing effect, both literally and in the brechtian (alienation) sense. The sense of urgency and the often inaudible or distorted nature of the medium demands an active or critical listening approach. 

The literal distancing potential is something we (the spellchestra) have still only explored on a smaller scale. The walkie-talkie parts of the album are taken directly from recordings of the first ever spellchestra concert – S00E00: the summoning, summer 2024 – outdoors in Byhaven in central Copenhagen. During this performance, aeroborn (embodied by Tettix Hexer) was roaming on the threshold of our radio reach and spent most of the concert by the main entrance of the city hall and in the central train station, transmitting into the concert. On the album, when aeroborn speaks of standing by and knocking on a big wooden door, Tettix is literally standing by the main entrance of Copenhagen’s city hall knocking on its huge wooden door (I’m sad we didn’t also have a Tivoli-pass for the occasion lol). I have countless ideas for future long-distance walkie-talkie pieces.”

“This unknown ether, a sort of haunted radio station, is the shadow channel”

P/A: It’s my experience that you use elements like roleplay and worldbuilding to create open spaces that exist in-between and elsewhere. The cosmology you unfold is rich with motifs, complexity and ambiguity. Could you describe what kind of place, passage, porthole, or memory the shadow channel is?

hhn: “All those words apply. I definitely relate to it as a transition rite, on multiple levels, the most obvious one being from spellcaster (“solo project”) to spellchestra (ensemble). In the ending of ‘memo’, the previous album, anybard and companion transmits a message into the unknown. This unknown ether, a sort of haunted radio station, is the shadow channel. Within this unpredictable, hazy landscape of transmission, motifs and entities reveal themselves. The heist-plot is between the lines: anybard is summoning their crew, the spellchestra, on the shadow channel, and parts of the dialogue are the entities’ reactions to being summoned for this clandestine bard-guild. Once they reach track 13, ‘the summoning’, the motifs of the characters are reaching each other in a joint chorus, and in the final song, ‘giggl [heist theme]’, they are gathered in giggling and scheming, the cliffhanger for what is to come. Like you point out, these narrative complexities are all sourced from the operatic roleplaying method.

The sonic makeup is primarily live recordings from the past three years of my performance piece ”anybard shadow channel transmission”, with harmonized walkie-talkie feedback, vocal gaming and organ clusters as main sources. These recordings, from all across Europe, in varying quality and obscurity, have been heavily processed, layered and cut into atoms repeatedly, and crystallized into events. All the different spatial, temporal, sonic and narrative conditions of the transmissions and recordings are folded into each other, cut up in fragments and montaged together in this undead fabric of estranged sonic matter (that even I can’t fully dissect anymore).”

“Alienation in this sense can potentially/hopefully remind the listener of the constructed nature of the systems of their own reality. For instance the systems of oppression inherent to capitalist and imperialist hellscapes of reality, and the fact that those systems too can be deconstructed, deleted, replaced, transformed.”

P/A: But anybard is no longer alone… the spellchestra is here! The companions are alive! spellcaster transforms into a community. In the disoriented, liminal space created by memory loss – a place without prescriptions, without essence – the possibility of togetherness emerges. What kind of potential do you think this sense of alienation holds?

hhn: “The title of the first track of the album points to a key conceptual engine in my work: alienation/immersion. Alienation, again, in the brechtian sense of breaking the illusion of the artwork, and immersion as conceptualized in game-studies, the sensation a player feels when completely absorbed within a game-world.

Both ideas ask questions about agency, the active or critical spectator/player and the relation between fictional and real worlds, however with different aims and in different contexts.. Posed against each other, these ideas create a generative push and pull between being absorbed and distanced simultaneously. Roaming a landscape that keeps disintegrating, contradicting itself. Shimmers exit through the holes in the fabric. Alienation in this sense can potentially/hopefully remind the listener of the constructed nature of the systems of their own reality. For instance the systems of oppression inherent to capitalist and imperialist hellscapes of reality, and the fact that those systems too can be deconstructed, deleted, replaced, transformed.”

P/A: I keep thinking of the role of the echo, the whisper, the distant voice carried by the various characters in this enchanted void of signals and transmissions. How did you, as an orchestra, work with your characters’ voices, sounds, noise and instrumentation?

hhn: “As mentioned, the main walkie talkie corpus of the album is taken directly from the recordings of our first ever spellchestra performance. The extend to which we work with the characters, their voices and delivery, is all in the context of our shared performative practice.

In the spellchestra and in the game engine we compose from, there is a big emphasis on character development and their characteristics expressed through motifs and gestures. on the album, measure (embodied by Oliver Laumann) speaks in verse, starmeem/meanstar (embodied by Simin Stine Ramezanali) breaks into growl due to their character split, from the echo (embodied by Stine Victoria Hyun) speaks in echoes, to name a few examples.

P/A: What’s your favorite part of playing in an orchestra?

hhn: Playing, in all its senses. Stories. Unpredictability. Companionship, trust. silliness, goofiness. The social function, music being less important than the people it gathers.

P/A: One last, important question: What will you be listening to as the year comes to an end? Any recommendations to share?

hhn: I will be listening to a lot (!) of music that is to be released on a soon to be launched platform by the name of narrespil, initiated by Arte Carlander, Oliver Laumann and myself. Stay tuned! Other warm recommendations to be found on the attached “unlockings mix for p/a”

spellcaster – “unlockings mix” for P/A:

Gurdjieff & De Hartmann – Song of the Fisherwomen
Robert Ashley – The Airline Ticket Counter (Sc.2)
DJ Spooky – Phase Interlude
Arte Carlander – Daily Wave Sermon Part 1 (unreleased)
Arte Carlander – The Fur (unreleased)
Rued Langgaard – Sange af Jenny Blicher-Clausen, BVN 66_ II. Alle de smaa Klokker de ringe i Dale
Apple Tree – Ånder Ud
Mortiis – Towards the Gate of Stars
Robert Ashley – The Ride to Town (Sc.4)
Portal Pets – 28
Don Cherry – Arrows
“Blue” Gene Tyranny – What I Feel Now
Francesca Burattelli – arguments feat. Cæcilie Trier (unreleased)
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Dosed
Miles Davis – Rated X (excerpt)
cover them – svin forevigt
Burhan G & Medina – Mest Ondt
Povl Dissing – Blæs Vind Blæs Vindblæst

Info: Listen to our podcast with h hartvig nielsen from last year here.