Esther “Esther” (Textur, 2020) – review by Macon Holt
The second release from the Copenhagen based label Textur is the self-titled EP by Esther; a collaboration between producers Martin Messell and Andreas Høegh. Over the six tracks, the duo reconstitute the audio of live multi-instrumental improvisation into pieces of glitch infused ambience.
Manuel Göttsching & Cirklen – photo: Christian Møller Blæhr
Festival of Endless Gratitude, Koncertkirken, Copenhagen, September 10-13 – live report by Wieland Rambke
For the 13th year now, Festival Of Endless Gratitude opened its doors for an adventurous audience. What today is a festival celebrating experimental music from around the globe has gone through a long history of changes now: Originally a festival with a focus ...
Marcela Lucatelli “Anew” (self-released, 2020) – review by Macon Holt
“Anew” is the latest album from the Copenhagen-based, Brazillian composer/vocalist/concept engineer (to borrow Kodwo Eshun’s term) Marcela Lucatelli. The record sees her taking her expertise in extended vocal techniques as a way to perform an improvisational exploration of a computer programming manual while providing herself with piano accompaniment. But the facts of the record seem to ...
Af Alexander Julin Mortensen, fotoserie af Stephanie Stål
ML Buch udgav for nylig sit debutalbum, “Skinned”, via københavnske Anyines. Albummet følger op på 2017-EP’en “Fleshy” og byder på 10 sange, der varierer mellem eksperimenterende jam, elektronik og mere traditionel sangskrivning. Fælles for sangene er en særegen intimitet og nerve, der vækker mindelser om bl.a. danske Cæcilie Trier (CTM) og engelske Tirzah. ML Buch deler disses evne til at skrive musik, der både lyder enormt privat og samtidig dybt vedkommende og åben. “Skinned” fremstår derfor både som en modig blottelse og som en varm indbydelse til at lytte og erfare noget nyt og almengyldigt. Det kræver mod at skrive kærlighedssange, fordi de så let kan forfalde til trivialiteter og uvedkommende klichéer. ML Buchs musik er ikke i nærheden af dette.
Her følger et interview med ML Buch, akkompagneret af et mix fra hende, og til sammen kaster de lys over “Skinned” og processen bag albummet. Læs resten
Af Alexander Julin Mortensen – foto: Emil Hornstrup Jakobsen
SØS Gunver Ryberg har markeret sig i adskillige kunstneriske kontekster over de seneste år. Hun har skrevet musik til bl.a. computerspil, film, forestillinger og performancekunst. Og så har hun udgivet EP’er og et album, der med god grund er nået langt ud over de danske grænser. Sidste år spillede hun bl.a. til et arrangement i Manchester kurateret ...
Af Mikkel Arre – foto: Christian Friedländer
Undervejs på københavnske Whistlers debutalbum bliver der sunget et spørgsmål, der indkapsler et af pladens grundtemaer: ”Hope’s a bust / love’s a must / how does it all add up?”
In December 2019, the cultural theorist and P/A contributing editor, Macon Holt, published his first book, “Pop Music and Hip Ennui: A Sonic Fiction to Capitalist Realism”, from Bloomsbury Academic. In this essay Holt explains key points of the book and tries to answer the question, What is a Sonic Fiction of Capitalist Realism? – drawing on the writings by Kodwo Eshun, Mark Fisher and Slavoj Žižek, afrofuturist artefacts by Sun Ra and Drexciya, as well as pop music as manifest by Jessie J and Beyoncé.
Essay by Macon Holt. Illustration by Joakim Drescher. Photo by Nick Lowe (creative commons). Læs resten
Essay by Wieland Rambke
Look at a lava lamp. You always see the same thing while the shapes within keep changing. In presenting you with a visual stimulus that is in perpetual motion, it is as predictable as it is surprising. Everything that happens inside the lava lamp merely confirms the limited range of what it does. There is something hypnotic and soothing about staring at ...
A few years back, when covering the first Hyperreality festival, I spent an afternoon at Vienna’s mumok, a contemporary arts museum. At the time, there were two major exhibitions, “Woman”, dedicated to feminist avant-garde artists of the 1970s, and “Oh…”, which focused on one Austrian artist’s bizarre take on mumok’s own collection of modernist and contemporary art.
“Woman” displayed an extensive collection of stunning and challenging works by artists such as Cindy Sherman, Valie Export and many others. Crammed together and categorized around topics typically associated with women such as the household and sexuality, the works were stripped of the historical, social and geographical contexts that made each of them important and exciting in the first place.
“Oh…”, on the other hand, exhibited Jakob Lena Knebl’s peculiar intervention in the collection of well-known works: a painting by Picasso only visible as a reflection in a blurry mirror, a statue by Giacometti dressed in a shiny red dress and installed on a revolving turntable, among others. By arranging these masterworks in unexpected situations or even reducing them to a decorative function, she facilitated a confrontational – and fun! – take on a part of the art history canon, which is rarely challenged outside the realm of critical and academic writing.