in briefrelease

A Strange Instrument, a Familiar Sound

Mike Sheridan: «Touch«

There is something almost dogmatic about Mike Sheridan’s latest album, Touch. Everything leads back to the Cristal Baschet – a peculiar instrument from the 1950s in which sound is produced by running wet fingers over glass rods, setting metal resonators into vibration. No strings, no keys, just glass, water, skin and friction, slowly making the metal sing.

The Cristal Baschet is not merely an instrument on Touch. It is the album cover, the subject of the press photos, and almost the very argument for the album’s existence.

It recalls the material fetishism found in the American duo Matmos, whose music is often built around a single material or sound source: metal on Metallic Life Review (2025), plastic on Plastic Anniversary (2019), a washing machine on Ultimate Care II (2016). What is interesting about such constraints is that they ought to force the music somewhere it otherwise might not be able to go.

While listening to Touch, a question therefore begins to press itself forward: Which of these sounds could not have existed without a Cristal Baschet?

There are glassy tones that hang in the air and slowly change texture. Thin, cutting vibrations. Metallic surfaces that flutter, ripple, open and close. A constant sense of droning resonance; of something vibrating just on the other side of the audible.

Sheridan’s layering is meticulous. There is a precision to the mix, an almost surgical sense of the distance between the different textures. The best moments occur when the surface is disturbed: something that scratches at or short-circuits the otherwise tightly controlled resonance. On »BOW / GROUND«, for instance, deep bass pulses suddenly enter, creating a different physical quality – crackling, heavy, like something hitting the floor.

But Touch is first and foremost a well-produced ambient album. It moves through different degrees of the same state, changing nuance without ever truly changing its skin. That is not necessarily a weakness. There is something consistent, almost meditative, in Sheridan’s insistence. But the longer one remains in the same sonic state, the more one begins to miss what ought to be the Cristal Baschet’s particular possibility.

This is where the disappointment lies: in the gap between the instrument’s strangeness and the music’s conventional appearance. The sounds have been assimilated into a familiar ambient vocabulary, where the extraordinary instrument ends up producing something surprisingly familiar. You can hear that something unusual is happening at the source of the sound. But you cannot necessarily hear why it had to be this particular instrument. Had one not been told that a rare, almost otherworldly acoustic sculpture was standing in the room, one would hardly have guessed it.

in briefrelease

12.03

Do Whales Actually Want to Listen to Us?

Valentin Paoli: »The Musician and The Whale / La Baleine et le Musicien«

CPH:DOX, 11.03

Louise Steiwer

The French electronic musician Rone finds it difficult to express emotions verbally. In Valentin Paoli’s rather touching documentary The Musician and The Whale, he reflects on music’s ability to create connections and convey moods to an audience – whether human or interspecies.

One day, Rone receives a video from a sailor who is playing his music at sea. Whales gather around the boat, seemingly drawn to the sounds, and this becomes the starting point for an exploration of whether the musician might be able to communicate with the animals through sound. Rone seeks out an expert in whale vocalizations, who points to certain high-pitched synth elements in his EDM compositions that resemble whale song. He then has a girls’ choir record the whale sounds with human voices and travels to Réunion to play the sounds back to the whales.

At first, the attempt proves futile: the whales appear indifferent to the girls’ choir. Quoting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Rone realizes that if one wishes to move others, one must begin with what moves oneself. It is a Disney-like insight in a slightly sentimental film that speaks to the human desire to communicate with animals.

But are we actually sure that animals want to communicate with us? As the film’s central figure, Rone briefly reflects on a few ethical questions concerning animals, yet his infectious enthusiasm for the sounds of whales prevents him from asking the most fundamental questions about the relationship between humans and animals. Instead, we get a portrait of the musician that is almost as polished and warm-hearted as his music. The whale, wisely, remains beneath the surface of the sea.

»The Musician and The Whale« / »La Baleine et le Musicien« (83 min.)
Valentin Paoli (FR), 2026. Screening at CPH:DOX, March 11, 12 and 20

playlist

10.03

My name is Anastasia – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music is for me a silent but powerful weapon. It is crucial for preserving identity and culture. Throughout history, dominant powers have often tried to suppress people by wiping out their language, their traditions and their art. But in places where this failed, it was precisely the survival of art that preserved the soul and pride of the people.«

Anastasia is a Danish indie artist with glamour in her eyes and punk in her blood. Together with her all-female band, she creates a sound universe carried by raw energy, bittersweet rock melodies and cheeky, flirtatious lyrics about love, loss and everything chaotic in between. She debuted in 2022 with a series of charity concerts in support of Ukraine and has since taken over stages across the country – from Debutfest in Copenhagen to SPOT Festival in Aarhus. All songs are written and produced by Anastasia herself and take their final form in a close and intense interaction with the band, where personal expression meets collective power.

in briefrelease

09.03

Everything a Snare Drum Can Do

Ryan Scott: »21th-Century Canadian Snare Drum«

Collection QB, 13.02

Simon Heggum

Let’s be honest: when you think of composed music for solo instruments, the snare drum is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. It may be the noisiest member of the percussion family and has been setting the volume level in everything from classical music to pop for decades. That’s why I pricked up my ears when the Canadian percussionist Ryan Scott announced an entire album of works for snare drum – written by 14 different composers. A full hour and a half of music, no less. And yes, that sounds like a lot for a record that mainly consists of a single drum. But there is definitely something to discover here.

The opening, Andrew Staniland's »ANTIGRAVITYDRUM«, blends free jazz with inspired use of percussive vibraphone, while Beka Shapps’ »Skinscape IV« sends the drum strokes through ring modulation and extensive sound processing, bringing us close to musique concrète. Christina Volpini’s »only ghost« slips into horror territory with march-drum-inspired bursts and ghostly use of the snare drum’s high register, while Amy Brandon’s »Time and Effort« almost becomes a demonstration of the instrument’s technical possibilities.

Fourteen works over ninety minutes is a substantial mouthful. The snare drum’s limited tonal vocabulary means that you occasionally lose focus, even after several listens, and the contrast between drum strokes and silence is repeated a little too often. That said, Ryan Scott and the composers get just about as much out of what is essentially a glorified marching drum as one could hope for. I was both entertained and intrigued along the way. As an experiment, the idea is strong – but in the long run also a bit too insistent for me to return to often. Still, one should not underestimate the versatility of a good old-fashioned snare drum.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

in brieflive

09.03

Beauty in Decay

Thure Lindhardt, Ensemble Hermes, Sophie Haagen & Mikkel B. Grevsen: »Helvedesblomsterne«

Musikhuset Aarhus, 07.03

Therese Wiwe Vilmar

We sat in slow decay for an evening in the vestibule of Hell. It was during an ambitious, multisensory interpretation of Charles Baudelaire’s poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal (1857) – Helvedesblomsterne (The Flowers of Evil). Director Anna Schulin-Zeuthen and composer Mikkel B. Grevsen brought together mezzo-soprano Sophie Haagen and actor Thure Lindhardt with the six string players of Ensemble Hermes, adding electronic music to the mix. This Frankenstein-like staging transported modernist poetry into 2026, where the motifs stretching between beauty and decay still – despite many scientific advances – remain a fundamental condition.

In Musikhuset Aarhus, the stage was decorated with lush and withered flowers as vanitas symbols. Lindhardt opened with a recitation that shattered the fourth wall: with both humour and intensity he addressed us directly in the audience – hypocrites and future corpses.

In contrast to the almost seamless sonic unity of Haagen’s dark voice, the string players’ sustained textures and the ghostly distortions of the electronics, Lindhardt’s reading appeared as a strange but necessary disturbance. He prowled about with a folder tucked under his arm like an awkward outsider – the poet as eternal observer.

For my part, I dutifully tried to follow the printed programme sheet, but soon gave up and instead – quite in the spirit of the work – allowed myself, hypocritically, to be intoxicated and seduced. Helvedesblomsterne succeeds as a bold and grand project. Yet the performance also balances a little too cautiously between harmonic beauty and the nineteenth-century uncanniness that in Baudelaire crawls with death all the way into the bones.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

playlist

08.03

My name is Lasse Andersson – would you like to see my playlist?

»For me, music is both the beat that gets me through my run, sets the mood for everyday life, but not least my personal soundtrack that evokes past events and moods throughout my life.«

Lasse Andersson is the museum director of Kunsten Museum of Modern Art and Utzon Center, as well as the chairman of the board of Krabbesholm Højskole and the Packness Foundation. Before museums took up all his time, he wrote his PhD thesis The City and the Creative Entrepreneurs, co-founded the art and technology house Platform4, and was behind both the LasseVegas office and the technology project Nulkommafem. He has also headed the Urban Design department at Aalborg University. Today, he works purposefully to develop cultural institutions as modern spaces for learning: places where people meet and connect through aesthetic experiences that move, challenge, and open new perspectives on the society we share. For Lasse Andersson, art and architecture are not just mirrors of the world – they help shape it. With that ambition, he has curated exhibitions such as Fatamorgana – Utzon møder Jorn (2016) I Arkitektens Verden – Reiulf Ramstad (2019), Pierre Huyghe – Offspring (2022), Tal R & Mamma Andersson – omkring Hill (2023) og Michael Kvium – Knudepunkt (2025).