»Who ever said that music is ‘just’ music? To me, it is anything but that: an urge to understand and explain it all. A piece of jewelry I wear every single day. A joy that can, at times, run deep. An ever-changing imprint of millions of stitches in my heart. A longing to disappear.«
Henrik Marstal is a musician, author, and music researcher. He holds a PhD in musicology, is a senior lecturer at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory, and frequently appears in the media as an expert source on music. His areas of interest include contemporary music, such as electronic music. This winter, he will release both a new album with the pop group ibens and a book about Else Marie Pade, published by the British publishing house Bloomsbury.
You Just Want to Disappear into These Cosmic Hordes of Sound
British Burial should have once said that in his music he strives to reproduce the experience of standing outside a club and feeling the rhythms on the asphalt. Distances are fascinating. The sounds in Christian Skjødt Hasselstrøm's work Myriads in an enormous water container at the Ole Rømer Observatory comes from afar. It is rain from space, cosmic radiation or high-energy particles, which are translated into sound via three detectors. They also flash with light in the pillared hall, and when you grope your way to them through the darkness, they puff softly and innocently. But when you walk around the 1,662 square meter room, the sounds still seem a little bit threatening – like artillery drums, sounds from modern wars or warning signals from ancient warlords... The sounds are always very far away and rumble at a low frequency in the room with a reverberation of 40 seconds. But they are just peaceful phenomena from distant galaxies, and they hardly want us any harm. They just make us feel so infinitely small. Hasselstrøm did the same to us in a former cereal silo in the city of Struer.
»You can get salt and minerals on your clothes. It can be washed off,« warned the guide, now ringing a bell. But what if you don't want to get rid of that sound at all and don't want to go home to Aarhus, but just want to stay deep underground for more than the given 15 minutes and disappear into the cosmic and very delicious hordes of sound? Distances are fascinating, and Myriads is better – more enriching – than any club in Aarhus’ Latin Quarter.
»For me, music is at its best when it appeals to both the head and the heart. I love music that plays with language and understands how words create images, while also possessing its own unique sonic quality and mood. It’s an added bonus if the music energizes me during a run, makes me dance in the kitchen, or makes me laugh. Or cry. Music can be like a chocolate-coated marshmallow treat with a surprise inside.«
Lone Hørslev is an author of poetry, novels, and song lyrics, as well as the TV series Den gode stemning. Together with Mads Mouritz, she forms one half of the Mouritz/Hørslev Project, and she recently wrote lyrics for the musical theatre production STOLT in collaboration with Katrine Muff. The songs can be found on the album Jeg ønsker mig.