While many still sigh at the thought of seeing a full Sort Sol once again illuminate the dark grey Danish sky, the band’s eternal crooner Steen Jørgensen, together with his equally strong other half, pianist Marina Botes, has created music that is something entirely different – something deeper. And yes, I have seen words like »pretentious« and »boring« hurled at the duo, but none of that sticks to their new release, which consists of a series of intimate suites where Jørgensen’s spoken word is woven together with Botes’ magnificent piano playing. If the ambition is to build a bridge between the classical and the electronic, it succeeds convincingly.

As a lyricist who moves through the same pitch-black landscape as Jørgensen, I tip my hat to the strong poetic imagery that characterizes Dråberne 5, 7, 8, and 11 – especially on the album’s longest track, the dramatic »Hul – Dråberne 7«. As Jørgensen muses on the luminous melancholy of the inner city, the music becomes a transformation, a sphere of change made of ambient surfaces, muted strings, and a female vocal that slips in like a shadow—until the song rises in dramatic momentum, centering on the line »En nat i indre kvarter«.

The music is primarily grounded in piano-heavy terrain, where Botes’ keys find repose in muted pedal strikes and light strings. Only in rare moments do the compositions break free, as on the opener »Glemsel – Dråberne 5«, where chamber orchestra and jazzy breakbeats create a compelling and almost cinematic atmosphere.

Dråberne 5, 7, 8, and 11 is a seductive, inspiring, and downright sumptuous experiment in which the love between the two artists can be felt in every tone. If this is Jørgensen’s career winter, I will gladly accept more dark, warm moments.

I believe I am not the right person to grapple with all the existential questions of faith and culture that the multidisciplinary artist and political experimentalist Abdullah Miniawy grapples with on his latest album, Nigma Enigma. The record is equal parts Arabic chant, folk music, and sound art, based on modular synths and field recordings. The Egyptian composer uses the album’s eleven abstractions as the soundtrack to what he himself calls »an Arabic opera of doubt and faith«. But as a non-Arab, lifelong atheist, it is difficult for this reviewer to fully engage with the big questions Miniawy poses in his mother tongue, while samples of crackling fires and layers of filtering create an otherwise enigmatic atmosphere that resonates well with the album’s title. As the music also functions as the soundtrack to an immersive video game, we are taken even further from familiar territory, given that the reviewer has not touched such things since Quakein 1992.

If one sets aside the search for meaning and allows oneself to be colored by the music’s immediacy, what emerges is a strongly conceptual, sonically accomplished work, in which Miniawy’s voice – most often chanting Arabic phrases from old folk songs – is interwoven with electronic noise. In particular, the transition from the beautiful two-part chanting on »Jayhano Al Kawahi« – with strong religious undertones – to the deeply anarchic noise vignette »Half a Year II«, featuring filtered sine tones and pounding bursts of bass noise, serves as an apt characterization of a minimalist piece of sound art.

Yet without being able to share Miniawy’s cultural and spiritual context, the album feels like a riddle I cannot solve. Like drinking an Irish coffee without the whiskey: the real praise is withheld. Nigma Enigma will speak to those who can relate to the spiritual and philosophical questions Miniawy raises, while others may experience it as a musical journey without fully understanding its destination.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek