Lars Hannibal. © Søren Solkær

»Making a playlist is not an easy task for me. Music occupies most of my waking hours. It is a condition that began to grow when I was a teenager. If I am not playing myself, or working with the music I release or compose, music is still present, reaching out to me. I have always found it difficult to experience music in boxes or genres, so I listen very broadly and take pleasure in any music I can feel and that moves me. Music is a condition of life, and expressing oneself through music is a gift – but being able to experience music with openness is perhaps an even greater gift. I have chosen a list in which the guitar plays a part.«

Lars Hannibal began – like many others of his generation – playing folk and rock guitar at the age of fifteen. But when he heard the Spanish guitar master Andrés Segovia perform the gavotte from Bach’s Partita in E major, his musical life took a new direction, and he decided to devote himself to the classical guitar.

Since the early 1970s, Lars Hannibal has also composed songs and instrumental works. Today he performs primarily as a member of the Petri/Hannibal Duo and works alongside this as managing director of the record label OUR Recordings, which he founded together with Michala Petri in 2006, as well as a consultant for Edition Borup-Jørgensen.

© PR

»Music has been a healing balm for me.«

John William Grant is an American singer, musician, and songwriter holding both American and Icelandic citizenship. He first came to prominence as a co-founder, lead vocalist, pianist, and primary songwriter of the alternative rock band The Czars. After releasing six albums between 1994 and 2006, the band disbanded, and Grant withdrew from music for four years before embarking on a solo career.

He returned in April 2010 with a critically acclaimed debut album recorded in collaboration with Midlake. Queen of Denmark was named Album of the Year 2010 by Mojo magazine and was also selected as one of the ten best albums of 2010 by The Guardian’s music critics and writers.

© Malthe Folke Ivarsson

»In his music, composer Allan Gravgaard Madsen tries to create a better version of himself.« 

Allan Gravgaard Madsen is a Danish composer based in Copenhagen. His most recent works include Träume nicht and Nachtmusik. He tries to create a better version of himself in his music – where his personality tends to be restless, chatty and has an active inner life, his music is controlled, simple and merciless in its expression. He is the recipient of the Carl Nielsen & Anne Marie Carl-Nielsens Hæderspris 2022.

in briefrelease
23.01.2022

Finnish Space Travel

Tomutonttu: »Hoshi«
© Tomutonttu: »Hoshi«
© Tomutonttu: »Hoshi«

The Finnish multimedia artist Jan Anderzén has, with the album Hoshi, released under the solo moniker Tomutonttu, created a true little star. Not only because »hoshi« literally means »star« in Japanese, but above all due to the music itself. There is something cosmic, yet infinitely minute, about the sonic worlds Anderzén conjures—like a galaxy reflected in a puddle, or a space journey in a rocket carved from a hollow tree trunk. Synths emit busy, warm blips and bloops, while ultra-short vocal and instrumental samples create a recognizable blur. At once artificial and organic – soft, rounded, jagged, crackling.

Anderzén approaches sound with a playfulness I simply adore. His music is strange in an incredibly comforting way. It places me in a kind of colorful, trance-like state, only interrupted when, several times over the course of the album, I find myself smiling in delight at a particularly great sound. The synths on »Katse osuu sähköön!« The choral samples on »Kesä oli äkkiä ohi!« Milo Linnovaara’s flute on »Malta lausua ‘AH’!« And many more. Hoshi is an album packed with microscopic moments that together form a frayed, exploding, radiant, idiosyncratic whole—a stellar moment of just under 38 minutes.