Danish music group EFTERKLANG issued their first album (Tripper) in 2004. This, their second full album, is being promoted on an extensive European tour whose venues will be dreamily familiar to those whose eyes flicker through the schedules of seriously intentioned, gifted and commercially fragile artists.
The five core members of EFTERKLANG (Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen, Thomas Husmer, Rune Mølgaard and Rasmus Stolberg) have worked on this album for 18 months, adding choirs, a church organ, a string quartet and a brass quintet to their own individually versatile range of instruments, vocals and electronica. With so many tracks (involving up to 30 extra musicians), and with some sections recorded in the ambience of large rooms, the sound has a depth and dynamic range that has more in common with orchestral music than rock or even "post-rock". Certainly, the idea of "band" needs to be left to one side. No simple switch to orchestral conventions can be anticipated either. Some new hybrid is being created here. EFTERKLANG have made something that sets its own limits, and sets them very far and very wide.
The 11 tracks and 50 minutes of PARADE are best heard at a single sitting. The concept of a series of passing landscapes, surreal and childlike by turn, is well represented in the video for "Mirador", made by Hvass & Hannibal and UFEX. Principal ingredients are drawn from minor keys, counter melodies in a range of solo instruments and groups of voices. Very large and very small sounds are nudged carefully together, so neither are compromised. Electronic and live percussion is fundamental, but the standard pulse of drum kit, bass and guitar only appears as one option among many. There are long passages where tempo and rhythm are entirely carried by voices, keyboards and solo string or brass instruments. This gives the music a freedom and lightness so that when a stricter four four drum pattern does emerge (as in "Caravan", or the delightful celebration of "Cutting To Snow") it registers as intentional and significant. And lots of fun.
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In fact, nothing is just played because it is there to be played. Each piece is be built up from a first theme or creative spark and possibilities are kept tantalisingly open from start to finish. It seems as if the finished pieces were as much discoveries as compositions. EFTERKLANG are experimental in they sense that they wonder what would happen if … This listener was hooked from the first appearance in opening track "Polygene" of what sounded like a bass clarinet played with a jazz swing that connected directly with the sounds made by New York's legendary MOONDOG.
For some, I'm sure this openness will be experienced as unfocussed and even confusing. Perhaps people will be inclined to think of the album as film sound track. Constant change and a lack of repetition can be uncomfortable as well as exhilarating and rewarding. But one among several of the considerable achievements of this very fine album is the unfussy way in which electronic/acoustic instrumentation and digital/analogue processes are blended in a single expressive whole. It sets a new standard against which others' tentative experiments can be assessed.
For live purposes, three additional musicians will be making EFTERKLANG into an octet whose performances will be measured up against standards set by SILVER MOUNT ZION and SIGUR ROS.
http://efterklang.net
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