Kasper Bjorke's Comeback

When did you first start making music?

Back in 1998. I started fiddling around with an old Akai sampler and an Atari gaming computer with the music making software Cubase, together with a friend of mine. We were mainly sampling old disco records and making these loopy jams, very inspired by Masters at Work and Daft Punk. Quite quickly we got signed, and in 2000, we started DJing and touring full time. After we stopped working together around 2005, I started producing my own solo albums and touring alone. My first album was released in 2007. Five mainly club music based solo albums later, I am now releasing The Fifty Eleven Project on Kompakt which is something completely different than I have ever worked on before in almost every aspect.

How would you describe the personality of The Fifty Eleven Project?

The Fifty Eleven Project, which is named after the department at the hospital I was frequently going for consultations and test results, is first of all, a deeply personal story told over two hours of instrumental ambient music as the narrative—describing the anxiety, fear and other dark feelings I experienced after I was diagnosed with cancer in November 2011, quickly operated on, and in the following five years of regular hospital check ups. Luckily, I didn’t have to have any chemotherapy or radiation treatment, so in that sense I was very lucky. At the same time, I had a very hard time shaking the fear of relapse and that evolved into full blown anxiety attacks, which to me, in some ways, was an even more scary experience than the actual cancer.

The second half of the album, however, is brighter and reflects on the light and love I felt in my life when I became a father, and also the gratitude of being healed from my illness. So, it goes from the darkest moment to the brightest, in that sense. I lost friends and family to cancer in the same period and somehow a cancer diagnosis is a club, that once you have become a member, you can never really leave—even after you have been given the all clear. Somehow it's still always with you.

What was your writing process like?

I asked my Danish friend and great musician Claus Norreen if he would like to work with me on the project, and some ideas I had for these ambient moods. We recorded it in his studio since it's just amazing and full of old vintage analog synthesizers. We set it up in a way so that we could record all these long live sessions into the computer and never use the computer for anything else than a recording device.

Then I brought back these takes to my own studio, and started arranging and editing and mixing them. After that, I asked my friend Jakob Littauer, or Jangze, to play piano parts that I wanted to be very Steve Reich-inspired on some of the compositions, to create movement and rhythm, and others, I just wanted subtle chords to support the synthesizers. The arpeggios and the pianos create the rhythm on the album—there's not a single drum hit. The last part of the process was having my Italian friend and string composer Davide Rossi play the cello, violin and viola on top of these recordings. That made a huge impact on the sound and opened it up completely. So, despite this being a very personal story, that I shared with these musicians during the recordings, I wanted to credit the project as the efforts of a quartet—it's something we made together and I could never have created on my own.

How did making this music get you through your diagnosis and recovery?

I started recording the album right after my last check up in October 2016. I wanted that final all clear from the hospital before I could start a new chapter of my life—and in the studio. But I was already recording the album in my mind during those five years when I was going to regular CT scans and check ups. I had the album all planned out basically. Once I started recording, it was a very smooth and healing process—I somehow started to let go of a lot of that fear and anxiety that had been building up over the past five years. So, in that sense, it was also very therapeutic to create this project.

Each song is accompanied with an art film, why did you decide to do this? Why with Justin Tyler Close?

It started as an idea where I wanted to have one sort of half documentary / half music video for just one of the compositions on the album that would then go online and help explain what this project is all about. I asked Justin because I really love his poetic approach to making videos and his visual aesthetics. Justin had an almost spiritual experience listening to the music out near Joshua Tree, and then the ambition to make something bigger came to life. We wanted to make 11 art films for each of the 11 compositions on the album, meaning actually shooting a 2-hour long art film in 11 chapters, that we then wanted to show on 11 screens with headphones, giving the audience a unique audio visual experience. Then, we wanted have this exhibition travel around the world. So, after I managed to get support from Prxjects.com—a Danish cultural laboratory that support local acts in developing exciting projects, we could begin planning the whole thing, and Justin ended up shooting here in Denmark for 10 days, 12-16 hours a day, non-stop. Now, the opening of the exhibition here in Copenhagen is less than two weeks away, and the films are nearly done in editing. It’s been a wild ride. Hopefully, a lot of people get to see the exhibition as it travels around next year—that's our ambition at least.

What was the best part about the creation of this project? Anything you learned?

That it actually came out as great as I hoped it would. And not having the computer as a production tool during the recording was a total eye opener and very liberating—it's great to find out that it can be wonderful to change old habits.

From the Italian musician Davide Rossi to the American, visual artist Landon Metz, who did the unique artwork for the album—you had many collaborators on this project. Can you tell us about that decision?

I am fortunate to know these amazing, talented musicians that all said yes to working with me on the project and who understood and respected what I personally needed to express through the music and the project itself. I also wanted to have them involved in the recordings, because I could never have done that alone. Making electronic club / beat based tracks as I have done for so many years on my own now, has been mostly a solo thing—but when suddenly going into classical music territory, I needed musicians who know their instruments completely. Jakob and Davide really added something unique with their piano and string parts, something that has to be performed live. Using samples and midi instruments would have been so wrong, and against my dogma of keeping this album 100% analog recorded. I recorded Jakob on a Steinway Grand Piano in a concert hall and you can really hear that. On other of the compositions, he plays on an old, dusty upright piano, and you can sense that when you listen, I think.

As for the artwork, I became friends with Landon Metz some years ago after meeting him at one of his exhibitions here in Copenhagen - and when I told him my story and asked him if he would create the artwork for the album, Landon said yes. It then grew into a really beautiful collaboration across our practices, where Claus and I had some studio sessions with Landon, where he had the chance to work on some ideas for installation music for his own exhibitions. It has also been truly magical to see the limited edition vinyl box with 3 vinyls and a poster come to life, and to now finally hold it in my hands. I think the repetitive nature of the shapes that he paints is very connected to the music. It's the most beautiful artwork that I could have ever wished for, and I am so proud and honored that Landon would work on this project.

How does it feel to be healthy and releasing this into the world?

Good question. It's actually very hard to describe right now. Honestly, I have been so stressed about the exhibition and the 11 films these past months—if we will make it in time for the opening—so, the actual album release somehow has been pushed into the back of my mind. But first of all, I am thankful—thankful that I was lucky enough that my cancer disease is long gone, and that I finally could let go of the anxiety through creating this project with some amazing and talented people on board. Second, I am very proud of how the album turned out and I can’t wait to share it with the world. I hope it can be music that everyone can listen to and enjoy—that both healthy, sick and next of kin can use the music as a healing tool, or to fall asleep when they have trouble finding rest. If that's the case, then I am happy and my mission with The Fifty Eleven Project is complete.

'The Fifty Eleven Project' drops October 19 on Kompakt Records, and the installation will be on view from October 12 until October 21 in Copenhagen. More info here.

Lead photo by Dennis Morton; courtesy of the artist.

Music

Unavoidable Blue Skies

Though it's in the name, Los Angeles is not home in Blue Angeles. L.A. is what sits on the other side of home: a mirage of past desires. Haux, who grew up in Massachusetts, started to put the album together after returning to the woods of the East Coast, overwhelmed with Los Angeles' overstimulating urbanity. Finding a home in his good friend’s grandmother’s spiritual retreat amidst interspersed trips out west, he finished what would become Blue Angeles alongside a team of tight-nit collaborators and old companions.

Blue Angeles is an impressively cohesive sonic universe. In an era where consistency in records is often undervalued in favor of single based collections which utilize disparate teams of producers and songwriters, Blue Angeles stands apart in its pointedness.The record’s ethereal palette and cinematic song selection feel like natural developments of each other. This is in many ways a product of the record's reality as it is a product of stagnated isolation and an organically cultivated team of contributors.

On the day of Blue Angeles’s release, Haux hopped on a call with me over Zoom from the woods of Upstate New York to delve deeper into the story behind the album's creative process, his relationship to LA, and his growth as a person and an artist.

I know that the title of the record references LA, and from what i’ve read about the album leading up to its release it sounds like the album is in part a reflection of a contentious relationship to it in the sense that the city is in part what you’re reacting to and/or growing apart from in the record. Am I catching something real with that?

It’s funny because LA is kind of interspersed throughout the whole record. I went there to try it out back in 2020. I got a good feeling from it, it was a place I always wanted to go. I wrote a couple songs there, mainly what would become the second half of the record on that first trip. Then throughout the process — mainly over the last three years — I'd stay there in the winter and return to the Berkshires in the summer. But yeah, throughout that process LA was the place I realized that I didn’t want to stay.

The record feels like it reflects that. You can tell when an album is a product of the LA session grind — not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that — but this record really feels like you built a world with a small community. It sounds really intentional. It’s apparent that you really took the time to be with yourself during its creation away from LA, which I really appreciated.

I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes a record can be finished in one session or a couple sessions. These songs are on the completely otherside of the spectrum. You know it’s been three years and some of these songs were written in 2020. I’ve had them in my soundcloud forever. It’s really funny, because it’s hard to relate to them now because it's been so long. But at the same time, I think it’s important to put it all together for me because it encapsulates this transition, this season of my life in one fell swoop I guess.

Right. And that season is a period of around three years right? What do you feel like you were processing in that three year period?

I guess this album is adolescence for me. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it and my thoughts have changed a lot over time, and as we change we have new ideas, but this one has stuck around like a good melody does. The last album, Violence in a Quiet Mind, I always felt like I was writing songs from the perspective of like an 8 year old to a 12 year old. They were all songs based on my childhood: what I went through as a kid with a single mom who was working really, hard, dealing with substance abuse, and these bigger heavier topics: really figuring out how it felt emotionally. But this album, Blue Angeles, it's really the adolescence chapter, the chapter of stepping out into the world and being myself, wearing clothes that don’t fit, and thinking of myself as an individual. Rather than thinking of myself as this kind of insular part of someone else's life.

Totally, like fostering a kind of autonomy. And given that you’re from Massachusetts it makes sense that the east coast would be an integral part in that process. Were there particular places on the east coast that aided you in that process?

Yeah totally. There’s this place I called “The Mountain,” it's over in Great Barrington. It’s my friend's grandmother’s property that she ran as a spiritual retreat center. It’s right off the Appalachian trail and it’s also a hikers quarters. But that kind of shut down when she got older and for Covid. I would basically return there from LA in the summer with my friend and his grandma. We’d basically live up there, I wouldn’t leave often. He’s also a musician and a producer on this record, my friend Aug E. Rose. So that place was really influential for me coming back to the east coast.

Wow, that's really interesting. Were you practicing at the retreat? Like was there a regimented spiritual nature to what you were doing? Or was it more free?

It was really free. I kind of knew the context of where I was but I wasn’t thinking about it in any structured way. I knew I had been in LA for a couple years and really had been beaten down by the concrete and the noise. I’m a pretty sensitive person, and I was living next to the freeway in Silverlake and the freeway was just killing me. So coming back to this place was a way for me to rest and recover. It was really quiet because it’s up in the woods. I guess the way life unravels sometimes you don’t know why you chose something but all of a sudden you’re there and it feels good, so you’re just like “well I might as well stay.” So it was free in that sense.

I can hear that freedom in the songs on the record too. I’m curious in that regard how that experience formed the way the record was produced. Both in terms of the literal process but also what you ended up going for sonically and artistically with the project. When you were in the midst of returning to this place and writing the songs for the record were you thinking about how you wanted the world you were aiming to create to sound when it was produced? I’m curious about the differences between the perspective you embarked on your journey with the record with and where you ended up at the end.

I think it evolved through the course of making it. So I put the part I wrote first for the second half of the record and the part I wrote second for the first half of the record. I think it breaks up for me into these two sections of time. The part that I wrote first I worked on with Thomas Bartlett. He’s a friend, and we worked on Violence in a Quiet Mind together. And so I had this working relationship with him. I wrote those songs in LA in the beginning and he just felt like the right person to bring it too. After we kind of figured out what those songs were I sat on them for like a year and a half. I was in the midst of writing new stuff in LA and just going through growing pains out there so I started writing new songs, and eventually I put everything together and felt like I had an album. I then sent it to my friend Maxwell Byrne who’s a producer from Australia. I had an idea about what I wanted him to bring, but I think it was really about giving him everything and just kind of let him take a stab at it. He brought a lot of texture and grittiness and that 90s feel which was a part of a lot of the music I was listening to at the time. He brought this summer attitude because it was summer for him at the time in Australia. And so I think a lot of what he brought represented that L.A. feeling to me. But I never really go out wanting it to sound a certain way with my songs. They kind of take on a life of their own as I build them. And who I work with has a big influence on how they sound as well.

Well I think it ended up sounding really cohesive. There’s also a really existential element to what you’re tackling in the record. I’m curious if you could elaborate on your relationship to the existential or spiritual condition that you were channeling into your process of creation at the time, and what you hoped to be received through that?

Blue Angeles really gave me the time to explore myself and my old pattern of taking care of others before taking care of myself. And through that deep self-reflection I noticed my old patterns more and more until I outgrew them. So, yeah I hope this album gives other people the time and space to practice their own self-reflection. And that this spirituality is based around the idea that if we take the time to care for ourselves, we make space to care for the world around us.

the way life unravels sometimes you don’t know why you chose something but all of a sudden you’re there and it feels good, so you’re just like 'well I might as well stay.'

My last question is about the title of the record. I can cerebrally understand the title in the sense it definitely feels right, but as an interviewer I’m curious about what specifically went into choosing it.

It’s funny because naming things is really fun to me but it’s also really challenging. I went through a million names for this but “Blue Angeles” I felt encapsulated it in a way that recognized my time in LA and how it felt. I think that basically it was just this feeling of unavoidable blue skies in Los Angeles and that was really the only nature I was able to connect with out there.

Music

Bling, Bling, Bling, Bling, Bling

March 13, 2024

By now, you should know who Amaarae is. And if you don't, I'm genuinely sorry. The limitless international superstar just released her long-awaited music video for "Angels in Tibet." Off her sophomore album, Fountain Baby, released this past summer, the project's second track has been taking the internet by storm. A trend of dancers, from at-home amateurs to professional groups, continue to create choreographed masterpieces that Amaarae shouts out whenever she sees.

As the music video begins with swirling images of opulence, the frame freezes on a statuesque Amaarae, where the crescendo is met with an immediate title drop: "Fountain baby, wash her, make it wet." Director Yavez Anthonio captures every angle of the tantalizing Ghanaian-American singer, a leather vixen whose genius overflows like the fountain behind her.

Text by Michael Anthony Hall
Photo by Yavez Anthonio

Continuing a US headlining tour with multiple sold-out dates, Amaarae is at an all-time high. This constant state of prosperity is evident in her recent visual offering, an extravagant mise-en-scène of hot and sweaty dancers lured in by Amaarae's orbit. Creative Director Paradhime sets the stage where the multidisciplinary artist sparkles like the jewelry she sings about. As the track comes to a close, Amaarae adorns a white fur coat accentuated by gold chains and her lustrous voice. As she stands on a platform, the song's bridge, "Tell me who you are. Is this what you wanted? Step into your power. Come on home to God," elicits a yearning that only Amaarae can evoke.

Check out the music video for "Angels in Tibet below," and catch Amaarae in a city near you here.

Music

Dayglow Plays M3F

Our time in Phoenix for M3F was nothing short of magical — I always love playing Arizona. Something about those desert people gets me jazzed.

It was the first show of the year for me, so it was pure rock and roll, the best kind of nervousness that can only occur at the beginning of something new. I look forward to being back if the city will have me.