The desire to explore danger in music comes from, I believe, three different needs within me – three needs which solidified through our newest record, Voldelig lyd (2017), and the subsequent tour in autumn 2018.
1. The world seems impenetrably complicated, absurd and chaotic like a thick web of information without content and lacking relevance for the lives we live. Through revolutionary media technology, the digitalisation of communication and the expectation of availability, my generation has reached the pinnacle of information spreading. Everyone is an editor, and to a great degree myself - we are all recipients; we do not let external information remain outside on the street with the advertisement posters and newspapers, but we take it with us upstairs and sleep with it – it is there, constantly present with us. In a “post-truth” world, it is challenging to gain a foothold within this noise of information, especially when reality, which we expect to have a certain degree of stability and logic, throws up absurdities which we previously only found on reality shows. It is not just the digital communication revolution which is difficult to relate to. It can also appear as though my generation feels less and less of a sense of ownership of the jointly possessed physical “reality”, but rather more of the bubbles and realities we now have the opportunity to create ourselves via the internet. I feel a sense of longing to reach behind this web and to find something true, something tangible we can share. Something which stretches beyond the situation which Bob Dylan describes in the following way: “There were ten thousand whispering, and nobody listening”. I have found that Danger Music has the capability of breaking reality down into comprehensible and tangible pieces by virtue of its bodily nature. It involves moments that grow out of chaos and fellowship, but also fear and danger.
3. I am of the persuasion that the mandate of art is to mirror, and perhaps also to create, the time of which it is a part. Music history, both in terms of art and popular music, is rich with examples of this. Now, though, it might seem as though popular music is shying away from really getting to grips with the times in which we live, perhaps because the world around us now is hardly very sexy or saleable – we are the first generation for a long while with tougher circumstances than our own parents. It might appear as though the music business has been successful in convincing musicians that they are, first and foremost, selling products – just listen to how musicians describe themselves as actors within the “music industry”. This product sensibility has led music in the direction of escapism, and, more than capturing the zeitgeist, conceals the spirit of the age and how each one of us actually feels. My ideal is not necessarily the social iconoclast, nor even a representative of counter-power, but I do ask myself if it is possible to locate a musical practice that has at its core musicians who want to seek out reality when it is confusing, chaotic, and perhaps even violent and dangerous too.
2. What is a musical experience, and what can it be? I have been looking for a musical experience which is different to the prevailing expectation of music as something “heartfelt” and “nice”, to something which cannot at any rate be described as “balsam for the soul” or “the language or feelings” – in other words text and melody that can be sold as a product. At the same time, I am looking for something which is not formalistically oriented around music that is “correct” and possible to defend through a web of ideology and musical analysis which is difficult to grasp. I have a feeling that danger music can serve as a gateway to a musical experience which aggressively puts up a wall against both the “heartfelt” and “correct” elements. I feel that the experience of danger, with its fundamental boldily aspect, overrides the systematic connection of information not directly concerned with the moment. Small components of simple information which exist simply in themselves, not in categories.
