Thorvaldsens Museum is a fitting place to unfold a narrative about the soul’s journey to the underworld. Not only are the halls filled with depictions of Greek mythology, the museum itself is a kind of mausoleum, with Bertel Thorvaldsen’s grave situated at the heart of an inner courtyard. Everything should align perfectly when the multimedia duo O Future stages the descent into Hades through sound and animated video projections. But it doesn’t.
Through eight rooms and five sound works, we move from the banks of the River Styx, through the underworld, and finally to Elysium, where the blissful afterlife awaits. Along the way, we are confronted with judgment, choice, and struggle – existential themes played out on the grandest scale. The electronic soundscape, delivered through headphones, begins with a simmering, oppressive digital lament and accelerates through the rooms to a heavy electronic beat layered with symphonic undertones. We hear jazzy saxophones, looped synths, and white noise, before safely arriving in a spherical, almost sacred, digital choir.
There’s an intriguing theme in the collision between digital voices and the idea of death, but it is drowned out by the many loose ends of the exhibition. Why, for instance, is there no synchronicity between sound and visuals? Why are videos consistently projected onto sculptures that bear no relation to Greek mythology? And why the oddly synthetic color palette that evokes 1990s MTV more than it does the vast drama the story seeks to evoke? I hurriedly close my eyes and try to focus on the beat – but it’s too late. Orpheus has turned his head, and Eurydice is lost. So is this exhibition.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek
On Kaikō – the trio Treen’s second release – saxophonist Amalie Dahl, pianist Gintė Preisaitė, and percussionist Jan Philipp demonstrate confidence, mutual trust, and a distinct musical adventurousness. The opening track »Hylē« unfolds with rattling percussion and strikes seemingly aimed directly at the piano strings, stumbling forward over an underlying drone. The saxophone cuts in with phrases that sound at once admonishing and bewildered. Nothing feels meticulously calculated; instead, the music is carried by a keen awareness of the three musicians’ individual voices within the shared soundscape.
The same basic formula unfolds across the album’s three other pieces, yet always in new variations. On »Kinetic«, Dahl’s saxophone emerges with much greater weight, its slowly growing crescendo mirrored and challenged by Preisaitė’s piano. Improvised music can often slip into polite holding patterns, with the musicians taking turns in the spotlight – but not here. Dahl, Preisaitė, and Philipp appear as three drifting islands without anchors, propelled by their own currents yet inexorably drawn in the same direction. The result is both sudden shifts and an organic flow that can pull the listener into a trance, if one surrenders and simply lets the sound wash over.
It is precisely the trust between them that allows the three to play freely, without fear of leaving or losing each other. In doing so, they create a momentum that is hard to resist – whether one chooses to let the islands drift past or to float along in their current.
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek