Antenne - Danish Nocturnes

Music born from cold northern lands often evokes vaguely mysterious atmospheres, balanced between icy sensations and gratifying emotions. Antenne, hailing from wonderful Denmark, follow this statement more or less faithfully.

The members of this Danish duo are Kim G. Hansen and Marie-Louise Munck. The former was part of the industrial duo Institute For The Criminally Insane, managing to release an album in 1994 titled "Gekippt", a decent compendium of scabrous EBM and furious electronics. Marie-Louise cultivated, both before and after meeting Kim, her experience in Amstrong. In this case, the result was all in all remarkable and delightfully niche, quite similar to Antenne, hovering between trip-hop and dark filigree work. There are three albums in all ("Sprinkler" (1999), "Hot Water Music" (2001), "Lack Of You" (2005)), in which fans of the acid inlays of Primal Scream's "Exterminator" would find plenty to enjoy.

Meeting Marie, around 1999, together with the discovery of the computer as a compositional "tool", completely upended Kim's way of conceiving music. Such an enchanted female voice could only deserve a delicate, dark, crepuscular musical setting — exactly the opposite of what one would expect from the extreme-leaning background developed by the male half of the duo. Faithful to their love of a lumpy sound often punctuated by gentle rhythmic touches, Antenne elude any precise, circumscribed definition.

Over the course of the stages marked by their three works, the formula employed has often varied thanks to the rare compositional versatility of Kim G. Hansen, author of the music, arrangements and mixing. All these elements settle close to a trip-hop of dark, anguished tones, finding their common denominator in a penchant for shadowy atmospheres, never too heavy-handed, yet always immersed in an oasis brimming with smoldering, dormant dread, capable of evoking medieval expanses where fog, dampness and a timid wind reign supreme. From a technical standpoint, besides the aforementioned trip-hop, one finds frail echoes of the golden age of dream-pop, by-now dormant electro legacies (the first glitches applied to pop appeared around the late '90s) and a light new wave breeze drifting in from Kim's previous experiences. The other element that brands the Danish duo's music is the voice of Marie-Louise Munck, comparable to a divine miracle: the melodies accompanied by her singing so far, even just by a whispered vocalization like a yearning sigh, turn plain silence into heart-rending moments, shouldering the burden of an ornamentation elevated to an essential element.

Their career kicks off with #1, which can already be considered their most accomplished work. Nine tracks tinged with an autumnal grayness, disturbed only minimally by a hazy electronic component, in which classical instruments intertwine to create an altogether uncommon atmosphere. The opening sounds of "Here To Go", the first track, are the gateway into a world of its own: it begins subdued, with a snare drum surrounded by digital stars, over which, after a few seconds, Marie's voice appears like the sun at dawn, quite similar to a certain Beth Gibbons, but perhaps even more distinctive. The words enchant, they get lost in the void, while electronic particles spray out colors. The words sound out, together with the other sonic apparatus, in a sweet, sad, light song, like sheets of wood under a grayish light. Everything fades, disintegrates, right up to the ending, and we haven't even noticed that seven minutes have already gone by.

"Like Rain" ventures into a trip-hop episode in which the rhythmic component takes over, locking a minimal groove together with the almost-whispered vocals. The synthesizer's laments, paired with the beat, are later enriched by an angular drone, a barely audible guitar, frail acoustic clangs. In the background, almost like a hidden moan, the voice is forced to repeat itself, in a hypnotic loop. The passage closes with a minimal white noise that serves as an introduction to the next piece: "Let Me Ride It". A fully instrumental episode, built on digital crackle, a bed of ambient keyboards, various sound samples, and a subdued tone until halfway through, when suddenly a percussive rumble appears, progressively amplified, accompanied by a magical, fairy-tale-like ending centered on a muffled timbre. Finally comes "Whispering", already a programmed epitaph and a shining spark: slight glitches beneath a backdrop of sonic grime, a guitar played with the heart in the throat, once again, Marie's voice front and center. It speaks of whispers, hopes, fears: "There's no words, I am just waiting. There's no sleep, I am just floating...". A trumpet, in the moments when the vocals are absent, mutters disjointedly, together with the guitar that darts away, fast and elusive.

Another instrumental of nocturnal charm is "PPG Hold PRG.1", built on a low-tempo rhythm, drops of sound doled out with precision, almost seeking a point of collision between dark-ambient music and instrumental trip-hop. In the following track, "Moving Slow", an uncertain melody creeps in instead, acting as an anteroom to the usual dreamlike fable expressed also through words like these: "Moving slow, across the skies... Big big wheel... Hold on... to nothing... Falling away... flaming gold". Six minutes of total immersion in a suspended, imaginative cosmos. The ace up their sleeve, however, has yet to come: as the second-to-last track, there's "Something Not To Do", where the initial overlap between an old-fashioned moog synth and a digital loop hits straight to the heart. When, after a few seconds, the vocals begin to flow, time stands still: "Cold rain, is falling down... Down and down, thru the night... Black night, last forever... down and down in my heart... Something not to do but only know, something not to do but only know". At this point, the music is merely a backdrop of excellent quality, a companion of equal importance to the voice, an embellishment. The closing "Memo", yet another instrumental with a gentle touch, closes the album without regrets, with some highly evocative passages, circular melodies, floating electronic bubbles.

Right after the album's release, the maxi single of "Here To Go" was put out, featuring very interesting remixes by Full Swing, Zammuto, Accelera Deck and Metamatics. It also includes a previously unreleased track titled "Going Nowhere", an abstract work of minimalist subtraction.

Two years on from their towering debut, the Danish duo deliver a record that follows in the wake of #1, broadening the territories it explored with a very distinctive vein. Across its seven tracks, #2 retraces paths already trodden on the debut, but colours the journey with new shades. If snow, the frigid January breezes and the ice crystals that seem to hang from pine needles were musically the closest thing to the immersive quality of #1, then this 2002 record explores autumnal hues instead, made of muted notes, hinted-at brightness, warm textures and a slow advance that blankets the sound throughout its unfolding. Offering an amalgam as original as it is moving, the duo crafts an engrossing record that blends trip-hop attitude with touches of the finest slow-core.

It's no coincidence that the first track is a cover of "Black Eye Dog", originally written by Nick Drake. Blending glitch, laboured breathing and piano notes, the initial impact is devastating: the sinuous vocal line settles into a timeless atmosphere, mystical visions beyond this world come into view, while a keyboard paints the circularity of a sound that envelops and then vanishes. Across the nearly nine minutes of "Not Sad", the guitar arpeggio, accompanied by the faintest, barely perceptible snare, repeats almost obsessively, alongside jazz inflections not far removed from those of Bark Psychosis, in a perpetual motion that progressively dissolves into a vast sea of dense electric frayed edges accompanying Marie-Louise's voice.

"Annex Aug", which feels like a genuine divertissement, is perhaps the album's one sour note: an electronic blanket, with vaguely industrial touches, that loses itself in itself. For anyone who thought "Annex Aug" might signal the beginning of the end, along comes "Across The Way": a granular glitch lurking in the background mildly disturbs the melody of a guitar that keeps insisting on the same notes, accompanied by soft string samples and a voice fit to bring tears. And listening to "Dead Dreams", one could say anything except that these are the dead dreams the duo seem to theorize. The steady motion, lucid yet smudged in its limpid essence by shoegaze touches, bursts into the sweetest of collisions. The spectral "Cleary Wrong", suspended between electronic reverbs and ambient immersions, opens the door to the closing "Sunwalk", surely one of the duo's most distinctive and experimental pieces. Mixing light psychedelic warmth with pronounced basslines, with faint hints of old-school keyboards in the background, Antenne build a track with dilated contours that would not be out of place in the early repertoire of Air.

Innovating while renewing themselves, the Danish duo move with innate skill through their own sonic microcosm, stirring emotion and at times coming across as genuinely majestic. Inferior to its predecessor, with just one flaw: coming after a masterpiece.

After a fairly prolific two-year run of releases ('00/'02), the band settles into a very long period of rest; indeed, their next work will be none other than #3, released in mid-May 2008. During these six years of inactivity for the main band, the two members nonetheless remain more or less active through contributions or collaborations on other people's work. In 2002 the band collaborated with a Danish artist (Lise Westzynthius), playing a couple of instruments (guitar and synth) and handling mixing and production on one track: "French Leave". Both the song in question and the album ("Heavy Dream") explore slightly rougher territory, with mixed but very interesting results.

Activity remained dormant until 2005, when an intriguing appearance by Marie-Louise surfaced on Norken's only solo work: "Our Memories Of Winter". A sonic backdrop so foreign to the artist's previous experiences proves surprising, bringing out the young woman's qualities as a performer. The sonic traits, bordering on certain electronic-song styles suited to late-night club atmospheres, reveal very interesting particularities of her vocal timbre, unveiling an unsuspected urge to explore other paths.

A split 12" was then released at the start of the year between the Antenne name and the band Cryptic Scenery, featuring one of the tracks from #3 ("Long To Kiss"), offering the first proof that most of the songs on the album had been completed well before its release date.

That same year also saw an acoustic version of "Black Eyed Dog" appear on the Beequeen album "The Bodyshop", whose stripped-down structure, shorn of electronic arrangements, lends Marie's performance an uncontrollable magic.

In 2006 there is a close collaboration worth noting with another Danish ensemble called Pellarin & Lenler. On their "Going Through Phases", both Maria and Kim co-write "Taiko" with the duo, a stunning, spine-tingling electro-pop portrait. Overall, the whole album maintains an enviably high standard, moving through dub impulses, intrusions of soul's rhythmic warmth and a touch of boldness in terms of stylistic blending.

In 2007, the Nick Drake cover "Black Eyed Dog" was dug up once again, this time on Manual's album "Lost Days, Open Skies And Streaming Trees", in a meditative remix offering a placid, docilely laid-back version. Over the course of these six years, as before, mention should also be made of the inclusion of several Antenne tracks on numerous compilations. Among collections gathering Danish artists and others built around a stylistic theme, three stand out as most significant. The first two are the soundtrack to a Danish film titled "Nordkraft" (2005), which features the magical "Whispering", and the compilation "Full Swing Edit" (2001), assembled by Stephan Mathieu, where we find an unreleased track already mentioned in the "Here To Go" single, "Going Nowhere". The third deserves a special mention, as it was put out by a very interesting label, Suspicious Records. The compilation is titled "Broken Nightlights" (2006) and brings together a number of highly capable but little-known European electronic artists, including Sunday Munich, Leaf, Saltillo and Clover. The rescue operation carried out by the label (and its parent label, Hive Records) is a genuine musical miracle for anyone wanting to discover new names otherwise left in obscurity. The unreleased track featured here is called "Redmoon" and shows an incorporeal, very refined side, relegating Marie's voice to a mere backdrop for hissing, fractured sounds.

Having overcome serious difficulties in finding a label willing to release #3, the band managed to find shelter at the small but interesting Helmet Room Recordings toward the end of 2007. Few devotees were eagerly awaiting the release of this latest effort from the duo: after all, the scant visibility given to their work has hardly helped the distribution of their releases either, which has often been patchy and insufficient. What is most striking about Antenne's compositions across all three albums is undoubtedly their ability to keep reinventing themselves from scratch. Moving away from the slow-core shadows of the second record and drawing closer again to trip-hop proper, #3 hits – yes, once again – straight to the heart. The subdued pace, the falling leaves and the push of a few soft beats lend the duo's third record dark shades. The opening is disorienting: the more than six minutes of "Long To Kiss" are tinged with archaic reflections, blending a dark soul with (neo)classical veins. And if listening to the opening track wraps the heart in a feeling of sorrow, the sweet warmth of "Gloves On", accompanied by a tear-jerking video, brings the frozen blood back to the heart. In painting empty expanses, stripped bare of trees and souls, the slow flow of notes lives on, accompanied by a gorgeous guitar line.

The analogue flashes of light adorning the whole progress of "Days Into Nights" seem like starry rays lighting up a metropolitan night as bright as day, neon lights in the distance as the cold creeps in through one's clothes. And while the following "Trreaa#7" brings to mind the less bleak, less desert-like fragments of Pan Sonic, dub hints worthy of the finest Thievery Corporation creep into "Blue Light". "Ernst", advancing amid samples and piano smudged by the faintest misty haze, could easily have come from the repertoire of the most experimental Giardini di Mirò. In the strings of the penultimate track, titled "End", moving in a circular motion, Antenne pick back up the classical austerity of the opening piece, developing it beautifully alongside a guitar that carries the melody toward a delightful folk drift. Once again, as already happened on #2, the closing track, "All Of Us", echoes the notes of an electronic sound that plays at contaminating itself with a distinctly sixties psychedelic vein, very much in the style of Air.

The Danish duo's third chapter moves, amazes, touches the heart. Blending distant elements with an innate naturalness, Antenne capture metropolitan warmth tinged with a gentle darkness. And it's sweet to lose oneself in their sea. #3 stays true to the stylistic choices charted in the past, distilling everything the band still has to say into eight songs capable of slipping away like handfuls of fine sand, or settling into the most hidden corners of memory for any listener, even a casual one.

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