GB - Herzsprung

Some albums seem to be built slowly, others seem to have been summoned. "Herzsprung", the second work by GB (aka Gustav Berntsen), falls squarely into the latter category: an electric organism that takes rock, opens it up surgically and lets jazz, psychedelia, noise, pop and the ghosts of the Seventies and Eighties seep through. Not nostalgia, but a kind of archaeology of the future.
The title itself (an almost-invented German word, "heart leap") suggests an explosion. And indeed the record thrives on sudden swerves, collisions and flashes of intuition that seem on the verge of derailing without ever losing control. After the more muffled collage of "Gusse Music" (2024), GB turns up the volume, opens up his voice, and lets a real band in.

The heart of the process is almost ritualistic. In London, Berntsen spent weeks gathering fragments from the Tube, cutting them up, reassembling them, blending them with his own diaries until language turned into plastic matter. Then he carried those shards into the Swedish wilderness, where four musicians let them breathe on a 24-track tape. Much of the album was recorded live, often on the first take: mistakes aren't corrected, but welcomed as a sign that things are flowing the right way.
"Adrenaline" throws the door open with restless guitars, kinetic drums and a fretless bass that turns psychedelia into jazz-fusion. "The Next Day" is almost an indie-rock apparition, luminous and strangely familiar. "Belly", on the other hand, moves like a nocturnal animal: oblique chords, crooked grooves, details slowly emerging from the dark. Then comes "Shit River", the breaking point. The voice cracks, the chorus swells, the guitars explode into a distorted, almost mystical mass. It no longer feels like a song: it feels like a door accidentally thrown open onto another dimension, letting us peer at what lies beyond.

GB belongs to that new Danish school capable of treating the history of music as living material. But "Herzsprung" is no conservatory exercise. It's too physical, too human, too in love with the accident. A sophisticated record without being snobbish, learned without losing its blood. A collage that, miraculously, pulses before your eyes and ears.

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31/08/2026