Trentemøller
Copenhagen’s Anders Trentemøller has long been respected as a creator of extraordinarily memorable melodies and dark soundscapes.
While many artists follow a pattern of invention and reinvention, Anders’ arc has been a series of points along the same curve, playing the long game, with each release representing the next chapter in a constantly evolving series. Contrasts and paradoxes are often explored. Other themes may revolve around reminiscence and remembrance, while eschewing nostalgia.
His upcoming full-length, Dreamweaver (Sept. 2024), will continue on this track, combining elements of shoegaze, dark wave, motorik, noise rock, and somber, introspective takes on electronic dream pop, but in a considerably more psychedelic manner. The chronology of its 10 songs, as a whole, are an immersive experience which present additional otic pleasures when headphones are strapped on.
In 2006, following a run of EP’s, Trentemøller released his groundbreaking debut full-length, The Last Resort. Deservedly topping several end-of-year polls, it exposed his work to a far wider audience.
Since assembling his first full live band, in 2007, Trentemøller has embarked on multiple world tours, playing over 500 shows, regularly selling out venues. The three studio albums that followed, Into The Great Wide Yonder (2010), Lost (2013), and Fixion (2016), were released on his own label imprint, In My Room. Multiple compilations, including The Trentemøller Chronicles (2007), Reworked/ Remixed (2011) Harbour Boat Trips (2009), Late Night Tales (2011), Lost Reworks (2014) and Harbour Boat Trips 02 (2018) have also been released, as well as the concert album, Live In Copenhagen (2013). In recent years, Anders has remixed music by Depeche Mode, Tricky, Savages, The Drums, The Raveonettes, Pet Shop Boys, A Place To Bury Strangers, Soft Moon, UNKLE, and Franz Ferdinand (which earned him an US Grammy nomination), adding to a list of over 100 previous projects.
2010’s Into the Great Wide Yonder continued where The Last Resort left off, throwing into tighter focus previously mined textures of suspense, tension, release, and noir influences.
2013’s Lost expanded things even further, truly capturing the atmospheric and darkly romantic qualities that are hallmarks of the Danish artist’s music. The staggeringly mature Fixion was released in 2016, showcasing the artist’s penchant for experimentation, polyrhythms, and creating mélanges from his many influences and inspirations. Sometimes revealing itself gently, other times challenging the listener, the tracks share the common thread of Trentemøller’s unique, genre-defying style. Riding the line between being a collection of songs, each with its own personality, and presenting itself as a single body of work, Fixion’s praise was well-deserved, and translated brilliantly in a live context.
2019’s Obverse was initially conceived as an instrumental album, not bound by the rule that it would have to be performed live. Using this liberating notion as a launching point, Trentemøller chased down every idea, and explored every tangent. Eventually it was decided that half of the songs could actually do with vocals. No stranger to working with strong female singers, such as Lisbet Fritze, Jehnny Beth, Low’s Mimi Parker, Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino, and Jenny Lee of Warpaint, Anders called again on collaborators, old and new, reenlisting Fritze, Lee, plus adding Lina Tullgren, and Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell into the mix.
After a nearly two year break, Trentemøller surprised fans by releasing two singles, “Golden Sun,” and “No One Quite Like You,” back to back, early in the summer of 2021. The latter being a stripped down piece, very different from his elaborate productions, and featuring guest vocals by Tricky.
2022’s Memoria, dug in deeper, honoring the five canons of storytelling. Themes of impermanence, as they relate to anything from mortality to relationships, run deep. Present are the familiar subjects of light and dark, turbulence and serenity, piercing chill and comforting warmth, clearly inspired by the inherent antipodal elements of the Nordic environment he calls home. However, Memoria also pushes much further into this territory, while simultaneously investigating new themes.
On the Memoria tour, audiences were treated to a new band lineup, which included Icelandic vocalist Disa, who stunned the crowd with her interpretations of the back catalog. Later that year she contributed to “Into the Silence” as well as Trentemøller’s cover of “Cops On Our Tail,” originally released by his old friends, The Raveonettes.
When considering “Into The Silence,” it’s understandable that fans might have assumed it was foreshadowing an album of similarly brilliant economy, but Dreamweaver is, in actuality, an absolutely lush endeavor. Repeated listens offer new rewards, from geysers of white noise propelling song sections further forward, to jarring commotion coming up against honeyed vocals, and jangling guitar bends blanketed in tidepools of reverb. With Disa along for the ride again, her contributions balance between vocal performance and instrumentation. Dreamweaver is a production tour de force, even by Trentemøller standards, that gives the impression no idea was left uninvestigated.
