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LP
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KDS 005LP
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Fresh on Francis Harris's Kingdoms imprint comes Rasmus Juncker's Ophold -- six tracks of sublime atmospheres and textures. The Danish musician, sound composer, and DJ fits perfectly with the label's aesthetic, joining the dots between ambient, leftfield electronica, and modern classical. When Rasmus started to think about his debut album he spent several months trying to find his own way to combine his favorite musical influences, improvisation, electronics, and classical music. "Almost a year later", Juncker says, "I went to a sensory deprivation floating tank in Copenhagen while researching for another performance and while I was lying there, floating in the water, deprived from most of my senses, I got the idea to do something drastic in my musical process. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant describe this deprived state as a mental 'Cesura', which became some sort of guideline for the album." So Juncker decided to start working on the album by leaving the process as well as the final result completely open. "I wanted to create sounds and music that I had no idea what they would sound like, but would feel like a mental 'Cesura', an 'Ophold' (in Danish)" he states. He invited musicians, one after the other, to his studio. "I had an electronic musician to improvise patterns and new interesting sounds based on my experience in the deprivation tank. I chose some of the takes and some weeks later I invited a jazz guitarist to listen and improvise on top of what he heard. Then a classical string quartet and a double bass player came to my studio months later, and finally I recorded myself on percussion and drums. Throughout the recording process I've been experimenting with special microphones in various setups, used noises from the recordings and the room became absolutely essential for the pieces." Juncker states. "The material I used was all first take improvisation which I arranged, layered and edited into compositions. The final pieces were mixed by Andreas Pallisgaard with the same improvised and experimental approach of the recording and the production. None of the musician met each other, but their sounds developed into something completely fantastic I think. The presence of the acoustic instruments and the depth and complexity of the synthesized layers gave some kind of an indescribable sounding music from another galaxy."
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