A friend recently sent me the cool new album by Danish musician Fine and asked how we should define this sound that has been very prominent lately, particularly in Northern Europe. Experimental pop has been big in the region for a long time, but captivating recent releases by ML Buch and Astrid Sonne have drawn extra attention to the shared sensibilities of these artists, many of which live in Copenhagen and London.
This was all written a few months ago when the Fine album actually came out. I got distracted and forgot to hit post, but now there’s a new record by Molina that has given me the extra push to finish it off. Rebecca Molina also lives in Copenhagen and the closing track, conveniently titled Organs, features ML Buch on vocals.
My work in progress genre tag for the sound is acid baroque. The acid prefix has obviously already been used extensively. Here it indicates the blunted psychedelia of the production and the sparse hypnotic vocals. Classic dub techniques play a major role, shrouding the recordings in a seductive haze. As does the yearning timbre of R&B singing, yet in this context it is typically detached from any direct sexual or romantic desire, replaced by distant and deadpan lyricism. The R&B inflected side of the genre is exemplified by the brilliant work of Tirzah and Smerz. The baroque is also present in certain tunes by Erika de Casier, George Riley and Vegyn’s collaborations with John Glacier.
Acid also provides a neat connection to the wonky pastoral precedence of freak folk. I should note that all the current artists appear to live in major cities, although the tunes of Joanne Robertson do sound as if they were recorded in a vacant barn. Then there is the out of time voice of Clarissa Connelly, whose interpretations of Celtic and Nordic song craft could believably pass as being reverse engineered by ancient aliens.
Another common link between this group is their history at the conservatory. Shirking the natural path of their classically trained ability, they instead angle their energy towards pop songwriting. But a certain orchestral flourish and instrumentation is omnipresent in the recordings. Echo drenched chamber vocals alongside beautiful minor chords, favouring the organ, cello and violin, recall the baroque musical era. Any traditional notion of baroque religiosity is muddied by a routine pairing with distorted emo indie guitars and associated melancholic worldview. Techniques honed at the conservatory gleefully defiled in the bedroom.
The influence of both the acid and baroque on this generation is heavily indebted to Dean Blunt and Mica Levi, who have successfully fused the two components for well over a decade. Blunt with his micro laptop strings and Levi with actual orchestras on their film compositions. They are both restless collaborators, likely connected to every other name mentioned in this post, and have provided a gateway into this world for many fans.
There are so many key artists from now and then that I haven’t mentioned above. A few that could loosely be defined as acid baroque include Chanel Beads, Coby Sey, Hinako Omori, Julia Holter, Laura Groves, Laurel Halo, Lucinda Chua, Mabe Fratti, Nailah Hunter, Oliver Coates and Zsela.
Edit: Astrid Sonne, Clarissa Connelly, Erika de Casier, ML Buch and Molina were all classmates at college according to Boomkat.