SEPTEMBER 14, 2012
Efterklang To Release New Album, Play Metropolitan Museum of Art
Danish Trio To Release Pirimida On September 22nd
by Tom PryorWhat happens when you set a trio of Danish experimental musicians loose in an abandoned Soviet mining town in the Arctic Circle?
You get Efterklang's Pirimida - one of the most haunting and unique albums to come out this year, due for Stateside release on November 22nd. Fusing the found sounds of this arctic ghost town with lush, orchestral arrangements, Efterklang paints a singular sonic picture of the stark beauty of - and the industrial damage done to - one of the planet's most fragile environments.
The trio will debut this singular work in North America later this month at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art - full details on the album and the live event are reprinted in the official press release below.
Efterklang will release their new album Piramida, on September 24th, and will perform their first US show in two years, just 2 days prior.
On September 22nd, Efterklang will play their only US show this year at the majestic Metropolitan Museum Of Art in New York in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. The band will perform with the 19-piece Wordless Music Orchestra and guest conductor Matthew Coorey. The arrangements are courtesy of Missy Mazzoli (Kronos Quartet, Victoire), Karsten Fundal (Under Byen, Oh Land), and Daníel Bjarnason (Sigur Rós, Múm).
For this special concert, Efterklang (Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen, Rasmus Stolberg) will perform as a six-piece, augmented by Peter Broderick (piano), Katinka Fogh Vindelev (choir), and special guest Budgie (drums).
Piramida is a VERY unique album, that was made in truly unusual fashion. In short, they sampled an Arctic ghost town and turned those recordings into instruments and music!
In August of 2011 they went on a nine-day audio expedition to an abandoned Russian settlement in Spitsbergen, an Arctic island located just shy of the North Pole. Spitsbergen is home to more polar bears than people and also to the ghost town of Piramida (officially known as Pyramiden), which was abandoned overnight in the 90s, and today stands as a slowly decaying ruin.
To get a sense of what happened there, Efterklang have produced a short album trailer that gives a tantalizing insight into this unique journey - it's really the best way to understand how they obtained over 1,000 sounds to sample for the new album. Along with discovering the world's northernmost grand piano, the trio spent nine days exploring and recording the sounds that would inspire and build the songs on Piramida.
In May, the band was invited to perform at the Sydney Opera House, where they premiered the album with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. You can watch a magical performance from that night of the song "The Ghost".