Under Bjerget by Jacob Kirkegaard
Jacob Kirkegaard - Under Bjerget (Underneath the Mountain)
Shortly before Carlsberg’s main factory in the center of Copenhagen closed down, Kirkegaard got access to the large basement area of this legendary 150-year-old building, and recorded the vibrations of its many tubes and kettles. The composition Under Bjerget was made from these recordings. Two years later it was presented as a 16-channel sound installation inside four large and pitch dark rooms in the now abandoned Carlsberg basement.
Tracklist
| 1. | Under Bjerget 01 | 24:46 |
| 2. | Under Bjerget 02 | 24:59 |
Credits
Originally released in 2015 as a now sold out tripple cassette by Posh Isolation entitled 5 Pieces. The release contained five of Kirkegaard's previously unreleased works which all bear the signature sound of Kirkegaard's processed field recordings slowly evolving into carefully crafted drone works, rich in both detail and emotion.
Jacob Kirkegaard, Under Bjerget, 50 min, ©, 2011
The project was initiated by and made in collaboration with Line Kjær from Kontoret for Undergrundsanliggender, Copenhagen
Selected by ROLLING STONE as "20 Best Avant Albums of 2015":
Limited to just 200 copies but no less necessary, this three-cassette release anthologises five recent works by one of contemporary sound art's most subtle, intriguing figures. More artistically minded than field recordings, more naturally hewn than noise tapes, Kirkegaard amplifies hidden worlds into evocative drifts.
The underwater recordings of Æsturarium turn Hudson River glubs and swirling sediments into a 29-minute white-noise suite; Iron Wind captures the vibrations of German fences for a haunting breath of ambience. Déjà Vu is a feedback conversation between eight empty rooms; Fool's Fire is an electrified needle picking up radio waves from crystals (it sounds like an orchestra of run-out grooves); and Under Bjerget is a 58-minute meditation for the rattling tubes in a Copenhagen basement, glacially moving from drone to pulse to rumble.
License
All rights reserved.
Sound artist and composer, born in DK 1975. Kirkegaard's sound works have been released on labels such as Important Records (USA), Touch (UK), mAtter (JAP) and Posh Isolation (DK). He is a founding member of the sound art collective freq_out as well as the not-for-profit arts organisation TOPOS. In 2016 Kirkegaard was the sound-artist-in-residency at St. John's College, University of Oxford, U.K.