EMOTAN, an album propelled by separation, loss, and a drive to defy expectation. Before the recording started, two of the key relationships in Ludvigsen’s life - one professional, one personal - ended on the same night. Picking up the pieces, Ludvigsen turned to the studio to process his acute grief and frustration. He also sought to step outside of the box into which he felt he had been placed: that of a drummer first and foremost.
“I think I’ve always wanted to prove that I can write music that isn’t dependent on my drumming…. In a lot of ways this music is a better representation of who I actually am,” Ludvigsen says of EMOTAN. The album draws its name from the YouTube account where a teenage Ludvigsen would post drum covers. During the writing of the album, he found himself returning to the emo, hardcore, and alt-metal to which he used to listen back then—decidedly uncool music with which he nevertheless still holds a deep emotional connection, think Paramore, Silverstein, Escape The Fate, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.
Those influences cut through clearly on the album, painted in inky blacks and oily browns, suffused with soaring pained vocals and slicing guitars, coated in distortion, winding through an existential abyss. Ludvigsen’s expert drumming patterns and details the production in novel and sophisticated ways through the haze. His voice weaves through and around his arrangements as he utilises every corner of his vocal register, from whispers and falsetto mumbles to yelps and fry screams.
EMOTAN is an expansive album, as deeply personal as it is experimental. With it, Ludvigsen takes a bold and definitive step forward, beyond the confines of his identity as a drummer and straight through his own personal hurt.