Denmark is a small country, and the same can be said about its capital city, Copenhagen. Its modest size, however, doesn’t reflect much in either the quantity or quality of its experimental and independent music scenes. Maybe the fact that the city isn’t bigger, that everyone knows each other, and that its different “scenes” have become more and more entangled over time, has actually had a positive impact on the state of the new music coming out of Copenhagen over the years?
Well, you can only wonder. But it’s safe to say that the town has gained a fair amount of international recognition due to a diverse field of contemporary artists, such as Iceage, Croatian Amor, Puce Mary, Lust For Youth, and more recently the likes of ML Buch, Erika De Casier, Clarissa Connelly, Molina, and Astrid Sonne.
Surely, all of these artists unquestionably deserve the critical recognition and exposure they've received! However, the Copenhagen music scene amounts to so much more, and if one digs a bit deeper into what's been going on, they will find artists challenging aesthetic and stylistic conventions within the context of many different genres, with many exciting releases coming out every year.
At Passive/Aggressive, a non-profit independent music media outlet with a strong focus on new experimental music from Denmark, we’ve been covering these movements since 2011, with weekly articles in both Danish and English by musicians, academics, journalists, philosophers, and simply talented writers with a passion for new and unheard sounds. If you want to know more about the current state of strange sounds coming out of Copenhagen, read on. I’ve picked out a bunch of recent projects to keep an eye out for and a guide to which promoters and festivals to look at, all with a focus on the city’s electronic and art music scenes. The experimental music communities in Copenhagen have become more and more entangled, which is part of why it’s so interesting to follow.
None of these lists are exhaustive—in fact very far from—but they’re a good place to start.