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Denmark has a large capacity when it comes to musical laptop equilibrium. Rumpistol, Bichi and Opiate are examples of a number of these. Band Ane can easily be part of that league, and on her personal debut album, the listeners are invited into a subtle universe that draws inspiration from glitch, drum’n’bass, noise and ambient. Rhythms and sounds are cut up beyond recognition, and layers upon layers of melodic figures wind in and out of Band Anes' at once complex and extroverted compositions. Behind the playful name Band Ane hides the soloist Ane Østergaard, and she manipulates with all sorts of expressions, moods and sounds. Some of these are produced with the help of toy instruments, and in the same naive spirit, Alfons Åberg is celebrated on the track Alfons, which plays with Georg Riedel's well-known theme. There are lots of fine compositions, imaginative instrumentation and challenging productions on Anish Music, which is a highly recommended record that keeps tingling in your head and body, long after the CD has been taken off the player.
Anish Music Too & Free appears almost like a journey through a psychedelic landscape, where the music is at once something very abstract, but at the same time contains minimalist, concrete and everyday-like aspects. Østergaard manages to place her music in the middle of it all and encapsulates past, present and future, as the music points both back and forth. In particular, she captures the past in the spoken word sequences, which pull the music back to the Danish 80s, with a focus on spoken word and beat poetry which Dan Turèll provided a part of. His philosophy was that art, poetry and music were everywhere, and that one should include everyday life in its most banal and down-to-earth form. Consistent with this attitude, he found art and poetry everywhere and made the little things the most significant. In the same way, Ane Østergaard gets the small things included in her music and turns them into significant objects in themselves. With a mix of melodic electronica, pure psychedelic settings and spoken word, she has put together a double album, where spoken word represents the everyday-like and down-to-earth, while the music itself makes the two albums more abstract and narrative. The music itself points forward, and both albums have an avant-garde distinctiveness that not only breaks with the rules, but also transforms them. The hybrids Østergaard is presenting are delicious to listen to, and they also testify to her characteristic musical talent.
Band Ane's music is the enjoyment of slowness. A health break from today's click bait and media pimping. The genre is still ambient electronica with dusty surfaces and field recordings, but the depth of her programming of the sounds of nature and the city in an electronic environment reaches new ... yes, depths. Wolves In My Trashcan shows an increased finesse in her music, Inside The Knitting and Rock My Boat wrap themselves around the mind as an uplifting dream sequence, while 9520DK, At Night is haunted by her own, creative vocals, before the smoldering ignites in a thoroughbred dubtrack. Her signature, the nostalgic melodica, peeks out between sad piano chords on Robin Hood Horn before closing the record with drowsy thriller vibe on Owlfarm. Her greatest quality? She delivers consistently without getting bored, she develops from record to record without giving in to her original expression, and also she is the banner bearer for Danish electronica. She is a musical rainforest.
On its fifth Anish Music release, Band Ane is transformed into a full-blooded ambient project that requires the listener's full attention and headphones. Band Ane's music is suspended in an open space best defined by the genres: Ambient, Musique Concrète, Pop, Avantgarde.Ane has the uncanny ability to compose electronic music that has so much warmth and presence that the listener gets the sensation of literally touching and smelling the music. Caravan aspires and flourishes with involved listening, and the attentive immersion into the sonic material offers a unique connection between composer and listener. Band Ane's music is a deep and personal examination of how we see ourselves reflected in sounds, and a discovery of how these sounds can be reflected back to us in the course of a piece of music.
Anish Musix consists of twelve tracks that minimalist and softly rumble away. As always with Band Ane, the tracks are dreamy with bubbling synths, quirky whims and humorous crunch. It creaks and sizzles in a warm and airy way. Especially on Fantasia Night, some whimsical contrasts arise between the various repetitive layers, which makes me imagine how Østergaard spoons an elastic band and drowns an accordion in pixelated water to a synthetic clave rhythm. Band Anes electronica is exuberantly atmospheric and melodically enchanting. There is a consistent calm on the plate of the kind that belongs to the late night hours. While everything else is asleep, Band Ane draws simple adventurous patterns in the dark with a star sparkler that splashes and spits around with glitch. Drifting Mind drifts away and with all its lightness gives good air for the mind to strut freely and peacefully around. And on Delicate Memories, Kirsten Pallesen treads lightly with her clarinet between Østergaard's meditative synth tones.
