release date: Apr. 3, 2014
format: cd (ukendt 003)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,52]
producer: Troels Bech & Henrik Olesen
label: non-label-release - nationality: Denmark
Track highlights: 2. "Drømmen om et liv" - 3. "Glade dage i St. Vemod" - 6. "Hjertet" - 7. "Drone" - 9. "Nat falder" - 10. "Skridt" (4 / 5)
Full-length studio solo debut by Ukendt Under Andet Navn (aka Henrik Olesen) is produced by Troels Bech together with Henrik Olesen and is like the mini-album Ekskursion (2012) another non-label release. Co-producer Troels Bech is also credited for several instruments on this, and the album also features songwriter Solveig Sandnes on vocals. All songs are credited Henrik Olesen, except track #2, "Drømmen om et liv", which has words by (the late) Danish poet Morti Vizki, who also gave name to the final album by Olesen-Olesen, on which the song appears with slightly different musical arrangement - also by Henrik Olesen.
Without being over-produced with multi-layering, the album is more orchestrated than the first two releases by Henrik Olesen, and the album also contains two tracks that are found on his ep debut from 2010, "Hjertet" and "Skridt", however, both have been altered, lengthened and also improved. Especially, the end-track "Skridt" with its repetitious / droning form is quite successfully transformed.
The album received some fine reviews but failed to attract any interest from national radio stations and sales numbers - also as a consequence of being a non-promoted self-release, which is sad, 'cause it contains some fine compositions and deserves far more recognition. That said, it doesn't appear much as a full-coherent album. Some songs are quite introspective, some are light-weight indie-pop songs, which makes me think of early releases by Radio Dept. and another Swedish band, the duo-project Paus by Joakim Berg of Kent and Peter Svensson from Cardigans, and yet other songs are slower compositions with a bold ambient style. The strongest tracks are musically driven progressive compositions, whereas the weaker ones focus more on a lyrical force that lacks the poignant weight, imho, but it's altogether a very fine and also highly original collection of songs.
[ Gaffa.dk 3 / 6, Berlingske 4 / 6 stars ]
