Photograph courtesy of Nina Mouritzen
Frisk Frugt, aka Anders Lauge Meldgaard, the singular Danish multi-instrumentalist, composer and instrument maker who was behind Dansktoppen Møder Burkina Faso I Det Himmelblå Rum Hvor Solen Bor, Suite, one of our favourite albums of 2012, and is, as tQ editor John Doran explains, "flipping brilliant", twice over, has a new album on the way. Den Europæiske Spejlbue will be released on his new label, Tambourhinoceros, due out in Denmark in November, the rest of the world early next year. It tucks in a similarly head-spinning array of sonic approaches, though the label explain it’s more focussed on Meldgaard’s native continent than Dansktoppen…, the product of his a around Mali and Burkina Faso. As they explain, it’s "a vividly realised song-score for a homemade, post-digital fantasy orchestra, packing in sampled elements, complex polyphony, inventive (often home-built) instrumentation dressed in epic, ambitious arrangements with parts for classical musicians as well as improvisers, spontaneous voice leading and foraged sound fragments."
Says Meldgaard himself: "This music has been composed over a long period of time through extended experimentation and editing, not through the traditional processes of writing, performing and recording. I am fascinated by the idea that today one guy with an internet connection can follow a musical chorus at Yale University for free, while downloading thousand upon thousand of sounds from the internet, and then put it all together with software illegally downloaded to create an image of whatever he or she wants. I want to transcribe all the music that has revealed itself, and perform it at live concerts." Avail yourself of the first track lifted from the record, ‘Solhyldest 1. Del’, below and keep an eye out for further coverage of Frisk Frugt on tQ shortly.
