- For Norwegian version click here.
Be Your Own Algorithm in the Search for New Music
This was originally published (in Norwegian) in the festival newspaper for the Ekko Festival 2025.
“Would you like to write a ‘Kristoffer’s ambient’ piece for the festival magazine?” I was asked. “For example, write a bit about some tracks that have been important to you?” “Of course I’ll write!” I replied. But do people really need an article about my old heroes? Because aside from obscure bootlegs I found on Piratebay and various people exploring gear on YouTube, I’ve listened to Biosphere and Tim Hecker just like most others. No, I think it’s much more important to highlight someone who could benefit from a little column space, and at the same time, talk a bit about how to discover music like this. Because how do you actually come across new music outside the large commercial segment in 2025? Have the record shops been shut down in favor of algorithms, and has ambient been replaced by AI-generated “mood” playlists? The answer, fortunately, is no, even if big tech is spending a lot of dollars trying to make you believe it.
So let me take you on a journey where I tell you about some Norwegian artists I’ve met on my path outside the algorithms, and how they are all connected in a kind of decentralized spiderweb. Hopefully, I can send you off with both some new music and a little inspiration to look beyond the Spotify recommendations. You’re already at the Ekko Festival, so there are plenty of great artists here to use as a starting point if you want to do your own version of this.
When I studied music technology, I took a sound art course with a Czech student from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, let’s start there. Magdaléna Manderlová describes her own practice as working with sonic essays, field recordings, participatory soundwalks, site-specific projects, concerts, and text. I realize I’m in a bit of a conflict-of-interest situation recommending a record I mixed myself, but I’ll let it pass this one time.
Straw Bales is a sound collage consisting of voice, field recordings, and small musical elements. A kind of mix of a nostalgic story in a dreamlike space where music, voice, birds, and mining sounds blend together. If you understand Czech, or perhaps just want to listen to the story as pure sound, you can try the Czech version titled “A všechno je náhle pták a chce odletět”.
The English version of the work was released digitally and on cassette by Breton Cassette, so let’s continue our journey there. What is Breton Cassette, exactly? It’s not easy to say. On their website, they write that “Breton Cassette is a small, artist-run initiative that operates in the free field and serves as an archive and independent alternative platform for sound projects and publications.”
Record label, archive, alternative platform? What we call it isn’t perhaps that important. Far more important is that Pernille Meidell, who is behind Breton Cassette, is responsible for no less than 49 (!!) releases being on the Breton Cassette Bandcamp page. This is truly a fantastic place to explore. You could, for example, start with the newest release, which is by Pernille herself under her artist name PERIMETER O.
Silent Spring Within volume I-IX is presented as a continuous track of 35 minutes and 35 seconds. Sonically, after a pinging synth drumbeat and chords that could be the start of a short film, it continues where Straw Bales left off, namely with birdsong. But where Magdaléna took us into warm nostalgia, PERIMETER O takes us into a more melancholic state. The release is best captured by the artist’s own text, where a poetic description of about 500 words can be found on the release’s Bandcamp page. The cassette is, of course, sold out, but the digital release is the easiest 50 kroner you’ll ever spend. By the way, I’m really excited to see what Breton Cassette’s 50th release will be!
If you examine the catalog, you’ll find the name Jenny Berger Myhre on two different releases, so let’s talk a bit about Jenny. Jenny Berger Myhre is a multidisciplinary artist who works with sound, video, and photography. A quick glance at her website informs us both that “You’ve found Jenny on the internet, welcome!”, and that her newest release is with the project Flutter Ridder, a duo she has with Espen Friberg, another multidisciplinary artist.
The album is also called Flutter Ridder, and the back of the vinyl cover lists instruments like pipe organ, Serge modular synth, and church bells! When you listen, you hear how they play with harmonies and disharmonies. What is a priceless pipe organ and what is a Casio from a flea market isn’t always easy to tell, and there’s something beautiful in that too. The duo has a strange ability to pull me between the heavy and the playful without me quite noticing when the shift happened. With the soft chordal instruments interspersed with more percussive sounds from Friberg’s Serge synth, this is a release best enjoyed with the record spinning and the rain drizzling, I would say.
In addition to physical instruments, I also find the sentence “SuperCollider code (‘Morsel’) written by Niklas Adam.” If you don’t know what SuperCollider is, it’s an open-source sound programming language or a so-called “environment” often used for algorithmic composition and advanced sound synthesis. In my circles, Niklas is known as one of the two SuperCollider-Danes who work or have worked at Notam (Norwegian Centre for Technology, Art and Music).
In May 2023 (6 months before people started boycotting Eurovision because Israel is allowed to participate despite their genocide of the Palestinian People), I helped organize Modulert Grand Prix at MIR in Oslo. This was a terribly fun concept where you show the Eurovision final on a big screen, while the audio is remixed, manipulated, and in some cases completely destroyed by various electronic musicians and sound artists who are given the TV audio feed via a jack cable they plug into their setup.
The aforementioned SuperCollider-Dane also participated here, and a quick fun fact is that in addition to remixing Austria and Portugal, which was his task, we were caught so off guard when the broadcast suddenly started that Niklas also live-granulated the welcome segment, which wasn’t part of the competition. You can find the whole thing on Metronomicon Audio’s YouTube channel.
Anyway, Niklas didn’t participate under his own name, but under the alias Mona Sigler, and if you search for Mona Sigler, two Bandcamp releases pop up under this name! The album Beginning Entries is hard to describe as anything other than (thankfully not too heavy) childhood trauma on LSD. In the “Tags” section of the release, Niklas has put “weird dreams,” so my description is probably not that far off. It took me a couple of rounds before I got completely into the glitched, cut-up-the-tape-reel, FM-like synth universe of Beginning Entries, but now it has become a place I often return to.
And this is perhaps a good place to end this round. If you want to continue the game, there are different paths you can take. Here are a few suggestions:
- The other SuperCollider-Dane who has worked at Notam is named Mads Kjeldgaard, and in addition to writing his own music, he has started Exformal Records.
- Niklas Adam has his own “alternative platform and archive for music” called Ephemeral Observer.
- On the Bandcamp page for Mona Sigler’s other release, named Svævende Melankolibri, we can also read that the release is “Dubbed by Stiv Heks on HULESYSTEM”.
Good luck on your journey!
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