Kristoffer Lislegaard

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2025 in review

I have been wondering how to do this year’s post. There are a lot of different ways to frame a year. Previously I have mostly listed some of my most interesting projects I did during the year, with some reflections and anecdotes around each of them. Then I would end the post by writing a bit on what I wanted to try to focus on in the new year. I guess you call that part a sort of New Year’s resolution.

All in all, a pretty easy format, right? I don’t know what kept me from writing this post. Last year I posted on January 14th, now we are already into February. Maybe it is simply the feeling of unease triggered by all the shit going on that we hear about every day now. A bit unspecific I know, but you probably know what I am getting at and I don’t want to spend keystrokes on it. But 2025 at times really felt like a fight, and I am not even directly affected, just watching from a distance. It seeps into all of us. The darkness, the dampening of hope and joy, the feeling of helplessness. There were also some stressful things in my own life and people close to me this year, and I felt tired. So tired.

But I am feeling stronger now. It helps to rest, to eat healthy, to log off, to say no, to clear your calendar and… to take vitamin D. So I feel a bit hopeful again, like I am moving in the right direction even if parts of the world are not. And I guess I am ready to write this post now.

Modular synthesis as resistance

One thing I was in desperate need of this year was logging off the internet. To have proper mental breaks and a total shift of focus. To get totally absorbed into something. This is not easy. The internet is everywhere now. It is in my pocket, and my smartphone is my alarm clock and calendar. Music has always been a great escape from life’s stress in its transcendent nature, but as a computer musician, even there it is. The same screen that is my studio, also provides the things I am trying to escape. But I did manage to find one spot in my studio where the internet could not reach me unless I actively invited it. This was not in my usual spot in front of the computer screen and Genelec speakers, but at the far end of the studio I set up an “analog corner”.

It shifted and saw several different variants during the year, but the main components were modular synths and a Tascam cassette recorder with 8 tracks that I bought at the end of 2024. There were cables not working, noise from old gear, but these were practical things, they were not eating at my soul. This I could deal with.

Composing without a computer gave me a lot of big challenges, and I am back on the computer now to transform this material into a finished album that fits into my project, but this way of working truly shaped the album and album-making process in a profound way. I am really looking forward to sharing the finished results with you, but more on that later. For now I will say that it was very much needed for me to find a way to travel to that special place, and that working with physical gear and the cassette recorder really made that possible.

Releasing my Autechre concert

As you may know if you are reading this blog I opened for Autechre. Since this was such a highlight I decided I would make a release out of it, so in April I released the full concert both as a live video and as a live album.

Øy: Vinyl, videos and celebrating 5 years

In February, 5 months after putting in the order, the vinyl pressing of Øy - Live finally arrived! You can get the vinyl from Tiger record store or Bandcamp.

This also marked our 5-year anniversary of the duo’s first concert! So to celebrate we did a concert in Tiger record store in Oslo and later that evening a watch party on Lislegaard.stream showing the video recording of all the tracks and Q&A + storytime in between.

Composing for contemporary dance

This year I did my third (!!!) piece with choreographer Geir Hytten. It was both challenging and very rewarding. I am super happy with the result. We premiered it at Dansens Hus in Oslo and if you live around Trondheim or Sandnes we will perform there in 2026. More info here.

I also did a residency at Praxis in Oslo with movement artist Anu Laiho and artist Peny Spanou. It was a really inspiring pre-project and I was super happy to work with these two great artists and humans! You can read Peny’s perspective on the project on her blog.

Videos, streaming, community

I also did some live streams over at Lislegaard.stream and published videos on the blog and over at the video library. I have said this many times before, but it really feels liberating to be able to stream and publish on your very own platforms! No YouTube full of distractions and no Twitch full of ads. Just the community-vibes in the chat. I will definitely lean more into this in 2026. In fact the very next blog post will be a new video! Premiering February 10th. More info here.

This is how I will publish:

Sometimes I did invite the internet over to my analog corner by live streaming. These were some of my most positive meetings with the internet in 2025. This whole stream is archived here.

Speaking of sharing on Mastodon, one of my streams this year was in celebration of the Mastodon community I am a part of called Sonomu.club. Sonomu.club is a Mastodon server initiated and run by Luka Prinčič, a very inspirational Slovenian computer musician and community organizer. To celebrate the renewal of the domain I organized a Sonomu renewal camp live stream where I played interviews I had done with some of the community members and performance videos people had sent in.

Luka called in live 45 minutes before their gig to welcome the community to the stream.
Interview with Danish composer and sound artist Mads Kjeldgaard.

It was a super positive experience and you can watch the whole thing here. Ps. It is a big file so give it a little while to load.

Blogging

Another computer activity that has felt good this year has been blogging. I hope to write even more in 2026! Not because I feel the need to look busy, but because I think it is a good way to both sort out some thoughts as I try to communicate them to you, but also because with the rest of the web filling up with hyperactive content, blogging just feels so…..GOOD. I mean both writing and reading. My RSS reader is full of blogs I read. So expect more blog posts.

One blog post that got a lot of attention from readers was Being your own label in 2025 (is confusing). It is my reflection on some of the things I face as someone who (together with my wife) runs my own label Heart Baby.

I finally cancelled streaming

It was about time. Already back in early 2023 I wrote the blog post How I listen to music that started as an experiment to see what is actually outside Spotify? Since then music streaming platforms have been less and less of my music-listening life.

There are many reasons for it, but outside of the political aspects, I can simply say that they gave me less and less joy. I am not interested in algorithmically curated “mood” playlists. I am not interested in what music “the system” wants me to listen to.

I think this topic deserves its own blog post, but in short I have been listening more to physical media bought at concerts and I have been listening more to the music of my friends and people I meet (online and offline). I buy files that I download and I listen to albums not playlists.

I wrote about one of the ways to discover music on your own terms in the blog post Be Your Own Algorithm in the Search for New Music. It is a great post to check out if you are interested in finding some Norwegian experimental music.

Some other things worth mentioning

I played many gigs including EKKO festival, CODA Oslo International Dance Festival and Øyanatt. Here is a video from one of my audiovisual performances this year.

Live at EKKO festival

I presented #BeYourOwnPlatform at Big tech må vekk (Big tech has gotta go) festival. I will try to make a video presentation in English that I can publish here as well. I ended up joining the Norwegian working group for democratic digitalisation led by Attac as a result.

Photo: Salve J. Nilsen (Sorry I cropped it)

I did a (double) concert for the concept Live music live gaming where one player plays a video game and musicians make a live soundtrack for Oslo flermediale - Nordic Multimedia Poetry Festival.

I played improvised music for slam poetry once a month.

2026: Sustainability and focus on the important things

You’ve gotten to the end of the blog post, congratulations! Your attention span hasn’t been totally fucked up by doomscrolling and short-form content! That is a win in itself I tell you!

This also relates to my goal for 2026 which of course is to focus on the healthy things. I have already quit or said no to multiple projects to both be able to chill a bit, but also to free up more mental capacity for going deeper in my own projects. I have so many ideas. I of course need to finish my hardware-modular-tape-recorder-away-from-the-computer-album but the next one is also going to be a proper BIG project. No real spoilers, but it will involve open hardware and free open source software!

So I will try to not get distracted, beaten down and tired.

I will continue to create, share and inspire.

And go for the long form.

Thanks for reading!

This year I will try to focus on one computer at a time.




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