In an attempt to relax, disconnect and recharge, my wife and I went on a trip to Athens, Greece. I think it worked, because as the days went by we really felt like we “landed” here. Chilling, enjoying the weather, the food, the views, etc.

And after some days my mind started slowly thinking and pondering about my projects. This year I am trying to focus on the important things, to really go where my artistic curiosity and interests lie, and not necessarily where others are telling me I should go.

Live streaming

One of the things that is simply always a positive experience for me, is live streaming on Lislegaard.stream. With more people tuning in each time it really feels like a positive space for audiovisual exploration. So as we were walking around in Athens, listening to the birds I was also thinking about different live streams I could do in the future.

We were on top of Acropolis when my wife said:

Just think, maybe Plato and Aristotle walked here pondering great thoughts, and now here we are walking in the same place.

To which I answered:

Yeah, it’s cool to think about, but I think I might be the first person to walk here thinking about different audio solutions for off-grid live streaming and the duration of messages on chat overlay on Owncast.

Then my studio partner Jørgen sent me a replay of his studio live stream back in Oslo.

So I decided that it would be super fun to do an impromptu live stream right here in Greece. I didn’t have much with me, but I DID have a laptop, headset, and phone with 5G. I set up a scene in OBS streaming software, checked that video and network sharing via cable from my phone worked and packed my little gear and went out.

Finding a remote location for streaming

Acropolis itself was too crowded with tourists of course, but we did walk up another mountain a few days before, with a beautiful view: Nymph Hill, including the tower of the muses. Can’t get a more inspirational place than the actual place of the muses, can you? So after looking around a bit, we found the PERFECT spot!

I did a quick speed test, and it turns out the upload speed on the mountain was excellent!

Going live

Then I prepared the server, opened an empty project in Ableton Live, pressed live in OBS and shared the stream to the Lislegaard.stream email list and on the Fediverse.

Here are some excerpts from the stream, or you can watch the whole thing in the live-stream archive.

It was fun! 34 people watched live! More remote streams in the future!

• Watch the stream in the live-stream archive
• Read more about Lislegaard.stream here

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• Get it on Bandcamp
• Get it on Mirlo (includes the whole concert as one file)

Pay-what-you-want.

The Bootleg series is where I publish unpolished, raw live recordings alongside the official albums. Today I am happy to share a new recording in the series with you!

In April 2025 I played in Trondheim at the festival Elektrosamfundet. I was booked to play at 1 in the morning. The last thing I told my studiopartner Jørgen was that:

Well, it should be pretty hard to lose a suitcase from Oslo to Trondheim and not be able to get it there before 1 in the night, but I do as I always do: When possible, bring enough gear in the hand luggage that you would be able to do the gig even if your suitcase doesn’t show up.

This turned out to be critical!

Because what do you think happened? Well, no suitcase!

Missing were a modular synth, my Organelle (that I use for granular live sampling), audio interface, microphone (for talking). I had the most important part of the setup in my hand luggage: laptop, controllers and in-ear monitors.

So I knew that I would be able to do the gig with just software, but I would have to think differently than I had planned, change the setlist and also see if I could substitute some of my hardware with software. Luckily my whole setup is very modular, and I had time at the venue.

So this recording captures this pretty special gig. I hope you like it!

• Get it on Bandcamp
• Get it on Mirlo (includes the whole concert as one file)

Pay-what-you-want.

You can read more about this concert in the second part of this blog post.

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Synchronicity is a funny thing. This morning before our rehearsal I was woken up by the civil defense air raid siren being blasted in Oslo by mistake. And then when listening back to this recording it is hard to not hear how similar my synthesizer sounds. I can’t remember thinking about it while playing, but I guess it was still there in the back of my mind somehow.

I also love how there are still new sounds to be explored within my setup for Øy. Whenever we don’t play for a while I start thinking that I should go back to programming some new Max patches to give me some new features, but then we have rehearsal and I keep discovering new ways of playing it.

What happens in this recording?

So after the siren in the beginning we move into a distorted industrial territory. Here Janne’s tap sound is sent through a very distorted chain of effects where I also send in different instruments that start “fighting” over the audio space. Because everything is so distorted there is only room for one sound at a time, so they keep pushing back and forth. Are we going to hear the bass, the processed tap sound, or feedback? Sometimes we hear Janne’s clear tap sound, while other times it is mostly her sounds in between the actual taps. The scraping across the wood and her leather shoes stretching. We also hear some Roland-style kick drums, and the siren turns into a more melodic instrument after a while.

Then after this fight we go into the beautiful synthesizer part. Here so many things are happening on the same instrument that I will make a list of what I remember. I have made a custom controller for Madrona Labs Aalto:

• I am playing some notes live on my LinnStrument controller. We hear both the carrier oscillator and the modulation oscillator
• I have programmed a sequence of notes in a SH-101-style pattern sequencer. Whenever Janne taps hard enough it triggers the next note. Sometimes intercepted by my live playing.
• Envelope follower on FM modulation, filter envelope amount and modulation frequency (I think), following Janne’s sound.
• I keep varying noise->mod oscillator, FM, mod frequency (both in octaves and “free”)
• There is a loooong delay that gives it a sort of Frippertronics-style complementary synth

I thiiiink that is all parameters on the Aalto synth. There is also some granular noise.

• Øy on Bandcamp
• Øy on Mirlo
• Øy on Tiger

<- previous clip

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• 720p in the video library
• 4k on YouTube

In November I played at Ekko Festival in Bergen, and here is the full video recording of that set.

Ekko has been running since 2003 and has hosted artists like Autechre, Biosphere, Floating Points, Holly Herndon, and Jon Hopkins. It is definitely one of Norway’s coolest festivals.

The concert

The venue was dark and filled with haze, creating a really nice atmosphere. In addition to my visuals you can see we had atmospheric stage lights. I am always a bit scared that the person running the lights will “not get it”, but this time I was super happy with the result! Great job!

The set included (as they often do) some new improvised elements and I was really happy about that. The granular chords you can hear in the video on the top of this blog post was something I discovered during my rehearsals before this concert and it was cool to explore this further live on stage. I was a bit tired (like I wrote about in my 2025 in review post), but I think the concert as a whole was a great success! Judging by the response afterwards, people really connected with it.

Get the audio recording

If you want to follow me and get the audio as a free download, sign up for my newsletter or RSS feed. You’ll get links to download (MP3/FLAC) or stream the recording.

• Subscribe HERE

I made a proper mini documentary about the trip

If you didn’t see this already I also made a documentary about the festival set, including traveling to Bergen with train and watching some other fantastic artists.

• Watch the documentary HERE

The links to the full concert video

• 720p in the video library
• 4k on YouTube

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Introducing my new video series Field Logs!

I have for a long time now been thinking about (and also experimented with) how I want to create mini documentaries of my adventures that try to move away from the fast-paced “YouTube style” and communicate in a different language.

It is not like there is none of this already, but a quick scan through YouTube gives you a few very distinctive styles. You’ve got the vlogger / influencer style, the silent study-with-me-influenced quiet-vlogs, the meme-like-fun-times-synthfluencers, the high energy overly edited and possibly staged videos, and of course the new (possibly forced) “authentic” style.

I have watched many good videos in all of these styles, and I applaud anyone who is actually trying to share their love of music, document their scene, show life on the road etc., but I want to go a bit of a different route. It will probably take a few episodes before I feel like I have really landed the format, but I am very happy with the first episode!

And after a lovely watch party premiere over at Lislegaard.stream I have now published the first episode. I don’t know when the second one will happen as I am trying to go for quality over quantity here, but if you like it, please let me know :)

FIELD LOG #01: Ekko Festival, Oslo to Bergen by Train

• Video library
• YouTube

Join me on a trip to Bergen to perform at EKKO, one of Norway’s most legendary festivals for experimental electronic music.

In this episode

• Preparing and rehearsing the live set via live streams.
• The scenic train ride from Oslo to Bergen (a sci-fi landscape!).
• Checking out sets by artists like James Holden (and his custom “Benny” software) and Om Unit.
• Bergen rain. Proper Bergen weather…

Mentioned in this video:

• EKKO Festival
• Yara Asmar
• Jules Reidy
• James Holden’s “Benny” patch
• James Holden and Wacław Zimpel
• Om Unit - Acid Dub Studies

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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.

• Get the tape + download at Tiger or Bandcamp.
• Get the download at Bandcamp or Mirlo.

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.

• Watch the video here.
• Watch the videos from the album here.

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:

• Live streamed premiere watch party on Lislegaard.stream.
• Publish the video in the video library.
• Share on the blog, via RSS, the newsletter and on Mastodon.

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.

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.

• Read the blog post here.
• Follow Heart Baby via our newsletter and on Mastodon.

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.

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.

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!

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It is the time of year where everyone is posting their Spotify Wrapped numbers. And I get it. Big numbers looks good right? In a system where most of your connection to the people listening to your music has been stripped away from you the only thing you got is this emotionally manipulative Wrapped. I don’t blame anyone for doing it, and I don’t want to shame anyone (other than the tech oligarchs of course). No shame on the artists who spend time and energy creating music, the most magical thing and just want to celebrate that somebody listened to it. No shame to the listeners who just want to say “thank you for the music” to their favorite artists. That is fantastic! So I understand why people post their Wrapped.

But I am not going to do that. Instead I posted this message to the Fediverse the other day and thought it deserved a repost here on the blog:

No Wrapped here. Just gratitude.

My numbers might not break the internet, but the connection is real.

In a world of fast consumption, I am incredibly grateful for the listeners who take the time to slow down and dive deep.

Thanks to all the deep listeners, the diving minds, and the people who buy directly and support independent music.

A special thanks to everyone who engages with the process, not just the product, who shows up to the streams, reads the blog, and replies to the newsletter.

My gift for you

And I mean it! So I thought about if I had something I could give back to the people who care. And I found something. Because I really value the direct link between my studio and your ears I have prepared an exclusive download for anyone who joins my newsletter (Edit 27.12.2025: Or subscribes to this RSS feed). This download is a bootleg recording of my concert at the fantastic Ekko festival in Bergen that I performed 01.11.2025. More info about the recording itself + some images from the trip in the download.

• Join the newsletter
• Download MP3
• Download FLAC
• Stream on secret Faircamp

Shoutout to Tore Ivar who I had a very nice conversation with after the Bergen concert. He asked if I was planning to upload this set anywhere, and I told him that I didn’t know, but I could send it to him if he wanted. Well you are all Tore Ivars tonight, hehe!

Best,

Kristoffer

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This Wednesday my fantastic wife and partner in life, music and all that is good released her third solo album in three years! What an achievement!

Since we run our own record label I am thinking about how we can share the music, spread it, promote it, call it what you want. Because the goal of releasing music to the public is of course to have someone listen to it. But releasing music and actually having people notice and listen is very confusing. So I thought I would write some reflections on just that. The process, some questions and challenges of a small record label.

The backstory of our label

Let’s start with the backstory of how and why we have a label in the first place. Vilde and I have a duo together called Sgrow. Between 2013 and 2019 we released 3 albums and an EP of original music + some remixes. Our first EP was released by one record label and two albums by a second label. After the second album we were told the label would end so to keep the music online we would need to have a new label be in charge. We figured out the easiest way to move forward would be to register our own label and continue the deal with the distribution.

So now we have a label

So it was kind of random that we ended up with our own label, but what it does is gives us the possibility to release whatever we want, whenever we want. For me it is not a goal or wish in itself to do everything ourselves, but at least we are not dependent on convincing anyone, or work to other people’s schedule and approval.

It does feel sometimes like the whole world is turning into either giga-corporations or automated systems (run by giga-corporations), both without any real person you have a relationship to. And it is no different in the music world. If you look at a platform like Spotify, even though there are lots of music from independent labels there, I am pretty confident that the two biggest piles of music are either released by pretty big (probably major) labels or they are released by no-label-necessary systems like Distrokid and CD Baby. These are websites where you make a user, upload your music and they distribute and collect royalties for you. The major labels own about 1/5 of Spotify the company with whatever influence and motives that gives them, and sites like Distrokid are flooding the platform with ai and stock music, and then mistakenly remove music from real musicians without any warning. This is well documented. The artist Karra recently got a lot of attention for her video I invested $100,000 to create my album & Spotify deleted it 😳.

So to have our own little small thing rather than these huge systems is something I like! This also led us last year to change from our original distributor, to team up with smaller, more personal distributor Diger Distro. They are really nice and have a record store in the middle of Oslo where I can go say hi. They are quick to answer any questions on email and I don’t feel like I am less worthy even if…let’s just say we are not their most sold label. So I am really happy to work with them. I wrote a blog post about starting this collaboration here.

We called the label Heart Baby

One difficult thing with every project is of course picking a name! We ended up going with Heart Baby which is a semi-direct translation of the Norwegian expression hjertebarn (hjerte = heart, barn = child). The expression means a mother’s / father’s favorite child, which of course is something you are not allowed to pick. Also it is funny how tracks and albums are often called babies. When you release your album you often say that this is a baby you have been making.

The label exists mostly to release our own projects. So for now the roster is:

• Kristoffer Lislegaard - my solo project
• Øy - my collaboration with tap dancer Janne Eraker where we use the tap dance to control my electronics
• Sgrow - my and Vilde’s duo together. Experimental electronica meets more pop song structure
• ILKAMA - Vilde’s solo project

Digital distribution is weird in 2025

The physical side of our label is not too complicated. The Øy vinyl and Kristoffer Lislegaard tapes are sold at Tiger record store which also includes worldwide shipping. We also sell them on the Bandcamp profiles of Øy and Kristoffer Lislegaard, as well as in the merch booth at concerts of course.

I am considering pressing my next solo album on vinyl. If I do so I think I will try to get the record into other physical record stores as well for people to discover, but other than that the physical distribution is small and easy to understand.

Digital is a different story full of questions and actually quite a lot of ethical dilemmas. Should you follow the industry standard, go full underground DIY or something in the middle? Currently Diger Distro can distribute our music to all the mainstream platforms, and we also upload it to Bandcamp and Mirlo.

I actually have way too many thoughts on the topic of digital music distribution to fit in this blog post, but a few are:

• There are well documented problems with Spotify and some artists are actively boycotting it
• All the big streaming platforms are very problematic in one way or another
• Almost all people I talk to almost only know how to listen to music on one of the big streaming platforms (probably Spotify)
• People have content fatigue and their digital devices are a stream of corporate noise
• To get nominated for Spellemann (the Norwegian Grammy award) you actually have to be on either Spotify or Soundcloud

As you can see, there is a big system rigged to sort of force people into going by the rules. I am VERY curious how this will develop in the coming years.

The alternatives to the mainstream

But then there is also the community of people working to create alternative solutions. Our whole catalog of music is on Bandcamp and Mirlo. There are also others, but right now this is our main focus. And even here there are some problems. From an ethical standpoint I think Mirlo and other open source co-op-owned similar alternatives are the only ones that checks all the boxes. But very few people know about them, know how to use them, or even listen to artists distributed there, so it feels very alien.

But at the same time I don’t think that is a reason to not be there. So we are on Mirlo. We want to be available for the cool people who are at the best place and be a part of this movement towards music-and-artists-focused platforms. You can check out our label account here.

Then there is Bandcamp. All the artist projects have their own Bandcamp page. Bandcamp is a sort of middle point between Spotify and Mirlo. The service itself is pretty fantastic. You can listen to an album maybe like 5 times before it starts telling you that it is time to buy the album. When you buy it you can either stream it via the website or their app, or you can download the files in your preferred format and listen to them however you want. Want to host your personal streaming site with Navidrome? No problem, you have the files. Want to go off grid with a solar powered mp3 player? No problem, you have the files. Want to simply put them on your phone and listen without any subscription? No problem, you have the files.

So the problem with Bandcamp is the corporate structure behind. A quick search on the internet will let you know how Epic Games bought them to (probably) get a better deal for addons to the games in the Apple app store, before selling them to Songtradr and sacking everyone leading their union. You know, some good old union bustin’. Not great.

But what can you do right? Bandcamp right now is big enough that a decent amount of people that know how to use it, you can do everything from your phone, and they have been going for so long that many DJs and music lovers have a huge collection of music bought on Bandcamp. Again, their product is great, the company behind it has problems. Sounds like most tech companies if you ask me.

So we use Bandcamp.

Releasing music (to who?) in 2025

Ok so now we have the music on all these digital platforms. What do we do now?

I think this part is getting more and more confusing. It seems like at some point we had a sort of clear system around promoting or I guess just keeping people informed about new (digital) music. Things like newspapers, magazines, blogs, local tv and radio etc. were the old way, then everything shifted to social media. People could follow your page and they would get your updates. It was suddenly so easy to share behind the scenes, context and updates directly to the people who had said they were interested. Then slowly we had the massive enshittification of all these platforms we now were so reliant on and now it seems like it is impossible to reach anyone. The social media feeds are FILLED with ads, spam and short form videos of people I don’t want to follow. It has changed from a network of connected people to a slot machine of strangers’ videos.

So what do we do now? I don’t know really. My own music I have been sharing in electronic music forums, but of course sometimes I am afraid that I only manage to focus on a little bubble of other musicians. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it would be nice to be able to walk outside of these bubbles sometimes. Maybe one needs to join more bubbles? Who are we releasing music for? And what music are people able to find? Is it only major label artists and AI slop?

I have also been enjoying the Fediverse, blogs (RSS) and newsletters and this has been a nice way for me personally to find new music, but of course there are certain genres that are more present in these communities than others.

I would actually love to hear how other people are navigating this. Both on a practical, but also on a sort of emotional level. It is easy to feel like “the whole world” is happening without us, while we do our thing in our little corner without reaching people. Maybe it is more a mindset / expectations thing rather than a real problem, I don’t know.

We set up a dedicated newsletter for the label that sends out an email when there is a new release. You can subscribe to that here.

Giving context and depth

One thing we have started doing for this newsletter and the website is to write some longer artist statements for each release. As I as much as possible opt out of the surveillance capitalism I have no idea how many actually read these statements, but I think they are interesting, not only as a statement right now, but also as a sort of library of thoughts around our releases. In a time where most people listen to music on platforms where you have almost no info on an album it seems like a nice way to be able to provide something extra to the listener.

Rounding off

I think that’s enough for this post. I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this. Either from the artist / label side, or from a music listener side. Reply via email or tag me in the Fediverse.

I will end this with a list of links, with the new ILKAMA album and the artist statement being the top links. I hope you check it out, it is a really really good album.

Thanks for reading!

List of links for you

• Artist statement from ILKAMA
• ILKAMA’s new album Superspeed on Bandcamp, Mirlo and Streaming
• Heart Baby’s newsletter
• Heart Baby’s Mastodon

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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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• Watch the whole concert in the video library.
• Watch the whole concert on YouTube.

I recently played a concert in Oslo. The occasion (not that you need an occasion to play a concert) was that my friend Elif Yalvaç was visiting Norway and wanted to know if it would be possible to organize a concert while she was here.

Organizing the team and the venue

I asked Jørgen Skjulstad aka Dj Sissyfus to be both behind the regular mixing table, and behind the DJ decks, and we ended up promoting the night as Elif Yalvaç // Kristoffer Lislegaard // DJ Sissyfus.

I booked the venue MIR which is connected to my studio collective Grünerløkka Lufthavn and “booked” my lovely wife Vilde❤️ to sell tickets at the door. So with a great team and venue booked we were ready to play.

Elif started

We decided Elif should start. She played a great set featuring a combination of improvised guitar and her new more abstract rave (!!) material from her upcoming album. The album is still work in progress so I will let her save that for later, but here is a little clip from her guitar playing at the start of the concert:

Then I played

Before it was my turn I spent some time calming down a bit. It can be super stressful to organize an event like this because you have to wear so many hats. All communication and questions go through you, I had to rig up and test my stuff, make sure the video projector worked, hang up white and semi-transparent fabric etc. But I managed to calm down by eating a banana and some nuts, and drink some Norwegian sparkling water.

Then it was my turn to play. The set went very well and I was super happy about it. Here is a short clip, but the full concert video is linked at the top and at the end of this blog post.

Then we played together

After my set we did a short duo set. It was a nice way to round off the event. I felt very tired after everything, but it was very nice to play together. It had been almost 6 years since we were on stage together, so it felt very nice to reconnect!

DJ Sissyfus the greatest DJ

Before, between and after the sets Jørgen DJ’ed. He always picks great tunes and is a true joy to listen to. He played mostly ambient and experimental electronica tunes, but it started building up, and in the end after everyone had left, we had our own little dance party to end the night.

The full video recording of my set

All in all it was a great night and I am super happy about it. I have uploaded my full set to my Hyper8 video site. I have normalized the audio and blended in some of the camera audio, but other than that there is no audio polish. I hope you enjoy it. Tell your friends about it.

• Watch the whole concert in the video library.
• Watch the whole concert on YouTube.

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Direct link to the video file.

Watch the whole concert here.

Radio Free Fedi Fest is a streaming festival happening over at https://party.radiofreefedi.net/ through the month of July. For those of you who don’t know, Radio Free Fedi was an internet radio station focusing on music from the Fediverse. It was a one-person-operation so unfortunately they shut down the station, but there has been a few pop-up events to keep the community happy. And this festival is one of those.

So yesterday I played. My original plan was to use my battery powered streaming rig and have a low-key outdoors stream, but the weather was not on my side. So instead I did an indoor-AV-green-screen-stream playing tracks from Subsupra.

Technical problems

The playing went great but my streaming box was struggling so the beginning got a bit delayed. It was reasonably hot in the studio, but not summer-crazy-hot, but my Blackmagic Atem Mini Extreme Iso (jeez what a name) was not having it. I think they put too many features in a little box, and when you turn it all on at the same time the cpu gets too hot. I have two things I want to try to fix this. One is getting some fans to cool off the box, and the other one is to use a separate box for the actual streaming.

I am lucky enough to have both a big box and a small box. So I could try using the big box for all the switching, green screen keying, monitoring etc. Then I could run one hdmi cable from the big to the small box and use the small box just for the actual streaming. Let’s see how it goes.

Yesterday I had to think quickly so at the last second I booted up OBS on an old laptop that I was just planning to use as a screen and used that to stream. That was OK but not perfect. The quality was lower than I wanted to, and at one point it just shut off. The battery is broken so I think even with the power connected it had a moment of too little power. Luckily it only went to sleep mode, so we were back very quickly.

Good music and great vibes in the chat

Luckily even if the video quality was less than I hoped for the audio worked out nicely so people could hear the music well. And as always the positive energy in the chat was fantastic. I had the chat loaded up on my phone on stage so I could see the comments coming in in real time. I definitely want to do more streaming, something I say every time because it is always such a great experience. Also I am having so much fun with my live set these days, blending composed tracks with improvisation and remixing.

Watch the replay and have a nice summer

I have uploaded the full concert to my Hyper8-powered video page so you can watch and listen in even better quality. I wish you all a nice summer!

Much love, Kristoffer

Watch the whole concert here.

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Introducing stream recordings

Whenever I do a live stream, there is almost always someone who asks “Oh no, I missed it! Can I watch the recording?”

Well now you can! Because I am introducing stream recordings to my Hyper8 based video site. Some streams will be super special “one night only”, but some will be uploaded so you can have a peek after.

Watch two uploaded stream recordings HERE and more will come in the future. They might not stay around forever btw.

And check out the rest of my videos HERE.

You can subscribe to the videos via rss HERE.

Battery powered streaming rig

Talking about streaming, I will be doing more!

Radio Free Fedi is arranging Radio Free Fedi Fest in July. So people from all over the Fediverse will be streaming during July. It is happening HERE. Scroll down to read more about it.

So getting ready for summer streaming I put together a mini streaming rig.

The rig is small, battery powered and has excellent audio quality, which is of course the most important part for a music streamer.

So now I am ready to stream in the most remote outdoor locations (as long as there is decent cell signal of course), so that should be fun! Could be the perfect soundtrack to your beach trip via headphones or bluetooth speaker, or maybe your car trip or work if you are not on holiday.

Follow Lislegaard.stream via email, fedi or discord by following the buttons on the site to catch a stream.

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It was originally released in 2017 and is still getting regular updates, and in 2022 they even came out with a new screen for it. So the new model has the new screen, but existing users can retrofit the screen to their unit. In 2023 they even decided to open source the firmware so now the community is implementing new features.

Are you a synthfluencer now?

Some of you may know that I have a bit of a bad relationship with, and many thoughts on, how the modern media landscape like YouTube is pushing people into becoming synthfluencers, hyping up new products to drive over-consumption etc. To be clear I mean no shame to the individual people (seriously!), but I don’t love how the “system” is pushing us in this direction.

I even made a video about it.

BUT on the other hand maybe it’s okay to hype a small company that sells one product and just tries to get the absolute max out of that product. Much closer to how I would love to see the rest of the electronic music field go.

So maybe it’s okay to synthfluence a little bit when you feel like you can back the company. Too many thoughts on the topic for this post. Maybe I need to write a dedicated post on products vs techniques.

Anyway! I told my friend and studio partner Jørgen that I had ordered a Deluge, and he is actually one of the people who have been using his since 2017. His response was that we should make a video where we see how long it would take me, from opening the package to getting sound out of the Deluge.

The video

So that is what we did. Here is the video of me trying out the Deluge for the very first time! I hope you enjoy it, I think it is much more about two friends having fun in the studio than trying to advertise a product.

Originally posted in 1080p on Jørgen’s YouTube channel. Go over there and give him a comment, or on his Mastodon post.

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Part 1: Oslo - Boksenfestivalen

We will start off in Oslo, where I played at Boksenfestivalen. Boksenfestivalen is the festival of the great (secret) venue Boksen aka Hotbox. A dirty DIY space where there are interesting concerts and club nights. The slogan for the festival seems to be Unsafe art / Safe conditions, which I think is just what we need.

I had been talking to Morten about playing at Boksen for the longest time, but it always clashed with something else, so it was really cool to finally play solo at Boksen! Last year I played with Øy and it was a very nice experience.

The festival ran for four days and Morten asked if I wanted to curate the first night, what an honor! So here are the people I booked.

ILKAMA

First up was ILKAMA. Lovely ambient set full of the sweetest of sounds! So dynamic and well-crafted sounds, ear candy!

Bernt Isak Wærstad

Then it was Bernt Isak Wærstad performing together with a newly trained ai bot. Moving from ILKAMA’s utopia we were now in the deep dark doom. Bernt Isak had some problems with one of his controllers, but didn’t let it get to him, and I wouldn't have known if he hadn't told me. He delivered a bombastic and dramatic set. Very nice!

LNUA

Moving over to LNUA with Malin Olsen on visuals we were now in the mood of a sci-fi future. Very nice combination of music and visuals.

Kristoffer Lislegaard

Then it was my turn. I am happy with my set and had a good time. There was a very enthusiastic guy from Seattle who went on the side of the stage to film so I got some nice shots.

I have to admit I was a bit surprised when he walked onto the stage, but he was cool. Bought one of each of my three tapes as well. Thanks dude!

(You can hear his reaction at the end of the video)

Part 2: Trondheim - Elektrosamfundet

Then it was time to go to Trondheim to play at Elektrosamfundet, a festival with a lot of great artists on the program.

Most of it was quite dance oriented so I have to admit that when I saw that my slot was 01:00-02:00 I was a bit nervous. Was this sort of a headliner slot, or was it more of a nachspiel calm down slot?

I made a plan for a setlist and decided to try to go for a powerful start to get people hooked, have a calm ambient part in the middle, and end with a bang.

Samfundet is also quite an interesting place. It is the big student house in Trondheim and is all ran by A LOT of student groups, including the group responsible for video production. So this time it was the students that were doing the visuals instead of myself. I thought that even though it would have been nice to bring my own visuals I wanted to play ball and be a team player.

So I packed up my gear and got on the plane.

The last thing I said to my studio partner Jørgen before I left was:

Well, it should be pretty hard to lose a suitcase from Oslo to Trondheim and not be able to get it there before 1 in the night, but I do as I always do: When possible, bring enough gear in the hand luggage that you would be able to do the gig even if your suitcase doesn’t show up.

This turned out to be critical!

Because what do you think happened? Well, no suitcase! Here is a short summary of the next hours:

• No suitcase on the belt.
• Went to talk to the people responsible, met a note that said “Sorry nobody is working today. Scan this QR-code”
• Scanned the QR, filled out the form.

• The internet said they found my suitcase and put it on the next flight and said they would bring it to my hotel.
• Radio silence.

SO HOW DID THE GIG GO? DID YOU CANCEL?!!?

Luckily as I told Jørgen I brought the most important gear in the hand luggage! PUH! So in my hand luggage I had my laptop, controllers and in ear monitors. In the suitcase I had a modular synth, my Organelle (that I use for granular live sampling), audio interface, microphone (for talking), etc. etc.

So I knew that I would be able to do the gig with just software, but I would have to think differently than I did in Oslo, change the setlist and also see if I could substitute some of my hardware with software. Luckily my whole setup is very modular, and I had time at the venue. I plugged into the DJ-mixer on stage, plugged my in ears to the headphone output on the mixer, borrowed a microphone and plugged that into the mixer and used Madrona Labs Aalto software synthesizer instead of my modular.

So everything went great! I had to think and improvise on stage, but that is of course something I like to do so it actually turned into a very fun gig for me. People also enjoyed it. Most people lay down on the floor and looked up on the visuals in the ceiling. There was some talking at the beginning of the gig, but after a while people just got quiet and tuned into the music and the visuals.

When I was done and after applauding, people told me (and messaged me) that it was totally magical for them, that they had been on a journey and that they had never experienced anything like it. So this felt especially good after all this time of wondering how this gig was going to go.

Good times! Yay!

Video clips from the festival

Here are some clips from the night!

Lárus

First up was Lárus. He was actually allowed to do his own visuals (hehe) so he brought Ola Lysgaard to perform as a live AV duo. This set totally blew me away and I keep on telling him that he has to release an album now! Super eclectic, from danceable via experimental to ambient. Constantly surprising.

Sorry for the video compression Lysgaard!

Patås

Then it was time for Patås. I remember he once told me that he really likes things to be playful (inspiration for the name of his label Lek I guess, which means play in norwegian) and this is exactly the mood he brought!

Moving his machines and riffs seamlessly between breakbeats, acid and techno it is music you are unable not to dance and smile to. Good shit as we say! I was a bit bummed that I didn’t get to see him when he performed in Oslo not too long ago so this was a great treat!

Kristoffer Lislegaard

The clock turned 01:00 and it was time for my set.

I didn’t manage to document much. I was tired from thinking about my suitcase which also had both my camera stands so I decided to focus on playing. But here are a few lofi clips from pretty early in the concert.

Heading home and Final words

The next day my suitcase showed up just in time for me to take a shower, change clothes (located in the suitcase) and head back to Oslo.

So my big tip for all traveling musicians: If you can, bring enough gear in your hand luggage that you will be able to do the gig if this is all you got!

Thanks for reading!

Shoutout and thanks for good hangouts to Lárus, Patås, Kim Dürbeck, Haider and Ola Lysgaard. Also thanks to the guy who helped us find the exit from hyblene at Samfundet and the guy working in the hotel chatting with us at 4 in the morning :)

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As I wrote in my previous blog post I decided I wanted to release my Autechre opening set both as a video and as a live album.

And today is the release of the album! Hurray!!

I have printed some cassettes and they also come with downloads. So no matter where you buy it, you will get both the cassette version and the digital version. As always the best place to order from is my local Tiger Record store, which have worldwide shipping and are my friends instead of a faceless giga corporation :)

If you want to just listen you can stream the album on my Faircamp, or search for it on your favorite streaming platform. As always all kinds of support is greatly appreciated ❤️!!

Links to the album

• Tiger Record store - Tape + download
• Bandcamp - Tape + download / download
• Mirlo - Download
• Faircamp - Stream

Video of me showing the tape

Here is a little clip of me showing the tape at Tiger Record store. With subtitles for non-Norwegians.

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I opened for Autechre

30.09.2024 I opened for the legendary duo Autechre at Sentrum Scene in Oslo.

To really celebrate this milestone I decided I wanted to release the concert as a live album and live video.

The video is out today, and the album is corrently on pre-order, with scheduled release 22.04.2025.

Hope you enjoy it!

The video

• 1080p on my video site
• 4k on Youtube

Special thanks to everyone who sent me their phone videos, it truly made the video so much nicer! ❤️

The live album is on pre-order - release 22.4

I will also release the concert as a live album.

I have printed some cassettes and they also come with downloads. The album is currently on pre-order, but if you order a tape from Tiger I will send you a download code to Bandcamp or Mirlo today.

Full instructions for pre order here.

A couple of snapshots

What a lovely evening! I will come back with part 2 when the album version is out.

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• 1080p on /video
• 1080p on Youtube

07.02.2025 it was exactly 5 years since Øy’s first gig as a duo. We decided to celebrate this by doing a concert in Tiger Record store (where you can buy our vinyl) and also a livestreamed talk show / watch party.

Since it was a special day, I also decided I should try to document it, so I made a vlog so you can follow along. I to have say I am particularly proud to finally have done a proper vlog where I talk to the camera while walking out on the street like a crazy person / corporate influencer, but of course on a more ethical mission.

I don’t know if you have ever tried, but walking around talking to a camera is an extremely weird situation where it is very easy to become too shy. BUT as I said, I was on a mission to document and spread the word of experimental electronic music, so I managed to get over the awkwardness. Success!

• Bandcamp
• Tiger Record store
• Mirlo

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A welcome gift

Here is a free download of my concert at Ekko festival in Bergen, one of Norway's coolest festivals for experimental electronic music.

Download MP3 or download FLAC.

In the download you will also find a pdf.

Stream it

If you do not want to download anything (e.g. if you are on your phone right now) I have set up a secret streaming page for the recording here.

Let me know if you like it!

What you will get here

The feed will include the full content of my newest 10-15 blog posts. To browse the full archive of posts (there are some gems in there) you can do so here.

I have made sure the blog posts works in “reader mode” on web browsers if that is something of importance for you.

I also have a newsletter. It it not toooo different from following the RSS feed, but it has a bit more personal instros and context around the blog posts, concert and (most) live stream announcements etc.

You can follow the newsletter here.

I also have a dedicated newsletter where I send out an email every time I start a live stream over at Owncast based Lislegaard.stream.

You can sign up for that here.

I realize it is a bit fragmented, but it is an attempt at giving some agency to you in what you whant to get notified about.

Thank you for being interested.

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