Trentemoller

Trentemøller – Fixion (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:12 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Electronic, New Wave, Post-Punk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © In My Room

Danish electronic mastermind Anders Trentemøller returns with Fixion, his fourth LP and first since 2013’s guest-heavy outing, Lost. While the producer’s work has always relied on an icy Scandinavian mystique, here Trentemøller scales back a little bit of the density of his last couple of releases in favor of a more minimalist, though often commanding sound. Of the three guest vocalists he employs, two are familiar to the Trentemøller environment. Longtime collaborator Marie Fisker returns to lend her well-suited pipes to a handful of cuts, as does former Giana Factory singer Lisbet Fritze, another Dane with whom Trentemøller has recently worked. The third guest is Jehnny Beth, frontwoman of British post-punk outfit Savages, whose 2016 LP, Adore Life, Trentemøller mixed. Beth’s more forceful vocal approach is put to good use on the new wave-indebted electropop single “River in Me,” which is easily the record’s catchiest track. Elsewhere, things proceed through halls of frosty ambience, blending hard-edged electronic pop with brooding, downtempo dream pop, mixing in plenty of washed-out guitars and moody basslines. “Redefine,” one of the tracks to feature Fisker’s hushed vocals, is another fine example of Trentemøller working his magic in pop subtleties. The Beth-assisted “Complicated” is another highlight, with a dark-hued tone evoking the coldness of Berlin-era Bowie with shades of early Depeche Mode, the latter of whom pegged Trentemøller as their support act in 2013. The shadowy closer, “Where the Shadows Fall,” marks Fritze’s lone contribution and is the most ambient of the vocal tracks, filtered through layers of foggy reverb. As a whole, Fixion is a logical progression for Trentemøller, whose music seems to cinematically expand and contract while remaining true to his chosen bailiwick. ~ Timothy Monger

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Trentemøller – Memoria (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:12:16 minutes | 785 MB | Genre: Electronic, Indietronica, Downtempo
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © In My Room

Memoria is Trentemøller’s sixth full-length studio album since his 2006 debut. While six albums over 16 years may not seem like the most prodigious of outputs, the Danish musician has absolutely taken listeners on some expansive journeys in that time. Ratcheting up the dynamics and textures with each new album, Trentemøller has continued to get bolder and more explorative as his career has evolved. Veering from straightforward electronica to darkwave and indie atmospheres, no two of his albums have sounded exactly alike, but they’ve all been uniquely dedicated to unboxing the potentialities of a certain combination of mood, texture, and instrumentation. Throughout his career there have been nods toward the undeniable influence that shoegaze had on his formative years as a Gen X indie musician, but none—not even the presence of Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell on his previous album, the tense and dark Obverse—have been as explicit and thorough as the overall atmosphere here. Trentemøller’s roots in electronic music and post-punk coalesce with soaring gothic melodrama and the gauzy ethereality of the second wave of shoegaze; Memoria is definitely not as dark and aggressive as Obverse, but is more inchoate, and even a bit romantic. Tracks like “Glow” and “Linger” have echoey guitar lines that sound as if Trentemøller has nicked a hard drive directly from Robin Guthrie’s studio, while the vocals of longtime collaborator Lisbet Fritze evoke the over-echoed breathiness of classic shoegaze vocalists. When Memoria shifts from explicit shoegaziness—as on the electronic pulse of of “Darklands” and “A Summer’s Empty Room” or the M83-meets-Slowdive electro-gaze of “No More Kissing in the Rain”—its downcast, atmospheric shimmer is never lost. The two approaches merge the most successfully on the nefarious swoon of “Swaying Pine Trees” (which sounds like Trentemøller’s bid for an imaginary Twin Peaks soundtrack) and “Linger,” which is all half-climax and sonic spaciousness. The track is a beautiful exercise in extended dynamics and slow-motion collapse, and a perfect close to an album that is both specific in its evocations yet hard to pin down. – Jason Ferguson
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