The morgenseiten of Katharsisdrill 20 - boxes
I just bought a music album on Bandcamp by the band called Myrkur, a project created by the Danish musician Amalie Bruun. I had seen her singing in the nature in some short incredibly beautiful clips where she just sings traditionals, mediaeval ballads, and Scandinavian folk tunes.
I am still very much in doubt about what I think of her album, but that doesn't really matter here. It is something else I want to talk about. Try listening to this: Amalie Bruun made a pop album before her Myrkur project. Here's one of her pop songs.
And just to compare...
So we seems to have an artist that have a very eclectic oeuvre. (No wonder she fascinates me :) I looked around to see if it was some clever A&R guy that had invented her but she is really in control of her own career. It is simply a talented and original artist that has a very broad interest in music including Scandinavian Black Metal. There is something completely logical and connected about how she has chosen music in this video.
While trying to understand a bit of what was going on I suddenly dropped into a rather stupid discussion. It seems some Black Metal fans hate her, really hate her. I can not hate anybody for making music - there was a time when I could despise bad artists with success, but that is really just youthful righteousness gone bad. But this is not the case here anyway. It seems that what these guys (yes, guys) are concerned about is the holy border of Black Metal. So now I can despise! These guys are not artists, but fans that want other's creation to be their little isolated kingdom. Myrkur/Amalie is by calling her music Black Metal dragging the genre in a completely different direction, no doubt. And her old pop promotion fashion video seems to be a problem too :)
But trying to make other people's art fit your box is definitely not to my liking. It is spiritual poverty, that's what it is. And then it gets worse.
Try to read this: Of Course Crybaby Black Metal Fans Are Sending Death Threats to Myrkur
I can add nothing to the article - I think the author is very clear and concise. Instead I will mention @roused who in the comments below this fine post explains why he doesn't want to be a critic. That is the attitude I share. Why grab an axe and try to chop down artworks to fit your box, when you can learn more, open up for the unexpected... get a bit wiser maybe? Or just move on to better things.
And talking about axes - Myrkur's Youtube profile is called Myrkur Øksemorder which means Myrkur Axe Murderer :) It is a funny thing for me that all texts are in my own language.
If you want to see how different critics can be :)
My friend @shortcut has started to write some posts every morning - #morgenseiten he calls it - morning-pages. Here is his explanation of the project:
It goes like this: you shall each morning write from the soul, anything going through your head.
He writes a lot more, but this is the essence :) (Read his first morgenseiten post here)
I have decided to try the same. I write from the top of my head every morning or late morning if I have been sleeping late. I only correct typos and make a headline afterwards. Else everything is left as written. Expect some of it to sound like stage directions.
Funny, this morning before reading this I was thinking how remarkably diverse your taste in music is: classical, punk, rap, jazz (all different shades), blues, heavy metal, experimental...
And then you present someone who shares some of your diverse musical interests.
You could almost wonder if she is to music what Andy Kaufman was to comedy and entertainment? Could this be an elaborate form of performance art?
Another interesting insight into your musical world, thanks :-)
I have a friend, a musician, who once sat down at a party in our house to do the classic "show me your record collection, and I will tell you..." He was baffled.
It is not only in music I have this unruly interest in everything. I have had people who when they saw my comic was surprised that I could draw things that was recognisable. My former career suffered from it actually - art dealers want style, not erratic style shifts - so I have a certain reservation towards the glory of it. Musically I do not see it as a problem and I go down any road that seems interesting these days. Even things I do not really like.
But with Myrkur it is a bit different. I had to look up Andy Kaufmann, a fascinating comedian, but I am rather sure this girl is simply mixing things up to make music not performance art (I wouldn't be interested in it if she did some meta on black metal). I know girls who are into metal and I think that many of them, including Myrkur is there for the romanticism. Black Metal is simply a place for new, new romanticism just like punk and glam was for the old new romanticism. She says in an interview that she had to call her music something and then it became black metal as she admired the satanic Scandinavian metal scene.
What first attracted me was the fusion - that she was sampling so many things and genres. I am interested in the artists and their biography when I reach them from their art. When their art points at something that I personally are struggling with. Otto Dix was one such artist. I never found his things beautiful or appealing, but I recognised a soulmate. An ugly soulmate that made ugly, confusing things like myself:) The same with Picabia. I understand myself better when I confront myself with their biography, writings and other sources to them as persons.
As for Myrkur it is the same. I do long for some more metal in her music like all the rest of the metal heads. I am in doubt about if her pop instinct mix well with the very, very odd black metal pathos (that I also have my doubts about, but still return to because it fascinates me). The feminine voice and heavy metal is a difficult combination and has been so for me since I heard it the first time on a Paradise Lost LP. I am not at all sure I appreciate her music, but I am not sure and that is why I bought it. Music can sometimes be a very male experience for me, and I yearn to understand these feminine soundscapes and longings.
I bet your music collection baffled your friend ;-) I've often said I can find something I like in every genre, if it comes from a true place. But that's probably an exaggeration, there you have an advantage over me because I found myself drawn to the aesthetically pleasing and positive -- even as a teenager. Dark pathos, horror, or evoking Satan, even for theatrical purposes, have never drawn me in. For example, there are some heavy metal guitar players who are true virtuosos, and I appreciate and acknowledge their proficiency; but I've yet come across one whose playing moved me. I wanted to like it because the playing is great, but it just doesn't move me.
I listened to the interview with Myrkur and watched all the video clips. She's clearly a highly intelligent woman, and brimming with talent. That said, other than the first clip I didn't get that sense of "this is the real deal." Especially her pop outing. It is possible to make good pop music that conveys true emotion, and I assume she is more than capable of doing that, but that music was lifeless. That's when I began to wonder if she might be doing performance art, having a laugh like Andy Kaufman.
I guess DK isn't geographically Scandinavian, but culturally you are right? Maybe my Southern roots go too deep, I guess without the centuries of long dark winters in my genes I'm not capable of seeing the darkness in Abba or truly appreciating Black Metal. But it did occupy my thoughts and motivated me to write a morgenseiten yesterday I had not planned.
In any case, if Myrkur does something else interesting I hope you'll share it here. She's talented and interesting.
At last it is evening and I can think again.
I agree that her musical achievements in this is not obvious at all. There is something immature about it. My main interest in the first place was this Nordic Viking romanticism that is sweeping the world, and that I have also somewhat coincidently used in both my comic and illustrations. The next thing I noticed was that she was going full sails into this strange sub-genre and that she didn't give a shit about the conventions. She fuse so many different things from strange places. Especially the classic romantics. I am not going to be her advocate musically. What fascinates me is her attitude as an artist - and also the angry reactions she receives.
But who knows, maybe she will get somewhere unexpected with her music. The folk community seems to be very keen on her going that way instead :)
The other thing you take up is maybe more interesting (and inspired today's morningpages). The thing about regional taste. I have artist friends that hate Matisse. It is something in his idyllic abstract retraction from the world that annoys them. I also know people who only look at beauty, and to whom atonal art is a horror. You will find both types of people in South Carolina and Swalbard. I think that along that axis you will find more spreading in the normal distribution than in regions. There seems to be a large death metal following in the US.
But as you have read in my post I think that there might be something in song that is very regional as it somehow is so close to our spoken language.
(and we are Scandinavia geographically. I have read discussions about the topic where people stated that only the Norwegian/Swedish peninsula was Scandinavia, but Scania is the old Danish landscape that i look at from Copenhagen, now the most southern part of Sweden. Normally we call it the Nordic countries here and include the Finns, the Icelanders, the Faroese and the Greenlanders. )
Sorry, your answer appeared way down in my feed and I just noticed it. Sure you're absolutely right about the regional thing, I was looking too inwardly as I wrote that ;-)
There is kind of a typical American, and a typical German, but it is impossible to generalize about people as individuals. But I would guess the probability of finding a dark brooding thinker would be higher in the Nordic countries than in Florida, but there are going to be depressed people on the beach, and super happy Laplanders too;-)
I've always had a suspicion that climatic differences play an underappreciated role in human development and character -- but that's just my suspicion ;-)
BTW, have you ever seen this Swedish movie? I've watched it twice, it's great!
No, worry - our inadequacy of making small-talk is what makes us such bad social media persons.
I have discussed it sometimes with people, the thing about what we with an old, romantic (and nationalistic) term calls fokesjælen, the soul of the people. There are these differences - these typical Germans - Floridians - Danes. In Scandinavia alone we see each other as completely different from each other. The Danes: wild, dirty anarchists, The Swedes: übercontrolled clean socialists, for example. But I had this friend who had been living in Vietnam for some years and he said: "People outside of Scandinavia can't see ANY difference." Maybe with the coldest eyes of them all you could say that all humans are alike down to the tiniest detail, but one of the traits we share is that we see the difference in each other not the boring sameness.
I am not sure to be honest.
I never saw the movie, but I have heard of it. I will try to dig it up.
P.S: you have to remember that our long dark winter is countered by a summer where the sun is not going down :) hence the strong light metaphors is our religious poetry.
It's funny, in my interviews I stick to music, but when I spoke to the Swedish/Danish guitarist I asked him all about the Scandinavian languages and if they could understand each other. You would probably enjoy what he said about Danish ;-)
That movie is wonderful, I even gave a copy to a jazz musician for her birthday and she loved it too.
I know exactly what you mean about your summers. I lived in Alaska from the age of 12 to 15, and because of the long winters they gave us a 4 month summer vacation! It was fantastic, what a great place to be at that age, I loved it!
This was the guy called Malmström or something like that? I don't think I ever got the link for the interview.
Alaska is further North than us I think. Same latitude as Norway or something like that. Where did you live in Alaska?
It's really interesting, how this conversation about music reveals so much about your life as an artist. It might even reveal some essential characteristics about artists in general. In particular staying curious and open-minded.
As you might know, I had a former alias called "unity of multi", because I'm also very interested in the unified field of consciousness, that may (or may not) connect everything on a deeper level. So I'm trying to look out for similarities and connections, rather than differences.
Maybe that's the reason, why I also switch my art-style a lot while everything, I create, is still connected through me as the creator. But I can absolutely see the point, that art dealers and collectors are more trying to build (and collect) a recognizable brand rather than the wild rollercoaster ride of endless possibilities.
I often think of myself as a failed artist - I do not have this affection for my old things, often I find them lacking and boring and childish and wrong. The feeling of unity is very often lost on me. I can see other artists that has this monomaniac focus on one thing - Coltrane for one - and I love them for it. But it has never been the way I could go. We would probably not make art if not for the dream of unity though. Kafka wrote to a hidden audience, but it is there even though it is only a fevered dream.
Maybe you should try to not be so hard on yourself. After all, your earlier works of art have made you the artist you are today.
On the other hand, it may also be an impulse for further development. I remember that for a long time I couldn't create new art, because I thought I wouldn't be able to top my early works.
I am not hard on myself, just realistic, and I think you got it right already in the next thing you write. Development is not a goal for me - just impulse. It is just like eating and breathing - a thing I do while living. The thing you mention, that you are afraid of not living up to what you have done before. I have seen it break people. I have let that go a long time ago.
I had a time where I went through a lot of hard realisations. In the end I knew that I was lousy at making money, I was lousy at networking, I was lousy at reaching people through my art, I was, in short, a failure. But I couldn't live a life where I was not a full time artist either.
A good thing is that my wife has had a lot of success as an artist and entrepreneur, and that we have lived like anchorites all our lives to make this possible. Instead of comparing myself to people I know who had all the things above and became world stars, I am just content that my art seem to attract a few people here and there who really like what I do.
I think this is my main interest in this girl. @roused's doubt about the music - I share it, but I am still interested in it as I am exactly the same as her.
Thanks for your honest words!
Probably the best thing, we can do, is being who and accepting what we are. I'm still undecided though, if too much realism isn't the same as too much idealization of the past.
However, I'm really thankful, that you are, what you are and you're a great inspiration for me.
Not sure I understand this... you will have to find time to explain :)
I am very thankful for you, and I think you should be too ;)
I have never heard a female death growling vocalist before, that is something new, she not quite old style Mikael Åkerfeldt yet but getting there. The contrast in styles are extreme.
I have actually heard female growlers before, but the strange combinations of folk, metal and classical music is quite unique. Very extreme contrasts.
*Another nice post...thanks...............