I’ve wanted to write this post for about a week and finally I have the time to sit down and do it! Two days ago, on Saturday 21st of February, the Århus-based LJUD released a very important piece of Danish music history, Pioneers – The Beginning of Danish Electronic Music (link in Danish). The release is a compilation of some of the earliest electronic recordings and contains music by electronic legends Else Marie Pade, Jørgen Plaetner, Bent Lorentzen, Gunner Møller Pedersen, Fuzzy, Svend Nielsen and Svend Christiansen.
For many years, I have been interested in exploring more of the early stuff like Plaetner and Else Marie Pade, but haven’t been able to do so in a very structured manner. Now I have some of the best stuff digitalised by the LJUD guys and compiled on the two-cd release.
Furthermore, the enclosed booklet contains a great read-through of early Danish electronic music and interviews with all the involved artists, except from Jørgen Plaetner, who passed away in 2002. Here’s a link to a page dedicated to Plaetner’s music (still in Danish, hopefully you’ll be able to navigate). He was indeed a true legend!
If you would like to read an extensive work on electronic music, while listening to the Danish pioneers and flicking through a nice booklet perhaps, you should have a look an the Danish book Filtreringer by Henrik Marstal and Henriette Moos. While in Danish, it does not only cover Danish electronic music, but also a wide variety of electronic genres and is indeed a thorough historical piece of work.
To stick to the modern-day context, I would also like to write a few lines about Glöggerne, who have managed to impress me at least a couple of times last year both at Platform4 and the Student House.
Well, I better stop for now; I believe to have shared my recommendations of electronic music and the like for some time. Now, the single most important thing for you to do, is to make sure to track down your copy of Pioneers – The Beginning of Danish Electronic Music at your local record dealer! Thanks to all hard-working people at LJUD making this record a reality and working hard to ensure that the public is given the opportunity to get hold of some of Danish musical history’s most important work!
