OUT: 'Coordinates Remain' EP by Lasse Matthiessen
While the world was closed down and the musical landsacape was covered in silence, Lasse Matthiessen went on the only long trip that made sense for an incarnated melancholic.
The route went back in time and down the memory lane: Past his old school in Copenhagen, where he sang in Copenhagen's Boys' Choir, to his home in the middle of the now Copenhagen hipstar paradies 'Nørrebro', where he grew up and beat his first drum set - powered his first guitar. To Germany, Switzerland and Austria, where he, as a frequently touring musician, has built up a large and loyal concert audience over the past years.
And then Lasse Matthiessen arrived. Until the defining moments of his life disguised as an adult. Time and impact points that made the blood pump and the heart gallop - maybe even burst. A rave in Rome, a ballroom in Bordeaux and a break-up in much-loved Berlin, where he has lived and played through days and weeks, months and years.
When Lasse Matthiessen released 'When We Collided' a handful of years ago, he really got knocked through for radio waves and concert organizers. The highly catchy track has been streamed more than 890,000 times, and its folky DNA has since been regarded as his signature sound among bookers, colleagues and newcomers, not to forget.
That is changing now. 'Coordinates Remain' is thus a breakthrough. The EP is his most thoroughly produced and effect-bearing release to date, and it has been created in close collaboration with the Stockholm-based producer Joakim Buddee.
"Joakim has a more commercial and electronic point of view, while with my deep voice and a more complex genre background I contribute with the almost diametrically opposite. In practice, it has taken a lot of time to find exactly the expression that I wanted and could see myself in, but the mission has succeeded. I have allowed myself to listen to myself in some new contexts, what was the ambition for the collaboration."
On 'Rome' the bass and a simple beat plays, while Lasse Matthiessen's power-manipulated mahogany voice digs deep into the soundscape. From there, the intensity rises and ends in a graceful commotion.
And the experiments doens’t stop there. At 'Colors', work has been done with both close microphone and vocal techniques, so that the singing voice almost turns black in a restrained breath, while it is sampled on' Rome and becomes an underlying melody.
"A lot of tools have come into use that I would have found terrible just a few years ago, so Joakim and I have really looked for new ways."