Skyphone

Skyphone is a Danish, Copenhagen based 'electronica' trio consisting of Mads Bødker, Keld Dam Schmidt, and Thomas Holst. Their first album Fabula was released in 2004 on the acclaimed Norwegian label Rune Grammofon. In 2008, Skyphone released their second album Avellaneda, also on Rune Grammofon. Since the release of Avellaneda, the band has focused on the production of new albums based on recordings of acoustic material as well as improvised modular synth atmospheres. The first installment in what is intended as a series of albums and releases was recorded at a defunct railroad hotel in southern Sweden called ‘Hotell Hildur’. Fittingly, the title of the album is Hildur, inspired by electronic dub and an almost ‘musique concrète’ sense of materials and resonances of different spaces.

On Marsh Drones (Lost Tribe Sound, US, released August 2019), the band similarly explores sparse and brooding music for landscapes. The marsh land areas of western Jutland in Denmark are flat and non-distinct to the visitor who only takes a fleeting glance at it. The music on Marsh Drones is similarly minimal, restrained, but rich in details much like the landscape it attempts to resonate with. The weirdness of the landscape is reimagined in a kind of giddy, absentminded way, detailing grainy sediments, digital interferences, layers of soil and a sense of hazy salt-lights.