Nordsø Listening

The get together started with a tour of the plant and an introduction to the intricacies of creating a master by founder Henrik Damm Krogh.

Michael Hjort demonstrated the machines and showed us how one can get creative with various label options and mixing different colours into the vinyl.

We then moved over to the Nordsø’s impressive listening room where we could gaze at some very serious audio equipment and more of the wonderful paintings that give the whole building a creative feel.

Jexper Holmen kicked off the listening session with a presentation of Elving & Monrad’s temson, a record of deliberately cheap, LoFi digital sounds intentionally presented via the warmth of the vinyl medium – an aspect that was really brought home as we listened.

Kristoffer Raasted comes from an art background but often works in the fields of performance and sound art. We moved back to the main room so that he could make use of the DJ turntables there and present a mix of some of the vinyl recordings he has made.

Jonas Olesen was our lab host for the evening and talked a little about the role of vinyl as counterbalance to digital ephemerality and streaming culture. He also outlined some of the different approaches one might take to vinyl. Yann Leguay’s discsection was one such example of working directly on the vinyl rather than using it as a medium to transmit a previously made recording.

Jonas also presented curiosa such as a manual gramophone used by missionaries and postcards that could be played on a record player before we moved back to the DJ turntables so that Jonas could show us some of his hand etched grooveless records. As with Yann Leguay the vinyl doesn’t transmit any recorded audio but rather generates it directly through the engraved patterns.

After some German style flatbread pizza, courtesy of Henrik, we moved back to the listening room in order to hear a little of what Nordsø themselves had to offer: Two recent releases were soon on the turntable and we listened to the beauty of Marie Kølbæk sounding through their wonderful speakers as well as the eerie Hall Cronhammer Index as the darkness, cold, and wind intensified outside.

And then a final tidbit with full-force orchestral Star Wars blasting through the speakers as a TIE Fighter hologram hovered above the turntable.