With Balvig, the Danish electronic music landscape just got a very promising new producer. Even though he is brand new on the scene with this project, Balvig goes all in, and releases directly a full-length album on 22. January called “Carvings” via Sound of Copenhagen. He had for sure enough material, since he decided back in 2014 to produce one track a week over a period of one year. For “Carvings”, he made a fine selection of 11 of them.
Balvig makes instrumental-only, melodic electronica, a genre that is quite rare on the Danish scene, but that we know from international artists like Jon Hopkins. What makes Balvig’s music particular, however, is the way he mixes the cold and almost metallic sound of the north with warmer compositions inspired from eastern cultures. Balvig has a passion for Japan and this influence is clearly to hear on tracks like “The Sunday Woodcarver”, “Mpemba” or the beginning of “Kinnawhite” for example.
Another particularity of Balvig is that he does not only use computer-made sounds in his compositions, but he also went out in the “real world” and recorded “real sounds” from the everyday life, like singing birds on “Fotvandring” or voices on “Trenitalia”.
The result is an ambitious album with a very clean expression, and at the same time such an incredible richness of sound that the listeners will discover new elements of the music every time they will play the record.
I warmly recommend “Carvings” to all the fans of ambient music, especially the tracks “Dash Four”, “Shima” and “Kinnared”, my personal favourites.
Listen to Balvig’s album “Carvings” on SoundCloud.
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