The River

The Distance

Sidewalk Riverbed

Matching Patterns

Competition Day

5.59 Langsom Jagt

Even if you live under the proverbial rock, it’s probably still apparent to you that pop culture’s fixation with American country music has reached a fever pitch. It is important to mention this because, though Frederik Hauch and Samuel Hällkvist, the two players who comprise the duo Orbit Stern, have both nursed a longtime affinity for twang, one thing should be clear that Hauch and Hällkvist won’t tell you themselves, so allow me: It is not enough to say that Orbit Stern is one step ahead of the hordes of current bands sporting 1970s haircuts and country-music affectations. That’s because Orbit Stern stands a world apart from them. In fact, the music on Orbit Stern’s new album Ude i Skoven, Inde i Byen (which translates from Danish as “in the woods, out in the city”) sounds closer to something that came from Mars than our quaint renderings of Appalachia or the American west of popular myth. Likewise, the duo’s obvious attraction to analog keyboard textures yields a similarly alien sound that has nothing to do with the new-wave synth retrophilia now raging within indie rock and chillwave circles like some form of contagious flu. This is, perhaps, where jazz comes into the picture.

In Denmark, where Orbit Stern was formed (drummer/programmer Hauch is Danish, guitarist/programmer Hällkvist is Swedish but based in Copenhagen, and they apparently have little trouble communicating even though Hällkvist doesn’t speak Danish), jazz has never ceased to be music of right now. It was never put in mothballs in the attic of collective memory to be  hung on the museum wall for erudite academics to discuss ad nauseum. In Orbit Stern’s home country, jazz remains a vital, street-level form. Which partially explains why Hauch and Hällkvist have come up with a sound that is completely, invigoratingly fresh by grafting their jazz training to synthetic drum machine beats, old but futuristic-sounding keyboards, eerie tumbleweed atmospheres, proggish Frippertronics, and instrumental hooks reminiscent of Revolution By Night-era Blue Oyster Cult. If Little Steven and the international music press had you believing that Scandinavia’s consists entirely of fanatical garage-rock and black-metal purists, think again. Even amidst the richly fertile creative environment of Scandinavia’s experimental pop scene, Orbit Stern stands out as its own singularly exotic flavor, a shining light in a constellation of shining lights all coming up with new ways to break down musical boundaries.

Fittingly, Orbit Stern started when Hällkvist and Hauch got together to play shows with Swedish songwriter/sound artist Hans Appelqvist but then found themselves going in unforseen directions. On Ude i Skoven, Inde i Byen, the pair is doing with its influences what we as listeners should encourage all artists to do -- that is, to recontextualize them, to free them of all their social baggage. In order to make what the duo half-jokingly refers to “disco country,” it had to travel to a musical world that didn’t exist, which means it had to be invented along the way. Hällkvist and Hauch accomplished this by following sound rather than style. Which is what a musician is supposed to do, not play dress-up with mustache cuts and clothes that were in-fashion decades ago. You would never guess what Orbit Stern plays from the way that Hällkvist and Hauch dress -- or, actually, from the other bands they play in. Hällkvist leads his own (more or less) jazz group, Samuel Hällkvist Center, and also plays in a bunch of other forward-thinking groups that bastardize jazz and pop, including Isildurs Bane, Television Pickup, the Liberty Balance, and Variety Of Loud. Hauch is best known for his work in Danish indierock and pop acts such as Budam, Southern Gothic Tales and August, the Yes Wave, MOMO, and the Red Apples.

Of course, aspects of Hällkvist and Hauch’s individual styles can be heard across all of their work. But these are players who time and again demonstrate their hunger to try new things. As such, much like their other bands, you can loosely-but-not-quite categorize Orbit Stern under familiar handles like “experimental” or “instrumental” or “post-jazz” or whatever. But the need to do so goes out the window when you listen to Ude i Skoven, Inde i Byen. It’s not like Hauch and Hällkvist have made an especially challenging or difficult record either. There’s a whimsical ease here and hooks aplenty -- all the more impressive given that there’s no singing. But these guys once again continue to impress by putting fresh twists on things. Music magazines and NPR can’t seem to get enough of bands who repackage old things. But there’s nothing inherently imaginative about creating hybrid styles of music. When people do that without being truly creative, that stuff can sound like the musical equivalent of putting clothes on a mannequin -- all surface, no heart. Orbit Stern deserves to be heard above all of that. I included Ude i Skoven, Inde i Byen in my favorite albums of 2013, even though it isn’t actually out until 2014. That’s because I’m really excited about it. I suspect that anyone who appreciates music that is effortlessly original because its makers are tapped-into genuine inspiration will be excited too.

Saby Reyes-Kulkarni -- musician, music journalist (Paste, Alarm, Nashville Scene), host of Feedback Deficiency and Not Your Parents' Jazz Show (December 2013)

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