Sortlegeme Live at HeadQuarters, Aarhus – 22/09-2023 Written by Ralle Ravn
Sortlegeme is not a name I had heard before until this concert was announced and checking it out surprised me. Sortlegeme is a Copenhagen-based dark ambient tribal techno act by Jeppe Dalsgaard Andersen. The first release by Sortlegeme, the EP The Returning, was first released in 2016 and has since released a handful of cassettes and a couple of 12” EPs, the latest being the cassette Zero Intensity from 2021.
His music ranges from techno and tribal beats to electronic synths to floating ambient to dark ambient drones often blending in between each other on each track.
Why did this surprise me? It was the opening act for the Aarhus atmospheric black metal act Sunken. A pairing of genres you don’t see very often. The two acts were, as told by the members of Sunken, united under the same understanding of atmosphere which did show during the evening’s concert. Sortlegeme’s show starts with an atmospheric floating drone that gradually morphs into a tape loop-like sound while retaining its ambient drone feel underneath it. This glides into static noise samples that still retain the atmospheric feel. A techno beat enters the concert’s sound image breaking with the ambient drones and bringing some rhythm into the show. When my ears got used to the beat, I noticed a floating drone behind the techno beat, creating an interesting dynamic in the sound image.
This then switches to static samples that lie on top of a bassy ambient drone, and then the techno beat comes back in. The sound then switches back to floating ambient. This becomes the concert theme, the switching between atmospheric drones, techno beats, and noisy static samples, which so far worked very well. The floating ambient sound fades into a distorted drone that lies on top of a deep melancholic melody. The static samples come back in and break the melancholic soundscape.
This then transitions into a dark ambient part that is followed by a tribal techno beat, glides into a dark ambient drone blended with static samples, and again, the static samples are switched out to a new techno beat. The beat stops and a new melancholic part emerges. This fades into white noise that cuts off and a new ambient part emerges afterwards. This new ambient part slowly and gradually turns into a deafening synth voice, becoming an intense wall of sound. This wall of sound finally reaches a climax where it cuts off and the reverb rings out at the end of the concert.
I was overall impressed with the show. The elements in Sortlegeme’s music have an interesting dynamic between pulsating tribal-like techno beats and atmospheric ambient parts with static noise thrown into the mix. Although these elements were very segmented throughout the concert, it did work very well given that the concert was performed as a single song. As atmosphere was a theme throughout the concert, Sortlegeme fit very well into the show given that the show was “supposed to be” a black metal concert which, again, surprised me.
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