Looking Beyond the Future
Anyone who has worked at the same job for a number of years can attest to the fact that after a time, the job often becomes menial, mechanical, and stale. Denmark DJ Kasper Bjørke had begun to feel this way about the work he was doing and decided to make a change. Bjørke entered into the electronic music business in 1999 as one half of the disco-house duo Filur, alongside Thomas Barfod. Over an eleven-year period the pair released four genre-specific studio albums, finally calling it quits in 2012. But during this period Bjørke had also begun making music under his own name, and his first solo record, 2007’s In Gumbo, saw him slowly distancing himself from the electronic club sound that Filur was known for, experimenting with grittier-sounding synths and dirtier bass. The two albums that followed, Standing On Top of Utopia and Fool, both saw Bjørke continuing to coerce critics and fans into seeing the full potential of electronic music.
On his latest experiment, After Forever, Kasper channels his friendliest ghost yet. He has walked through the walls of the dance halls that had haunted him for so long, and released a record better listened to on headphones or through speakers at home rather than in sweaty crowds and seizure-inducing lights. After Forever opens with “Rush,” featuring falsetto vocals via Tobias Buch. R&B-inspired bass and guitar riffs mingle melodically with pipe organ synths as the track sets the tone for the ambient ride that is After Forever. On the mellow and moody “Sylvia,” CMT sings her soft and sleepy Sade-invoked vocals, smooth as glass, as soft bongo-style beats and melodies that recall early ‘80s synth-dosed ballads by Duran Duran and Depeche Mode ripple through the background.
The eerie and apocalyptic “Marbled Blood” builds up slowly with deep, dark synths and beats like a nervous pulse, slowly stirring in Jamaican steel drums that give the feeling that at any moment a monstrous beat is going to jump out from around the corner, although luckily it never does. Instead Soho Rezanejad’s whispery vocals drift in as though blown by the wind while a cryptic choir echoes “ah”s.
The solo, machine-like balladry of “Into Smithereens” is sandwiched between two other tracks, the extremely out of place “Lies,” which features Nomi Ruiz and sounds like a New Addition outtake, and the equally awful “Apart” featuring Sísý Ey, which sounds like it was stolen from an early ‘90s dance compilation of the kind that Time Life used to advertise on television, forming a waning and trite trilogy. Bjørke closes After Forever alone, softly and simply, with “Forever.” Pretty and poppy, the song moves along melodically with sunny-sounding synth chords that ring out and snappy snares that eventually give way to a catchy New Order-esque finger-picked guitar riff that fades out into the ever.
Not all of the new experiments on After Forever work one hundred percent of the time, though that’s why they’re called experiments. If Bjørke learns from his mistakes on After Forever, the next time he returns to the lab, he will likely produce the potion he’s been striving to perfect for so long.
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