Superkilen

Description

Superkilen, the new album by the Danish duo Svaneborg Kardyb, Nikolaj Svaneborg (keyboards) and Jonas Kardyb (drums), is named after a public park in the ethnically diverse Nørrebro neighborhood of Copenhagen. This former stretch of wasteland was redeveloped by the artistic group Superflex in the early 2010s to bring together immigrants and locals in an atmosphere of tolerance and unity. Its title seems emblematic of their music, which, just as inventive, creates space and serenity as a tonic in the tense and cluttered environment of life in the 2020s. Just as the regeneration project transformed this neighborhood, Svaneborg Kardyb has drawn on this positive energy to help inspire changes in their own music. "Superkilen means 'super corner' in Danish," explains Nikolaj, who has a studio right next to the park. Thus, Superkilen and the ideas surrounding it have become an integral part of the psychogeography behind Svaneborg Kardyb's latest album, as they have brought bolder synths and emphatic rhythms to the sublimely nuanced textures of piano and drums familiar from their previous works. The listener is consistently drawn into an auditory adventure that employs a soothing sound vocabulary that has earned them fans worldwide, yet is also unpredictable, with a narrative that can shift at any moment with the subtle introduction of a single new chord or an imperceptible rhythmic change. Complex, absorbing, and distinctly more than that.