Kenton Slash Demon – TT
Kenton Slash Demon – TT (2016)
Directed by: Gustav & Malthe Risager (Spektrum)
Following the release of their TT/Dok EP in March via Future Classic and a run of live dates including By:Larm and a support slot for Flume at London’s Roundhouse, Danish production duo Kenton Slash Demon now release a video for ‘TT’.
In late January this year, Kenton Slash Demon invited fans and peers in their native Copenhagen to experience The Twilight Communion – a multidimensional experience combining music, architecture, scenography, design and art and would lay the foundation for their forthcoming video for the track ‘TT’, which was filmed earlier the same day. It was held in the former St. Nicholas Church, one of the city’s most conspicuous landmarks. The fire of 1795 burned down most of the building, however it was rebuilt as a modern reconstruction of the destroyed monument that now houses the Nikolaj Contemporary Art Centre (‘Kunsthallen Nikolaj’).
Kenton Slash Demon created a 60 minute musical journey specifically for the event made up of entirely unrealised material, whilst their long-term visual collaborators DARK MATTERS built an immersive space of light and colour for the audience. In contrast to the mellow palette of their previous installations, the Twilight Communion was created with and for Kenton Slash Demon’s music, simultaneously obscuring and revealing the audience as they moved through the church.
The subsequent digital processing of the video footage by SPEKTRUM emulates the real life experience, where physical environment, music and humans melt into each other. Furthermore it reflects the meeting between the bleak and the euphoric; the organic and the human, which always has Kenton Slash Demon’s musical signature.
This project has been made possible by the support of Prxjects – Music Made Visual, a culture lab with the goal of supporting artists in ambitious experiments driven by artistic vision. The aim of this collaboration is to push the boundaries of music videos as an art form.
Speaking about the video, Lasse Andersen of DARK MATTERS commented, “We aimed to create this twilight zone through heavy light and smoke to obliterate the notion of a normal concert room. This also enhanced the feeling of a complete sensorial take-over with the audience and melt the boundaries between music and the physical space. It has always been our aim to create a universe around stories or music, so this was the big physical version of a Kenton Slash Demon world compared to our early music videos on the digital platform.”
Gustav and Malthe Risager of SPEKTRUM continue, “For the project we experimented with the displacement of time and its impact on the vision of movement. We used a technique to merge shape and motion as a visual translation of the sound. The idea is to let the viewer explore this unison universe in the limbo between reality and animation. Only the imagination of the viewer sets the limit of interpreting the moving bodies into new visual appearances and figures.”
TT/Dok is the follow up to 2015’s Harpe/Syko 12” EP which earned the duo raves from the Guardian, XLR8R, Stereogum, SPIN and more. Kenton Slash Demon also saw support from BBC Radio 1 & 6Music with airplay from B.Traits, Annie Mac and Nemone. ‘Harpe’ and ‘Syko’ have generated a combined 1.5 million SoundCloud streams that have helped Kenton SlashDemon climb to the top of the Hype Machine Popular chart several times.
KSD, both children of the early ‘80s, grew up alongside each other in Copenhagen. In their teenage years they discovered electronic music and were inspired to start spinning records and producing tracks together. Years later they formed the indie-electro outfit, When Saints Go Machine, whose music won them commercial success and a wide range of awards in their home country, especially as ‘Producers Of The Year’ for their international debut album Konkylie, that peaked at #45 on Billboard’s Uncharted / Next Big Sound list in America and was described by The Quietus as “an enigmatic, strange and beautiful record … an album to sink into.”
During work on the When Saints Go Machine debut, Kenton Slash Demon released their critically acclaimed Khattabi EP on Tartelet Records. A steady succession of high quality EPs followed on the Danish label: Sun EP (2010), Matter EP (2010),Daemon EP (2011) and the ‘Ore’ single (2012), garnering the duo widespread recognition and praise from critics and peers alike. Fans over the years include DJ Koze, Dixon, Claude Von Stroke, Brodinski, Luciano, Flume, John Talabot, Gold Panda and Michael Mayer.
TT/Dok is available digitally and on a limited edition 12″ vinyl.
Credits:
The video was made in collaboration with Prxjects by Mercedes Benz. See more at prxjects.com
www.darkmatters.dk // www.spektrum.studio
Art Direction and Installation by Dark Matters
Produced by Dark Matters & Spektrum
Directors: Gustav & Malthe Risager (Spektrum)
Cinematography: Henrik Edelbo
Compositor: Filip Kobjevsky
Producers: Tina Ryoon & Cecilie Waitz Søborg
Casting & choreography: Ronni Morgenstjerne
Dancers: Casper-Malte Jörgensen, Sus Wilkins, Tone Reumert, Luc Boris André Kouadio, Jens Schyth Brøndum, Helene Joanna Carmen Plett Forchhammer, Mia Jacobsen & Ezra Shami
Production Assistants: Emma Poppe & Frédéric Dilé
