The ingenuity of the Danish music sector
Denmark
Discover Denmark
By Thomas Rohde (CEO at Music Export Denmark)
We see a lot of different scenes thriving in Denmark in the last decade, and the last few years we have seen people all around the glove fall in love with our pop and new renditions of soul. Yet also bubbling are more alternative scenes, and acts like ICEAGE have been at the core of shinning international light into a new school of beautifully and elegantly crafted punk, rock and more experimental music. The band is soon coming with a new album out on the american label Mexican Summer and playing SXSW introduced by Roskilde Festival and MXD, and we cant wait for the album to be out, the press is already raving about it.
Next to Iceage, the digital version of the Austin festival will also introduce YDEGIRL, a Copenhagen based artist and producer who creates soundscapes where she breaks the boundaries between genres as diverse as R’n’B, folk and classical compositional music. And tipping over to a more electronic sphere we have a young, yet already highly acclaimed and talented composer and viola player, ASTRID SONNE, who in 2019 was the runner up to the prestigious Nordic Music Prize. Lastly, we couldn’t close the lineup without naming ESNS alumni SCHOOL OF X, who articulately blends influences from the Copenhagen’s local underground scene, with the greatest Scandinavian pop melody legacies. We are very excited to showcase and introduce these acts to the international community in a few weeks.
This past year has been rough on everyone, but we at MXD extremely impressed by the ingenuity from a lot of the Danish venues and festivals in this crisis, and their hard work and stubbornness to connect artists with audiences in a time where we need art to unite us all more than ever. A lot of examples of innovation could be mentioned, but since we have already highlighted the artists that Roskilde Festival are introducing in collaboration with MXD at SXSW 2021, it would also be obvious to highlight Roskilde Festival’s “Sounds Like Roskilde”-app which enables music fans to build their own artificial reality concert stage with some of the talents that were supposed to play at the Roskilde Festival in 2020. Please do have a go at building your own dream festival here: https://www.roskilde-festival.dk/en/sounds-like-roskilde/“
– Thomas Rohde (CEO, MXD)
