The Sound of Danish Rock

By Henrik Marstal

And is it possible to distinguish a number of general characteristics that are typical of Danish rock productions? The answer is both yes and no; it depends on how you phrase the question, and sometimes on what kind of rock we are talking about.

Danish rock has naturally exhibited innumerable different forms of expression since its infancy in the mid-sixties. To treat all these different forms of expression as identical or seek to find in them some special essence that is applicable to them all would naturally be absurd. Nonetheless, there is a great deal to indicate that, over the years, there have been some particular characteristics which relate to a special Danish way of doing things. And that is the subject of this article.

Centre and periphery

Danish Music has had a long tradition of foreign influences, not least in its traditional music, where Denmark's status as a seafaring nation enabled cultural exchanges with a wide range of countries. The country's compositional and popular music, too, has always been influenced by the dominant foreign flows, if for slightly different reasons.

Delayed waves

The sound of Danish rock has thus always been determined by the prevalent international flows. One characteristic is that these flows are almost always reflected in Danish rock after a two to three-year delay. The grunge wave, for example, came from the USA and affected the entire world from the end of 1991, but in Denmark it wasn't until 1994 that the first Danish grunge bands began to appear. By that time the international grunge wave had peaked, but this did not prevent a number of grunge-influenced Danish names such as Dizzy Mizz Lizzy, Kashmir, Psyched Up Janis and Passion Orange from obtaining considerable domestic success. One of the reasons for this delay may be that the periphery needs to react to the influences from the centre influences by claiming them for a Danish context, and thereby, so to speak, making them their own. And it takes time for this to happen.

The influence of the international flows often more resembles an acquisition than an imitation as such. Even if a band chooses to model itself as closely as possible on its foreign prototypes, it often happens that in the encounter between the external influences and the various musicians' own background or skills, something arises which does not merely sound like the sum of its influences, and which in certain cases may result in something unique. Although it is a difficult thing to prove, one can imagine that nationally-determined factors sometimes play a role, such as a particular national disposition, or the sum of the lifelong influences one has absorbed from the national musical culture, from nursery rhymes onwards. Accordingly, the decoding or acquisition of a given foreign style by a Danish band often sounds a little different to, for example, the way that a Swedish or Polish band might acquire precisely the same style. In this respect, it makes sense to speak of a special sound in Danish rock.

Kashmir's first album Travelogue was released in 1994. The band is still around!

Archetypally Danish

The acquisition of foreign styles by some Danish artistes can be so complete that the music assumes a unique character and is experienced by Danish listeners as being particularly Danish. However, the perception of music as being especially Danish is also often due to factors which are not just connected with the music. The inclusion within this canon of such artistes as Gasolin', Shu-bi-dua, Sebastian, Anne Linnet, TV-2, Souvenirs or for that matter Magtens Korridorer as archetypally Danish is to a large extent the result of so-called reception-historical processes, i.e. a number of ongoing initiatives to apply these names in relation to a national agenda. The fact that they all sing in Danish, sometimes sing about or refer to Danish places and events, and relate themselves to other Danish musical cultures and poetry are all factors which point in this direction. On top of this comes the chronological aspect: bands and soloists with an especially long career behind them will naturally have affected their audiences during different periods of their lives. If, as a listener, you made the acquaintance of particular Danish-language music in your childhood, there will often be a tendency to view this music as being especially Danish. Those who were children or teenagers in the 1980s might for example speak today of such 80's icons as Thomas Helmig, Rocazino or Tøsedrengene as being some of the most typically Danish music they know. We can thus see that it is possible for someone to view a particular kind of music as being archetypally Danish without necessarily having considered what it is in musical terms that makes it particularly so.

TV-2's 20th album De første kærester på månen (The first lovers on the moon) became a tremendous success in Denmark in 2005 

The Danish way
The sound of Danish rock can also sometimes be due to a special way of approaching the music. This became evident when the US guitarist Billy Cross, who had earlier played with Bob Dylan, came to Denmark in the seventies and quickly became a popular session guitarist, arranger and producer on a wide range of albums. His sound and approach to both the music and the profession of musician were markedly different to what was considered acceptable within the framework of the Danish mentality, with the result that he both acted as an inspiration, but also encountered problems, in his musical collaborations. This indicated that there was an approach to the music which was shaped and nourished by a general way of doing things and an exchange of common musical values which could be termed particularly Danish.

In addition to this, a special way of working in the studio and processing the sound also seems to have evolved over the years. Danish sound technicians have tended to create rounded and full-bodied soundscapes, preferably characterised by a mainstream-oriented approach to the use of reverberation, and often with the lead vocals placed well forward in the mix. To take an example: when Tue West achieved his breakthrough in 2003 with his debut album, borne along by several radio hits, many people among the critics and the audiences were in agreement that there was something characteristically Danish about his songs. This might be because the sound mix was highly reminiscent of the grandiose sound productions of 1980s rock, and thereby matched an impression of Danishness that many listeners already possessed. It may also be that his special vocal sound evoked clear associations for many listeners with other established Danish names such as C.V. Jørgensen and Peter Belli – which says something about how the sound of Danish rock is associated with previously established ideas about what is Danish and what is not.

Tue West's debut album is considered typically Danish (2003)

Does it depend on the ears that hear it?

No matter how many considerations we make regarding the sound of Danish rock, it is naturally true that for an insider, it can be hard to say what is especially "Danish" about it. For an outsider, on the other hand, it can be both easier and more difficult to decode the national characteristics. A Danish acquaintance of mine once, with great enthusiasm, played Kliche's legendary and highly influential debut album Supertanker (1980) for some foreign friends. They could not in any way understand how anyone could take such music seriously, as they merely heard it as an uninteresting copy of the international sound of the day on the experimental synth-pop scene. The entire reference frame of Danishness that Kliche inspired for my acquaintance was naturally absent for her friends, and their experience of the music was consequently totally different.

However, one of my American friends has spoken of how his encounter with Danish rock convinced him that while it was stylistically mainstream-oriented and rather bland in sound, it still seemed unlike anything he had heard before. It had a fragility and a melancholy, and a suggestion of the Danish welfare society, that he found fascinating. This is one way in which an outsider can experience the music and identify certain special, national characteristics in it.

Kilche's Supertanker is a major Danish rock album (1980)

The special touch

The debate over the extent to which any music can be said to sound 'Danish, 'German' or whatever is a long and controversial one, and its relevance is often disputed.

Contrasted with each other, the two positions are naturally that, on the one hand, rock is and always will be an international musical language irrespective of where in the world it is played, and on the other, that rock always arises from the encounter between a number of genre conventions and the musicians' own national background. The truth probably lies somewhere between the two.

But when young Danish bands aim for an international career, their chances may be improved if the music they play includes a more or less indefinable element that twists the genre conventions. An example: when the leading American music journalist David Fricke began to hype the then new Danish band The Raveonettes in 2002, resulting in an international breakthrough for the group, one of his arguments was that while the band played genuine American-influenced rock, they did so with a special character that derived from their own background, with the result that the music sounded like something no American musicians would ever have created. That was what made it interesting. Accordingly, the question of the sound of Danish rock is one that is always relevant, even if the actual musicians, critics or audience may never have given it a thought.

The first album by The Raveonettes is Chain Gang Of Love from 2003.

Written for DanishMusic.info
Published in March 2008.