Gloomers!

This month I began recording my next album….

It's an interesting journey that began 8 months ago when I started my “fortyssimo” sessions. I have been writing SO much music since September 2023, and I still am. The best of that music will be on “Gloomers”. So far I’ve written 40 new pieces, and over the next months there are 40 more to come.

Check the scores here

The hideout studio in Aalborg is my favourite creative space! Lucas Illanes and Jacob Nørgaard are MASTERS of sound!

I decided to just let loose and not worry to much about where the inspiration comes from. I dont really care. I WANT this album to be multilayered and showcase all the music I ever listened to. Whether that be Green Day’s Dookie album that I listened to non-stop in my teenage years or something completely different!

I so wanted to be Mike Dirnt, and I remember thinking : “If ONE day, I can play Longview on bass, then I made it….”

The beautiful thing is, that I can play Longview now, and yet I still didn’t feel like I reached where I want to go. Later on in life great modern jazz composers made their way to my headphones… Ambrose Akinmusire was one of them. I LOVE the way he writes…There is of course strong tradition in there somewhere, but it sounds incredibly fresh and modern. His sense of harmony and melody is brilliant, but I’m REALLY interested in the way he orchestrates the music… even in small groups.

I wanted to be one of them for a long time… an american jazz musician. I also tried on my first albums, to sound like…. New York. Im not unhappy about the result. It was such a big learning experience. To get to play with some of the best musicians in the world really highlighted my potential and my flaws :)

In hindsight I could also see that I wasn't ready for it, but I’m very happy I had the courage to do it anyway, because it made me a much better musician.

We recorded my album Clockstopper in Skyline studios on Manhattan in 2012.
Tomasz Dąbrowski - Johnathan Blake - me - Jaleel Shaw - Jonas Lindh - Søren Møller - Gilad Hekselman

As I wrote more music over the years I also provoked a continuously growing interest in classical music and music from other parts of the world.

There is still so much for me to learn, and it’s a humbling experience to dig into the works of the masters like Shostakovich, Bartok, Beethoven etc etc…

Last year I had the pleasure of hearing the Berlin philharmonic play Shostakovich 10 here in Aalborg, and there was a magical thing about it. Something I rarely discover in music. When an orchestra journeys through the music with such elegance and power…. wauw!


My point is: I finally have the courage to admit that I like ALOT of music. I dont want to be a jazz musician, or a rock’n’roller….. I want to be a musician. period.

That’s what I hope to show on Gloomers.

If you read this far, here are my reasons to write the music for the album.

More and more people experience the world of others through small screens, where people display impressive achievements and perfect relationships.

A world where one's own inadequacies are implicitly measured and weighed in a constant battle for attention.I miss a world where our professional dedication and tenacity outweigh our ability to pretend a dream world.

I experience young musicians who lose their spark at a far too early age.When the hours at the instrument and the creative process are no longer the catalyst for a successful career, it can be demotivating to practice your scales and refine your compositions rather than spending the time making the perfect SoMe story with version 589 of the "lick" you want to show the world that you can play.

I think established artists bear a responsibility in this regard. I myself have an active career, and I think a lot about my own work, but also future musicians and the scene we are creating for them.Gloomers is my word for a generation of people who silently, behind the screens, feel fear and anxiety due to their own unfounded inadequacy.

What if we can find the passion for art again?

If the established musicians can articulate the uncertainty and doubts about their own abilities through their art?This is, among other things, what I want with Gloomers.In addition to writing and producing good music, I want to help break down the invisible wall that has been built between artists. The wall that makes everyone anxious, excited, anxious and afraid without really knowing about each other's processes. We never talk about how hard it is to be musicians anymore. We talk about how amazing we are, but never about the process and the doubts.I will be involved in that.The music is colored by my last 20 years as an active musician. It is a mixture of the music I have played around the world, but also a work that gathers my sources of inspiration throughout my life. My teenage years with Nirvana and Green Day will stand on a par with the elitist music I studied closely such as Beethoven Bartok and Coltrane. A collection that hopefully stands as a unique and unified homogenous sound on a record that sits between many genres.

Thank you for reading, K