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ARBITRARY 025CD
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Arbitrary presents Terrain Vague II -- the second album by Danish electro-acoustic trio Mesmer. With this work, the trio creates a sensuous and reflective space to inhabit in a time marked by speed, noise, and digital fragmentation. Terrain Vague II emerges from field recordings made in Læsø, Frederikshavn, and Aalborg in Denmark. Using environmental sounds from harbors, coastlines, and the outskirts of the city, Mesmer explores the places where nature and culture intersect. These field recordings are not atmospheric background, but rather the architectural foundation of the work -- carriers of social, historical, and sensory traces. Through improvisation, compositional structures, and an electro- acoustic setup featuring synthesizers, trumpet, percussion, and modular systems, these traces are transformed into personal and collective sonic journeys. The title refers to the concept of terrain vague: indeterminate transitional zones with open potential. For Mesmer, it becomes an image of a society in motion. Rather than offering definitive answers, the trio creates an open listening space in which the boundaries between the composed and the improvised, the controlled and the free, dissolve. Listening is activated here as a conscious act -- an opportunity to reconnect with place, presence, and community. In relation to their debut work Terrain Vague (ARBITRARY 019CD, 2024), Mesmer has developed their practice in a more consistently site-specific and spatial direction. While the first work established the trio's shared language between field recording and electro-acoustic composition, Terrain Vague II allows the specific geographies to structure the music. Improvisation comes clearly to the fore, contrasts are sharpened, and the tension between the individual and the collective is pronounced. With this work, the format is also expanded -- realized as an album, a concert-series, and an installation. Mesmer -- Emil Jensen, Victor Dybbroe, and Anders Filipsen -- have worked closely together for more than 15 years across music, film, radio, and installation. With Terrain Vague II, Mesmer refines and deepens their artistic position. They offer a space for slowness and attentiveness within a complex present -- and insist on sound's capacity to open new ways of being in the world.
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ARBITRARY 019CD
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Arbitrary presents Terrain Vague, the debut of Danish group Mesmer. The album is a series of (deconstructed) live-recordings taken from three live concerts. The sounds on this record are taken from two years' worth of sound research and creative outbursts with inspiration from field trips to the outskirts of Copenhagen. Intrigued by the auditive landscapes of places where nature and culture meet and challenge each other. Listening to the field-recordings led Mesmer to interpret the moods, musical qualities, and inherent energy of the sounds from these areas. Thus, creating melodies, harmonies and rhythmical structures that, together with the field recordings, paved the way for this album. Mesmer consists of the three musicians and composers Emil Jensen, Victor Dybbroe, and Anders Filipsen, who have been creating music together over the last 15 years in various groups. Mesmer is fascinated by how sound (and its absence) influences us as people and how the different natural and cultural environments create different musical scenarios. Recorded and produced by Mesmer, 2021 and 2022. Mixed by Mads Emil Nielsen. Mastered by Kassian Troyer at D&M, Berlin. Cover art, graphic design: Mesmer/Mads Emil Nielsen.
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