Magma: contemporary music online

Magma is an invitation to embark on an adventure through the intriguing and multifaceted landscape of sounds, aesthetics and modes of presentation inherent in the Nordic contemporary music scene.

This new development is the first ‘genre specific’ addition to the Nordic Playlist website, and will serve as an online platform promoting the activities and profiles of Nordic composers, artists and performers.

On a biweekly basis, a featured curator will invite Magma’s readers to take a personal glimpse into his/her mind and artistic practice. Composers and individuals strongly affiliated with the Nordic contemporary music scene will choose and recommend a wide array of content, ranging from interviews and introductions to works, to a ‘curated section’ of items of particular and significant interest.

The first artist to be featured on Magma is Denmark’s Else Marie Pade, whose work is explored through a carefully selected series of texts, documentaries and online streams of her ground-breaking compositions.

“Else Marie Pade epitomizes the pioneer spirit, a true maverick,” says Magma’s Consulting Editor Arnbjörg Maria Danielsen. “She was so far ahead of her time that it would take the lapse of a couple of generations to really grasp what she was all about. It is fascinating to look back on her very solitary artistic quest and contrast it with the exuberant experimental electronic music scene we have in the Nordic countries today.”

Ahead of a release entitled Electronic Works – 1958 – 1995 on the 2nd December, which is scheduled to coincide with Pade’s 90th birthday, Magma presents an exclusive interview in which Pade discusses her work and reputation with Danish sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard, as well as Sofie Tønsberg’s 2012 documentary Svævninger, which captures the pair’s unique collaboration as it unfolds.

“In the course of Pade’s lifetime, Denmark has gone from being a very conservative country when it comes to music, to becoming a vibrant breeding ground for contemporary electro-acoustic music, sound artists and so on,” states Danielsen. “Pade was there, in the thick of the European avant-garde. She is a direct link to some of the most important and influential artistic developments in recent music history. And as such, she was a ‘missing link’ for far too long.”

Magma will provide a platform to present cherished treasures, works, experiences and artistic encounters that have had a profound impact on the featured curators’ artistic lives, with the upcoming chain of curators adhering to the younger generation of exciting Nordic composers. Iceland’s Anna Thorvaldsdottir is a composer known for evoking enigmatic images of nature and imagined landscapes within intricately woven sonic structures. Lars Petter Hagen is a Norwegian composer with an artistic approach that navigates an ambiguous region between conceptual art, research and existential quest – his music possessing a seductive lyrical beauty of fragile character, with a sense of inquietude persistently lurking beneath the surface.

“I am very happy to see Nordic Playlist Magma coming together,” says Anna Hildur Hildibrandsdottir, Director of NOMEX producing the Nordic Playlist. “The approach with the curators has really worked in the field of popular music and we are now confident in using that approach in a wider context, and looking more deeply into what the Nordic music scene offers. Magma is set up to highlight the work of Nordic contemporary composers to an online audience using streaming services, to expose the diversity of the genre and to create a link between an online forum and the live setting in which contemporary music is very deeply rooted.”

About the Nordic Playlist:

The Nordic Playlist is the first pan-Nordic music website and was launched on the 6th January 2014. The website features weekly playlists curated by the region’s most prominent artists and tastemakers, which are made available to stream via licensed streaming partners Deezer, Spotify and WiMP. The Nordic Playlist is produced by NOMEX which is owned by the five music export offices in the Nordic Region, and is supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Consulting Editor: Arnbjörg Maria Danielsen
Executive Editor: Francine Gorman

Links:

Subscribe to the Magma mailing list for weekly updates: http://mad.ly/signups/125932/join

For more information, please contact: info@nordicplaylist.com