Projects on Mads Kjeldgaard — Composer and Sound Artist

Hyphal

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

‘Hyphal’ is a piece of algorithmic music for mechanically controlled pipe organs, commissioned by Gamut INC for Aggregate Festival, premiering at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche in Berlin in 2025.

This piece was composed during a stay in the Pyrenees mountains on the border between France and Spain where I spent a lot of time in a mountain valley with an overwhelmingly lush microclimate. Where it seemed that out of every crack or orifice in the landscape, plants and flowers of all kinds would emerge, as if to collectively scream “I am alive!”

Life in the Quiet Zone

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

…and in between, when the sound subsided, there was the never entirely ceasing murmur in my own ears. — W.G. Sebald, Rings of Saturn

The Quiet Zone is a sound art project that blends field recordings, essayistic text, and photographs in an exploration of the Quiet Zone – an area on Danish trains zoned off for quietude.

The Quiet Zone exists in nearly all Danish train carriages. It is marked by doors that slide open with a wave of the hand. In this zone, which all commuters have an almost trivial relationship with, we all cultivate a silence that is potent with sounds and movements. So much happens here that we take for granted. This project explores the sonic qualities that can be found here and the potential they hold. What connections do we have to ourselves and each other in this zone? What boundaries exist between this and other zones? How do we move within this space? What do we expect from it? What does it expect from us?

Moans and Groans

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The sculptures of Moans and Groans recreate the sensation of the wind in the trees. Through branches equipped with vibration motors, a custom-made electronic circuit translates seismic recordings captured between the roots and in the crevices of trees in Denmark back into vibration motors known from consumer electronics.

Viewers are invited to touch the sculptures and feel the vibrations they transmit as they resynthesize the experience of the tree rocking in the wind, from the perspective of the tree itself.

Empty Cloud

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

An enormous cycle of minimalist, ambient background music composed in 48 parts, spanning 12 hours, taking you on a peaceful stroll around the circle of fifths. Released by Exformal Records. To read more and listen to the release, go here.

The music of Empty Cloud was written and composed specifically to be played in the background in a room, quietly, or at least ideally at a barely audible volume. It’s music that’s just there, plain and simple, and if you forget about it, it’s fine, don’t worry, it will let itself be known when it needs to.

Space In Between

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 11:20:17 +0200

‘Space In Between’ is a collection of slow solo pieces for piano and loopers, composed and played by Mads Kjeldgaard in his apartment. The pieces were recorded with the window open, to allow the street sounds to mix with those of the piano.

Released by Exformal Records in 2024.

Go to this page for more information about the release.

Akkorder

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The pieces were all made using a generative system for algorithmic music. The system is included in the release as a SuperCollider script for people to create more variations of the pieces at home.

CD in transparent jewel case. The CD contains both audio and data.

Design: Mads Kjeldgaard.

Released by Ambitious Tapes.

Click here to hear more

Computer Music Journal, Volume 44, Issue 4 - Space as instrument (MIT)

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

My piece ambisonic piece “I Solens Flint 1000 Floder” was featured in the Computer Music Journal published by MIT University, alongside a range of other great composers. The magazine also featured a little writeup by Martin Supper.

Click here to read more

Death Told So Clearly To Fuck Off

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“Death Told So Clearly to Fuck Off” is a piece of generative computer music for high order ambisonics.

It’s sound material consists of custom software instruments that model the physics of real string instruments - this virtualization of the physical aspects of the instruments makes variable their shape, timbre and size while they are being played.

The piece itself is structured by a “spawning” algorithm that - according to certain principles of probability - creates patterns of microtonal chords and notes that over time weave their trajectories into larger structures.

Else Marie Pade 'Samlede tekster'

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Together with Simon Christensen, I edited this collection of texts written by the Danish composer Else Marie Pade.

“Your timbres are more beautiful now than the electronic timbres of the 50’s and 60’s, and it wasn’t because of a lack of experiences, but back then one wanted to tell the truth and not be romantic. And one cannot handle that in the long run.” – Excerpt from the book.

Hold Time

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Mastered by Niklas Adam

Released by SuperPang.

Click here to hear more

Hollow Body Timbals

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Like a heavy blanket it covers the mountain valley. It seeps in from everywhere: piercing trills, screams and grains. The insects are awake. They want to eat, they want to drink, they want to sing, they want to fuck. And so, they excite their mechanic bodies.

Recorded on site at Rašćane Gornje, Croatia 2018. Mixed and mastered at NOTAM, Oslo. Design by Stephen McEvoy.

Click here to hear more

I Solens Flint 1000 Floder

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“I solens flint 1000 floder” is an electronic composition by Mads Kjeldgaard commissioned by Notam and Ultima Festival 2019.

It was composed in 7th order ambisonics, partly at NOTAM in Oslo, Norway, and partly at EMS, Stockholm, Sweden, for a 3D audio speaker dome set up in Oslo as part of Ultima Festival 2019.

The title (which is in Danish) can be translated to something along the lines of “In the shard of the sun 1000 rivers”.

Internal Organs

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Internal Organs is an interactive sound art installation. It was first installed at Organ Sound Art Festival 2023 in the basement of the old church of Koncertkirken.

The installation consists of 4 audio channels that continually generate new organ music. As the audience move around in the installation, a network of small electronic sensors pick up their proximity to the speakers while laser “tripwires” set off new melodic content in the organ composition as they move around or enter/exit the work. All movements registered by the sensors result in new compositional decisions made by the algorithm responsible for generating the musical material.

Music for Power Supplies

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

‘Music for Power Supplies’ is a collection of pieces composed using sounds of the electro magnetic fields emanating from power supplies.

These fields, containing rich, dense harmonic structures, were captured using tape heads and diy coils and manipulated into deep, spiritual compositions traversing vertical layers of consciousness.

Click here to hear more

Musik for virtuelle orgler

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A collection of algorithmic music written for virtual organs – that is, musical structures based on simple mathematics and probabilities and organised in ever-evolving patterns of ungraspable and unrelenting melodies and chord progressions. All the pieces were produced using programming languages and very accurate software models of pipe organs.

Composed, mixed and mastered by Mads Kjeldgaard.

Design: Tony Lugo.

Released by SuperPang.

Click here to hear more

Radio/Mixes

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Vintage Electronic And Tape Music From Scandinavia for NTS Radio and The Lake Radio

Guest mix for Conditional Radio on Resonance EXTRA

Singularity: Music for a dance performance

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I composed music for the dance performance “Singularity” by dance artists Roosna & Flak. The music is purely generative, meaning that at each performance, the code for the performance generates new versions of the music involved. The solo performer has sensors attached to their body to create interactivity in the sound universe.

See below for more information.

Description

The solo dance performance Singularity is an invitation to meet the unknown in ourselves; to let images, thoughts and states arise, transform and dissolve — not knowing what will remain when we offer ourselves to ourselves.

Spatial remixes of classic electronic music

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

As part of Ultima Festival, I reworked older classics of electronic music to make them work in a 3D audio speaker dome using the technology of ambisonics.

At Ultima 2019, by commission of Notam, I created ambisonics versions of:

Faust by Else Marie Pade (1962)
De Natura Sonorum by Bernard Parmegiani (1974)
Poème électronique (1958) by Edgard Varèse

At Ultima 2020, by commission of NyMusikk, I live-diffused in the forest of Ekeberg in Oslo:

States of Emergency

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It began when a car exploded outside my window in Paris. Some guy had made a mistake while fixing his car or something and now his car and a car parked next to it were burning through the night while fire fighters were spraying water on it and bashing it with an axe to make the car horns stop.

This gave me the idea to write music exploring the idea of the state of emergency (in Danish: Undtagelsestilstand, which literally translates to ‘state of exception’) which was in effect at the time. I wanted to create my own sonic zones of suspension where all laws are foldable, perspectives may be modulated and time reversed in a deep void.

Sværm: Båndmagasinet (The Lake)

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Remastered by Niklas Adam.

Cover by Mads Kjeldgaard.

Recorded at DIEM, Århus on the Serge Modular System.

Originally released as part of the tape magazine Båndmagasinet #3.

Båndmagasinet #3 - A cassette tape magazine. The piece Sværm was written for this audio magazine focused on synths

Click here to hear more

Tour Mode

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“40 people gathered in an imaginary community where the world lives under the gaze of the people of the future. It seems that this was a big project to develop a new, modern concept of what to do. But it was quite simply a one-off and never done to create anything new. When I first started working on this idea, I went down to a few thousand hours and I found out the work was coming just before the opening. While I wouldn’t want to add a little glossary, there were enough details for a few to make the whole concept even more interesting. But with the exception of this tiny, tiny demo, I think I had to write something about it. Nowadays I’ve been working on something called the new project called The New Concept. The new concept is very simple, simple, and does not take up too much space (and yet we actually know exactly where we’re coming from). It doesn’t allow any of the basic concepts, since we are only going to use a little bit of math to figure out the full point of the concept. There’s only one area, and if you need to write about that, you’ll need those basic numbers yourself, so you have to really learn a bit more. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for the concept, it’s the ones I’ve covered here and there. Play loud to please the audience. The performance should be extremely enjoyable, and that the performances will provide an exciting atmosphere.”

Verdenskværnen

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Verdenskværnen (“The world grinder”) is a composition inspired by the Swedish author August Strindberg’s rambling, autobiographical novel “Inferno” (1898) as well as the sounds of gentrification.

It explores different ideas of sonic tactility in it’s sound material.

“The sun shines, everyday life proceeds on its usual course, the cheerful bustle of business raises the spirits. Then one feels rebellious, and challenges heaven with doubts. But when night, silence, and loneliness reign, the heart beats, and the breast suffers from constriction. Then one jumps out of window into a hedge of thorns, and humbly begs a physician for help (…) you are ground to powder, and think it is over. But no! You are brought again to the mill. Be thankful! That is hell upon earth, as Luther knew it, and reckoned it a special grace to be pulverised on this side of the grave.” - August Strindberg’s Inferno (1898)