“What kind of music do you play?”
It’s a common question we often get as musicians. And one that we still struggle to answer. After two decades and eight albums (which often takes the band in a slightly new direction), the idea of squeezing Afenginn into a neat genre box feels increasingly difficult. From the earlier “Bastard Etno” high octane chaos to male choir/brass band situations with an invented languages, calm and cyclical and lyrical chamber works and now long-form movement-music with electronic elements, the music keeps wandering a little bit off track.

This first part of my little genre-rant looks at where we came from, and how it went as it went.

I sometimes wonder when the act of listening to music changed for me. These days I, probably like most people, often listen while doing other things: driving, cooking, cleaning, or trying to drown out the noise of the world. Noise-cancelling headphones help. And although I love listening to music, I rarely sit down with the singular purpose of just listening.

I grew up in a small Finnish town, and the library was often my after-school refuge. In winter it was already turning dusky by mid-afternoon. I’d walk through the snow, drop the heavy schoolbag and jacket in some corner, and enter a world of comics, books, and music.

The fourth and last single from the album Movements I is now out. It’s called Emberlin and is one of the calmer tracks on the album, and personally, it’s one of my favourite moments on the whole musical arc…

Third single from Movements I is out today: Undertryk.

Built on a hypnotic pizzicato groove, it slowly gathers its layers: Greek-style clarinet, African percussion, and wordless vocals. Sitting in the final spot on the A-side, it’s intimate, textured, and - hopefully - quietly addictive.

Taktstok, the second single from the upcoming Movements I album is out now. It has muscle, dance, pathos, and bombast, with Nordic flair - a bit like salmiak-infused salty liquorice on a bed of raspberry ice cream.

A week after releasing Aelva, we’re back with a new perspective. This Close-Up Version strips away the broader structures and dives into the physical core of the track. The pulse is heavier, the mood darker, the mix more intimate. It’s part of a series where we zoom in on different aspects of each piece, revealing new angles, textures, and emotions hidden inside the singles.

We’re releasing new music!! Our last release was in 2019 - the longest break we’ve taken since Afenginn began over two decades ago. But while it’s been quiet on the surface, we’ve been building underneath.

And today it begins. AELVA is the first single from Movements I - our eighth album, and the opening step in a long-form trilogy. In many ways it is the first movement. Exciting!

Something is stirring in the Afenginn universe. Movements is our eighth album and the first in a carefully constructed trilogy - a long-form musical work composed in interwoven movements, designed with the vinyl format in mind, and made to set your internal dancer free. There will be molecular rearrangements. There will be grit, elegance, and occasional chaos. And yes, the 70’s Finnish disko boy in me is very excited…!

The fourth track on "Retrograd" is "Tattar-intro," which serves as a prelude to "Tattar-humppa," the following track. Listen to the track and download the piano sheet.

The third track on "Retrograd" is "Sumpdronten á la Schwennske Orienten." This composition is set in 3/4 time in D minor with a tempo of ca 100 BPM, featuring the violin and clarinet playing in unison, mostly.

Next up on "Retrograd" is "Kazubstep," a tune composed by our talented bassist, Andrzej Krejniuk. Andrzej was in the band from the very beginning until 2006 and played an important role in shaping the initial sound of Afenginn. Kazubstep was often a highlight in our early shows, usually played as an encore along with "Hønen."

Track-by-track: "Tivoli Invaliid"

"Tivoli Invaliid" is the opening track on Retrograd and one of the first tunes we started playing. It quickly became kind of a signature track in our early days. Despite its oompah feel when we perform it, the song was actually inspired by surf-rock bands like the Finnish group Laika & the Cosmonauts and the American band Man or Astro-Man? - artists I was drawing inspiration from at the time.

The tune is relatively simple and built around three parts: A, B, and C:

It's been twenty years since we released our debut album, "Retrograd." That was on October 5th, 2004. Time has a curious way of slipping by unnoticed until, suddenly, it stands before you, two decades tall, as a reminder of its fleeting existence. And it's good to get these reminders once in a while - to sit down and reflect on the path and the role we're playing in the bigger picture (not in the cosmic sense, but more culturally and socio-realistically). In that situation, I find myself astonished at how fast the years go by. How what feels like a handful of moments has stretched into twenty years, seven albums, and over 600 concerts.

Next weekend, on Friday the 14th of June, we’ll have the big honour of performing at this year’s Heartland Festival on the beautiful Fyn in Denmark. We’re playing at the Backroads Stage at 18:30, and we’ve prepared the best 60 minutes of Afenginn music that we could. It will be both salty and bitter and sweet and sweaty, bombastic and beautiful and sour and bastards, exhilarating and exhausting, thrilling and tranquil, chaotic and calming, unpredictable and unforgettable.

Last weekend we headed off the Esbjerg on the Danish west coast. For the third time, the fabulous Folk & Fæstival invited us to play at their festival. The Danish music magazine Gaffa was on the spot and gave us a great five-star review with the headline:

Spherical, spiritual, melancholic and life-affirming. Afenginn performed a memorable concert that contained all emotions and was almost spiritual!

We have some thrilling news to share with you. Yes, you read that correctly – there's new Afenginn music on its way, planned for release in 2024. This is an exciting chapter for our band, and we looking very much forward to reveal what’s cooking in the headquarter.

On September 29th we’ll be visiting Klaverfabrikken in Hillerød, Denmark with our only concert this autumn. When we started the band over 20 years ago, one of the first booking we got was at the venue Klaverfabrikken. Since then we’ve performed there multiple times. Now it’s been quite a while since last time and we’re looking very much forward being back!

We are overjoyed to share some great news with all of you - Afenginn has officially joined forces with the booking agency, Spectacle Music!

After some years of slightly lower live activity, where we’ve restructured, loaded up on new ideas and ambitions, this marks a significant and exciting milestone in our musical journey and road to supreme world domination.

On Friday the 3rd of February a group of 11 musicians from the Danish National Academy of Music will perform the Klingra album from beginning to end. This special performance will take place at Tobakken in Esbjerg as part of the Folk & Fæstival.

New year calls for a bit of tidying up in the storage. From now and until the 1st of February ALL orders from our webshop will be shipped free of charge all over the globe. Type in the code SALE23 at checkout and the shipping will be for free.

Next week is an exciting week here in Denmark. On Tuesday there’s a general election, where the outcome is supposedly quite uncertain. Although in the big picture it will probably be more or less business as usual afterwards anyway, regardless of whoever gets in the driver’s seat. But it’s exciting and what the news is all about these weeks.

Another thing that is not so much in the news, but nevertheless extremely exciting is that Afenginn will be performing live and giving one of our (since the pandemic meltdown) increasingly rare concerts. This is exciting and if you happen to be in a reasonable distance from the central-Zealand El Doradic Xanadu of Ringsted.

Our 2016 album OPUS has been sold out on vinyl for a while, but is now again available. We just got another delivery of them, and the German pressing plant seems to have been doing a very good job.

OPUS was highly acclaimed in national and international media and was awarded with four Danish Music Awards for Composer of the Year, Album of the Year and Live Act of the Year as well as the Carl Prisen for Best Roots Composer.

Since we started out, we've been having a newsletter coming out every now and then and it was a really nice way to connect directly with y'all through mail, and not necessarily having to be in the claws of various social media channels and algorithms and all that. We used to have an old typewriter, where people could sign up and took the trust quite seriously and putting a fair portion of effort into these letters.

Then a few years ago I accidentally deleted our complete mailing list due to some kind of brainslip clusterfuck. Not more “accidentally” though than that I, with the determination that would’ve made a psychotic beaver jealous, wrote “PERMANENTLY DELETE” (all caps and everything)

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