Grainy black & white videos of a semi naked woman cavorting around a derelict factory in a rundown post-industrial town are back in fashion. Or at least they are in Nordic Music Central. And you never knew they’d gone away, did you?
Norwegian instrumental post-rock trio Les Dunes has released a new music video for their ‘Den Hopsack’ single from the new album ‘From Etne to the Edge of Space.’
Les Dunes is an instrumental post-rock trio from Haugesund, on Norway’s western coast, and consists of members from bands like The Low Frequency in Stereo, Undergrünnen, Lumen Drones, Helldorado and Action & Tension & Space.
All this space stuff prompts me to wonder when someone is going to write a song or songs about all the extraterrestrial events going on right now like the Voyagers talking to God in deep space and the faux comet 3I/Atlas glowing like there’s a party going on amongst the little green men on board that might yet pay us a visit.
But for now we’re stuck in this disused relic of the industrial age and its environs.
Actually there’s something exotic, perhaps even erotic about it; a Beauty & the Beast moment that contrasts her (Synne Garvik’s) grace, prettiness and firm body with the ugly sprawl of the buildings.
And does that final shot suggest that for many that life is all they can aspire to, the barred window acting as if it belongs in a jail cell as she reaches out to it forlornly?
Musically they are all about mood and momentum and ‘Den Hopsack’ is, according to the press release “rooted in a thought of a long freeway drive at night where time stops and the mind flows”.
If you focus on the music at the expense of the video there is a distinct undercurrent of road trip about it, but one of the excitement of arriving in a new city at the crack of dawn having driven through the night with Roy and Cyndi rather than having been diverted off the ring road to an obsolete trading estate.
It’s all quite intriguing and mysterious. It would help if I could find a satisfactory translation of the title from Norwegian or German (their label is based in Berlin and many Nordic artists get sucked into the mode and zeitgeist of that city) but I can’t. Something about a type of fabric, I can’t get my head around it.
The album ‘From Etne to the Edge of Space’ is out now on Kapitän Platte.
The band consists of Per Andreas Haftorsen on guitar, Morten Jackman on drums and Per Steinar Lie on bass.
Find them on:
Bandcamp: https://lesdunes.bandcamp.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/les_dunes_band
Facebook: https://facebook.com/Lesdunesband
