4 Guys From The Future


Monday 21st July 2014

Frisk Frugt, Lily Elec- tric, Mellemblond and many more. Yet Men 4 Guys From The Future is something completely unique. With the aestetics of leadsinger and composer Bjarke Porsmoses as starting point the group plunge into the corners of our existense, emotional chaos, past and future.

The debut Under The New Morning Sun, which was written and recorded in Berlin, took the listener on a search for existen- tial foothold. Both the vibrant music scene and historic rootlessness was very present on the album. 4 Guys From The Future reached a large audience especially in France and Denmark; multiple appearances on various indie charts on National Danish radio, TV perfomances on national French TV, a Silver Ace Award at the Las Vegas Film Festival, over 3000 albums sold and great shows at fx Roskilde Festival, SPOT Festival and at numerous Danish and French club venues. In short 4 Guys From The Future managened to prove that rock spiced up with both thoughtfulness, aggression and improvisation in unique popsongs has great potential nowadays.

On Adagio Bjarke Porsmose has perfected his songwriting and created an extremely ambitous, mature and great sounding work of art that is rooted in the same themes that the gathered around in the first place. The songs are very detailed and was played live before being recorded on a European tour as support for the fellow countrymen and good friends in Choif of Young Believers.

Adagio came to life in a close collaboration between Bjarke Porsmose and Mads Brinch Nielsen. Mads behind the mixing desk and as the recording technician - together they produced Bjarke’s songs into the very clear and consise expressions that are to be found on Adagio.

Production-wise Bjarke and Mads went for an intense sound. There’s a special presence on the album even though the melodic, harmonic, thematic and other aesthetic elements are largely recycled aspects of the rock music of the last 4-5 generations. The presence creates an electrifying intensity, both when the music is aggressive and when it is calm. Rasmus’ drums are loud and clear in the mix, as is the almost omnipresent vocals.

This isn’t laptop music, it isn’t a digital universe - it’s acoustic and physical frequencies. It’s OK that the album refers back in time to specific rock diciplines with a similar musical randomness in the recordings process as the red thread more than complete and deliberate aesthetics in sound.

Adagio explores a romantic and intense state of mind. The romantic manifests itself i the very emotial lyrics on the sub- jects of love and lack of redemption. In the songs “Skin On Fire”, “No Morning Comes” and “Signposts” love is the central concept. “you Don’t Know What you”re Doing” and “B.T.G.T.K No Poem” go down a more physicological and expressionistic ex- pression. “Corruption” is the alter-ego of Adagio, it aggressively and destructively attacks the sensivity of the remaining songs. “Beauty Hides In Everyone” seeks to be almost neutral, as an example of songwriting in the pop genre. The closing track “End Of The Future” is an ambitent piece of instrumental music.

One shouldn’t let the big emotions, the many details or grand thougts discourage you. Adagio is an album that strikes the listener with a very immediate power. The melodies are rock solid and the production sounds really great.

The album is of the rare breed where the artists actually has something urgent and passionate to say:

“To me Adagio is about phycological issues like fobia, anger and anxiety and their counterparts like redemption, trust, rec- oncilliation, joy and tranquillity - mostly on a musical level as the lyrics stays on an associative level most of the time. Adagio tries to embrace large quantitites of musical and emotional information and expresses a wide-ranging experience of what rock and pop music is today. The need to join or endorse a coveted avant-garde genre or other popular alternative music scenes is replaced by a free use of past expressions.

The songwriting has been absolutely central to this album, more so than on the predecessor Under The New Morning Sun. The same melodic and harmonic motifs recur on all tracks. Thsi motivic recycling provides a more common idiom in an attempt to create a more distinctive expression of 4 Guys From The Future, a more particulate expression, an expression more non-iden- tical to other bands.“ - Bjarke Porsmose

The Adagio artwork is created by Aske Zidore (award-winning Danish producer and musician) who also made the cover art for Under the New Morning Sun. As with the music the artwork points in another direction than 4 Guys From the Future’s debut album; it’s a more fragmentet and ambiguous expression than the very iconic debut cover. As is the case with the music on Adagio the artwork is a clash of several cultural eras; a bunch of digital references is in sharp contrast with the painting “Udsigt fra kunstnerens vindue” by the Danish artist Martinus Rørbye (1803-1848, National Gallery of Denmark). The front cover is a still from the actual recording sessions, a kind of contemporary music score. The inside meets the outside on the vinyl label, which is a mockup of the Apple error icon also known the “The Spinning Wheel of Death”.


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