“New album out in 2016”, Navneløs briefly announced along with the premiere of their November single, “Elektrisk Hånd”. If you bear in mind that their debut album “Værk” was one of the best Danish releases of the recent years, you’ll agree this statement deserves at least an exclamation mark.

A still-young alternative quintet, Navneløs (Nameless) seem to work in two-year sprints. They released their first EP in 2012. Two years later, we heard “Værk”, after which some lucky listeners enjoyed one of two dozen concerts the group have played since then, including an intense tour with Ulige Numre last November.

In the meantime, the musicians have been apparently adding colours to their sound palette. In “Elektrisk Hånd” (“Eletric Hand”) itself, they took us from an ambient intro through electronic arpeggio to a soft interlude with Lin Rosenbeck’s beautiful vocal brought to the front – and then go almost orchestral in the final culmination. All of this in just five minutes.

The accompanying video, directed by Ida Dorthea, brought a similar variety of impressions:

This first single – and eventually the closing track of the new album called “Lava” – was a big promise for what we could expect from the new album. Recently, it was followed by an equally captivating new video for a track called “Bukseløs”.

But the promise was fulfilled with what we heard today when the entire album was made available for stream. Gentle but imaginative, dreamy but not watered-down, combining inspirations too wide to cite any genre names here, and – that’s a compliment – all in Danish.

Expect this album to appear on end-of-year lists not only in Navneløs’ homeland.

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