Copenhagen duo Jonas Kenton and Silas Moldenhawer have accumulated what they call an “unlimited hard drive” of unfinished sessions, samples, recordings, places and people. Now, with Coco O. and Oilly Wallace joining them on the hypnotic “Lange,” they’re finally attempting to figure out what happens when more than a decade of electronic history becomes an album.
There is probably a hard drive somewhere containing several previous lives of Kenton Slash Demon.
Actually, according to Jonas Kenton and Silas Moldenhawer, there are enough of them that the metaphorical hard drive has become essentially unlimited.
More than a decade of music.
Sessions.
Samples.
Recordings.
Ideas that almost became something.
Ideas that became something completely different.
Cities they passed through.
People they met.
Different eras of Copenhagen nightlife.
Different versions of themselves.
The strange part is that despite all of this material—and despite being active since their breakout in 2010—Kenton Slash Demon have never actually made an album.
Until now.
“We have built what feels like an unlimited hard drive full of music and eras we have shared together, but without it ever becoming an actual album,” the duo says.
So they’re opening it.
All of it.
And somewhere inside that enormous digital archaeology project is their debut album.
What Does Fifteen Years Sound Like?
Albums usually imply beginnings.
Particularly debut albums.
Here is the artist.
Here is the statement.
Here is the sound.
Kenton Slash Demon have the opposite problem.
They already have history.
Their catalogue includes releases such as The Schwarzschild Trilogy, “Harpe / Syko” and “TT / Dok.” Jonas and Silas are also two-thirds of Danish indie group When Saints Go Machine.
Their electronic work has developed alongside Copenhagen’s club culture while absorbing whatever happened to enter their orbit through travel, collaboration and friendship.
So the challenge isn’t necessarily figuring out what Kenton Slash Demon sounds like.
It’s deciding what all the things Kenton Slash Demon has sounded like might mean when placed next to each other.
“Now we are opening up all those sessions, samples and recordings.”
That sentence contains an unusually complicated creative proposition.
Because archives aren’t neutral.
Open a session from years ago and you’re not simply hearing an old synth patch.
You’re hearing your previous taste.
Your previous limitations.
A city that may have changed.
A friendship at another stage.
A version of yourself who thought differently about what electronic music should do.
Sometimes you’ll be embarrassed.
Sometimes you’ll wonder why you abandoned something brilliant.
Sometimes you won’t remember making it at all.
And occasionally, an old fragment will suddenly make perfect sense because enough life has happened around it.
Enter “Lange”
The first clue is “Lange.”
The new single is unmistakably designed for the club, but its construction feels particularly appropriate for a project now interested in connections accumulated across time.
At its center is a sample from Danish singer Coco O.
Around it, Kenton Slash Demon build a hypnotic house-inflected framework.
Then Oilly Wallace enters with flute.
Already the combination feels slightly improbable on paper.
Electronic repetition.
A sampled human voice.
Jazz instrumentation.
Club architecture.
But Kenton Slash Demon’s music has rarely seemed interested in protecting the boundaries between those things.
“Lange” doesn’t treat the flute like a decorative flourish added to make an electronic track feel more “organic.”
It becomes part of the hypnosis.
Another voice inside the machinery.
That makes the track an intriguing introduction to this new chapter because it doesn’t sound like two musicians trying to summarize their career.
It sounds like them continuing to follow curiosity.
Which may be the only sensible way to make an album from fifteen years of unfinished possibilities.
Coco O. Becomes a Ghost in the Machine
Sampling has always contained a peculiar relationship with memory.
You take a voice from another recording.
Remove it from its original environment.
Repeat it.
Stretch it.
Recontextualize it.
Suddenly something that belonged to one moment starts living inside another.
On “Lange,” Coco O. becomes part of that process.
Her presence carries its own musical history—her work has intersected with artists including Kendrick Lamar, Tyler, the Creator, Pharrell Williams and Drake—but inside Kenton Slash Demon’s track, the voice becomes material.
Memory becomes rhythm.
That’s particularly fitting for a duo currently digging through its own archive.
The entire album project seems to revolve around a similar question:
What happens when something from the past is placed in a new context?
Maybe it becomes nostalgia.
Maybe it becomes irrelevant.
Maybe it becomes the future.
Then Someone Brings a Flute to the Club
And then there’s Oilly Wallace.
The Danish jazz musician’s flute provides one of “Lange’s” most distinctive textures.
Again, the combination works because Kenton Slash Demon don’t appear particularly interested in announcing the collision.
This isn’t electronic music featuring jazz with a large conceptual asterisk beside it.
It’s simply another sound available to the track.
That’s an important distinction.
Electronic music has always been capable of absorbing almost anything.
A machine.
A field recording.
An acoustic instrument.
A voice recorded decades earlier.
Noise.
Silence.
A mistake.
The question isn’t where the sound came from.
It’s what happens when you put it there.
Kenton Slash Demon have spent years testing that elasticity.
“Lange” suggests they’re nowhere near finished.
Copenhagen Is Part of the Instrument
It’s difficult to separate Kenton Slash Demon from Copenhagen.
Not because the duo needs to represent some fixed definition of Danish electronic music, but because scenes shape artists in ways that aren’t always audible as obvious references.
Clubs matter.
Friends matter.
Other musicians matter.
The people you see repeatedly at 3 a.m. matter.
The rooms where everybody’s experiments collide matter.
Kenton Slash Demon describe their sound as something shaped not only by Copenhagen’s club culture but by travel and, crucially, community.
That final word may be the most important.
When they look backward now, they’re not simply discovering a catalogue of old music.
They’re seeing people.
“All the places we have travelled and all the people we have met have shaped our lives.”
So the album becomes partly a map.
Not necessarily geographically.
Emotionally.
One session leads to a person.
One sample leads to a city.
One abandoned project leads to an era.
Music becomes a record of relationships even when there are no lyrics explaining them.
The Debut Album as Archaeology
There is something refreshingly backward about announcing your debut album after spending more than a decade releasing music.
Most debut albums are attempts to introduce an artist.
Kenton Slash Demon’s might function more like an excavation.
Who have we been?
Which versions still matter?
What survived?
What deserves another look?
And what happens when the younger musicians who created those sessions meet the musicians listening to them now?
That last question is particularly interesting because electronic music technology changes so quickly.
Software changes.
Production trends change.
Club culture changes.
The cultural meaning of particular sounds changes.
A texture that once sounded futuristic can become nostalgic.
Something unfashionable can suddenly sound strange enough to become interesting again.
Opening an old session isn’t simply returning to the past.
You’re hearing the past with contemporary ears.
That distance can create entirely new music.
Please Do Not Ask Them for the Release Date Yet
For all the significance attached to finally making the album, Kenton Slash Demon aren’t pretending they know exactly what it will become.
“Time will tell which tracks will become part of the album and when it will drop.”
Perfect.
After more than a decade without an album, there is something almost comical about suddenly expecting them to provide a tidy rollout calendar.
The important part for Jonas and Silas seems to be simpler.
They can finally say they’re making one.
“It’s quite liberating to be able to say to each other that it’s finally on its way.”
Liberating is an interesting choice of word.
Because declaring something an album creates constraints.
Eventually you have to choose.
This track belongs.
That one doesn’t.
This era matters.
That experiment leads nowhere.
The unlimited hard drive has to become finite.
Track one.
Track two.
Track three.
An ending.
Maybe that’s why it took this long.
The Album Doesn’t Need to Explain Everything
The temptation with a project like this would be to create a retrospective.
A grand summation of Kenton Slash Demon.
2010 to now.
Here is what it all meant.
But “Lange” suggests something considerably more interesting.
The archive isn’t being opened to preserve history.
It’s being opened because there might still be unfinished futures hiding inside it.
That’s a different proposition.
An old recording doesn’t need to remain old.
A sample doesn’t have to belong to its original moment.
Jazz flute can live inside a house track.
Copenhagen can meet every city they’ve traveled through.
The people they’ve encountered can become invisible collaborators simply because those relationships changed the way Jonas and Silas hear music.
The album doesn’t have to document fifteen years.
It can be what happens after fifteen years.
And that distinction might ultimately define this next phase of Kenton Slash Demon.
After all, the duo has already accumulated the music.
The hard drive is full.
The friendships happened.
The cities happened.
The club nights happened.
The unfinished sessions are sitting there waiting.
Now comes the difficult part.
Opening the folders.
Pressing play.
And deciding which ghosts still want to dance.
