Our first release of 2019 – Town Portal launches their new single “Roko’s Basilisk” alongside the announcement of their third album, ‘Of Violence’, which is set for release on 5th April.
Hailing from Copenhagen, Town Portal are a three-piece consisting of Guitarist Christian Henrik Ankerstjerne, drummer Malik Breuer Bistrup and bassist Morten Ogstrup Nielsen. Their taut, gritty and emotionally stirring breed of instrumental rock pulls influence from the worlds of metal, math-rock, noise-rock and minimalist experimental music.
Across their previous LPs (2012’s ‘Chronopoly’ and 2015’s ‘The Occident’) they have attracted a fervent fanbase and major tastemaker support from the likes of Noisey, Brooklyn Vegan, Decibel and Invisible Oranges, to name a few. This adds to extensive tours across Europe, and other notable live outings including two appearances at ArcTanGent festival (2016, 2017), support for The Dillinger Escape Plan, and a set at cult festival Duna Jam in Italy.
Their new album is set to up the ante on its release in Spring, showcasing an expansive and eclectic sound – and “Roko’s Basilisk” is quite an opening gambit. Town Portal expand on the song’s genesis: “The Meshugga-esque riff at the centre of this song was among the earliest ideas in our new writing process. For a long time it was just this stray-dog riff, that wouldn’t fit with anything else we were writing at the time, but we liked it, and for a while we played it live as a sort of intro (there’s a video somewhere of us playing this riff for an ArcTanGent crowd engaged in the friendliest circle pit you’ll ever see). Wanting it badly to be a song in its own right, we eventually had to change our approach from merely trying to fit this awkwardly shaped piece of Lego with all the other misfits we had lying around, and instead listen more closely, to what kind of song this riff was calling for and then start expanding from there. That’s when it all of a sudden exploded.”
The outro of the track features a small brass section consisting of Tommy Peach and Will Gardner (Black Peaks), who both played on several songs throughout the album, interpreting Town Portal’s existing compositional ideas. On this song, however, these players had absolute creative freedom, and it resulted in one of most refreshing and exciting moments for the band.“There’s no way we could have pre-conceived this, and there’s a beautiful lesson in that for a band of absolute control freaks”, the trio conclude.
While their previous albums were self-recorded (with Ankerstjerne at the helm), their third longplayer finds Town Portal’s usual DIY approach replaced by a more ambitious plan that involved flying in their current favourite engineer Scott Evans (of Kowloon Walled City) from San Francisco, to record in Copenhagen’s legendary Black Tornado Studio. The brass section was recorded at Small Pond’s studio in Brighton, UK.
Town Portal have also found themselves invigorated by venturing into unfamiliar territories since their last LP. In 2017 the band were recruited by composer Ola Strandh (Massive Entertainment, Ubisoft) to collaborate on the soundtrack to the forthcoming high profile videogame ‘Tom Clancy’s The Division 2’; the following year they were sought out to join Johannes Gammelby and Manoj Ramdas in a new incarnation of Danish alt. rock darlings The Malpractice. The quintet played live shows in Copenhagen and Aarhus in support of Gammelby’s most recent release, ‘Slur’ (Crunchy Frog, 2018).
These exploits have infused Town Portal with a new and explosive energy which has infiltrated their songwriting. The result is a record where inspirations from deconstructed electronic music, avant-garde metal and cinematic brass arrangements coexist seamlessly; with the addition of producer Evans’s characteristic sonic fingerprint, ‘Of Violence’ promises to be the heaviest and most ambitious Town Portal record to date, while continuing to sidestep stylistic pigeonholes.
