“Art and music always come out of the collective”: Clarissa Connelly in conversation with Molina

Copenhagen contemporaries Clarissa Connelly and Molina connect to discuss romanticism, harmonic experiments and the future of Denmark’s thriving experimental music scene.

Last month, a group of artists and composers that make up Copenhagen’s buzzy music scene – including Clarissa Connelly, Molina, Erika de Casier and Fine Glindvad Jensen – moved into a new studio where they have been fervently sharing ideas, undertaking DIY projects and perhaps working on some new collaborations. 

For Danish-Chilean producer and composer Molina, meeting these women in 2017 was nothing short of life-changing. It was the first time she experienced feeling like part of a community. Fast forward eight years and this community has become a cornerstone of contemporary experimental music, attracting fans of cutting-edge celestial soundscapes that blend traditional musicianship with avant-garde digital manipulation. 

This synthesis of old and new is rooted in a curiosity about everyday sounds; building sites, bells ringing out, the low hum of electric cars. While Connelly and Molina’s music inhabits distinct sonic palettes, found sounds are an important starting point for both of them. They record these unexpected melodies on their phones to reference later, a technique that grounds their experimental compositions in reality. 

“Sonically, we all have our different ways of experimenting,” Connelly says, but ultimately, “togetherness is where it all comes from.”

Ahead of their performances at Rewire Festival, Connelly and Molina got together to discuss collaboration, finding inspiration in strange places, and the future of Copenhagen’s music scene.

The two of you share a studio in Copenhagen with other Danish artists like Fine and Erika de Casier. What’s it like working in that studio?

Clarissa Connelly: The studio is pretty new, but we often have listening sessions with each other. When releasing stuff, we talk it through before showing it to the world. It’s been really nice to be able to share your work with friends. To be like, “This is my idea,” and then have someone get it and discuss the aesthetics around it. 

Molina: I think the same. I really trust these women in their intuition and their understanding of music. It’s important for me to have their opinion and ideas before releasing something. The studio is new so we haven’t been in there a lot yet, but it’s really beautiful.

C: We had a work weekend last weekend. I posted a picture of us walking down the street. We had a day where we fixed stuff in the studio together. It’s nice to have a community in your physical surroundings. I think we’re really lucky to have that together.

Do you anticipate more collaborative projects coming out of this space?

C: We’ve been writing together. Also with others. So let’s see…Something will come out of that.

What do you both admire the most about each other’s creative practice?

M: What I really enjoy with Clarissa’s music is that she is so curious about how the different parts go together. It’s unpredictable. I like how it sounds sometimes when you’ve got 1000 ideas and you move them together and it really makes sense. When we went on a trip to Norway writing together, I got to see the ideas behind the workflow. It makes sense in your music.

C: I really like Rebecca’s way of production. I like when harmonics are thick and mushed together, so you get this tunnel of sound pushed towards you of a deep and very broad harmonic picture. I think you’ve done that really perfectly on your last album [When You Wake Up]. Your sonic picture is really broad, but lots of the harmonics are stacked in the same frequencies. And I love that. It’s like a wall of sound coming at you. I think that’s something really special.

Many of the artists on this year’s Rewire line-up, including yourselves, fall under the umbrella term of ‘experimental artists’. So I wanted to ask, what does experimental music mean to you? Is it a sound, a production style, a feeling, a stance?

C: Experimental music can be many different things. I think, for me, being surprised is one of the most important things in art and music. That can be in a production where sounds are surprising, but also chord progressions that go out of key and then back into key in a way that isn’t so surprising. Where you get kicked off but you get pushed into new rooms of harmonics. Even though I love many different ways of experimenting, harmonically experimenting is definitely where I get high.

M: I totally agree with that. The harmonic language and the surprises, the unpredictability, but with a catchy element as well.

Clarissa, you’ve spoken about having a hunger for togetherness. Do you think that the current music culture puts enough emphasis on collectivity, or do you think there’s too much focus on the individual?

C: I think we still have this idea of the individual artist coming out of nothing, which just isn’t possible for anything. Art and music always come out of the collective. There’s all of us from the school. ML Buch is from the same school as us, Erika [de Casier] is from the same school as us, but sonically, we all have our different ways of experimenting. All the artists I love have come out of a home they grew up in where someone showed them something that captured their heart and their mind. Togetherness is where it all comes from. I don’t think we’re individuals in this world. We’re just not. I think we are a part of each other. That’s just how it is. 

M: I think I actually never felt like part of a community until I met you, Clarissa, and all the other women. I always felt like I was alone in every aspect of creating. Now it’s really important for me to feel part of a community.

Some cultural commentators have noted a brewing romantic backlash to the tech era and the role that music plays within that. You both evoke nature in your music in a way that feels linked to this return to romanticism. Do you see yourself in that? Do you see your creativity as a way to foster moments of connection and romanticism offline?

M: Yeah. I read a lot about pictures within nature and the bodily perspective of feelings, but it’s not because I’m aiming to do that. It’s really intuitive. I really like to connect bodily changes and the organic through images. That’s what I get inspired by.

C: I’m very inspired by old things. I have lots of bells on my record. Bells symbolise time. They are also really, really old. We’ve used them for so many years for many different functions. I think that kind of thing has always inspired me. It gives me some perspective on my own life and allows me to zoom out a bit. I really want to do that with my music as well. That can mean romanticising a past, but I use it to look at the present. That’s how it functions for me. I look at the present with eyes wide open, and that often has to do with very old things. That’s how I get some perspective on time and how big existence is. 

How the world functions today, we get reminded of ourselves all the time. I think that gives us very little perspective and brings a lot of loneliness. Art does the opposite for me. It pulls me out of that very narrow grasp of looking at my phone and being in these very small mirroring rooms that we’ve created in society today. That’s how I use both experiencing other art and my own work. I think it’s really important we have that to remind us.

Technology can be a useful tool for creativity at the same time. How do you think that it can be better used as a tool for creative expression rather than a distraction?

C: My notes app is the most used on my phone. I use it all the time. If I have a sentence, or if there’s something happening outside. This morning I heard this really crazy chord. It was actually construction workers outside that were drilling in the ground, and then there was some other machine at the same time, but it sounded really beautiful. I recorded it on my phone, so with stuff like that, it’s a really useful tool.

M: It’s funny, sometimes when you’re out and you hear some sounds from the space around you, they sound like chords. I think that about electric cars. I always get a bit scared when they come, but they also make a really beautiful sound. 

How would you say that your dual heritages influence and inspire your work?

C: I think it can’t not affect you, growing up with music around you. For me, it was going to cèilidhs, Scottish folk parties, or falling asleep while music is playing behind doors and behind walls. That’s been a big part of my harmonic idea: feeling comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. Like waking up somewhere strange because you were a child and you were put into the children’s room to sleep, and being in that weird dream state whilst music was going on. That’s a big part of how I’ve tried to recreate sounds.

M: I grew up mostly with my mum. She had me when she was young in the 90s so I didn’t grow up with really old school music. I grew up listening to electronic music, so that influenced me a lot. The thing I find most exciting when I’m working is the beat and all the different layers to the beat. But then I also have my Chilean roots. My grandparents listen to a lot of folk music from Chile and there’s a lot of flutes and acoustic guitars. That’s something I can hear that I think is nice to use when I’m creating this world. I mix it up so it’s more synthetic, but with some natural elements as well. 

There are a lot of really exciting artists coming out of Copenhagen at the moment. How do you see the scene evolving over the next ten years?

C: I hope our government doesn’t cut down on art funding. I think it’s really important to say that, politically, we are going in the wrong direction in Europe and also in Denmark. That makes me really afraid of how that can affect the community. Communities need funding to have time and space to grow. In Denmark, we’re really lucky to have funding that can help when writing a record. That’s important for the scene to keep on growing. It’s important that politically and financially it still gets backed.