Audiopile Review: Another transmission from the fertile Danish underground, though this one doesn’t skew towards the sidewinding pop that we’ve been enamoured with through the year (see: ML Buch, Fine, Astrid Sonne). Coming courtesy of the recently launched 15 Love label, who have had our full attention since releasing the Album of the Year contender from ML Buch, the imprint now move on to a mainstay of the Copenhagen underground scene. CTM (an abberviation for Cæcilie Trier Musik), is a Copenhagen-based cellist and composer who has been bubbling under in the city’s scene for about a decade, racking up credits on albums for well-regarded Danes like Varg and Croation Amor and contributing her skills for boundary pushing local imprints like Northern Electronics, Posh Isolation and Youth. Though she’s been an integral contributor to the experimental scene in Copenhagen, CTM’s solo material has undergone a transformation that runs counter to some of her contemporaries in Denmark who have caught our ear recently. While Sonne and Buch began in the avant garde and made their way towards pop, CTM has done the opposite, her earliest works skewing towards adult contemporary jazz-pop. Even her prior album, 2022’s Babygirl, issued on Posh Isolation—an icy, minimalist take on R&B featuring the liquid guitar tones of the aforementioned ML Buch—feels worlds away from this surprising new shift in sound on Vind. Largely made up of solo cello pieces recorded at her home studio, Vind is an exciting survey of her compositional prowess, swiftly and fluidly moving between Arthur Russell-esque echo-laden atmosphere, cinematic tension that lands somewhere in the zone of Max Richter’s rich film & TV scores, or simplistic but affective cello laments that pull the ear gently inwards. While a fixture in Denmark, the heightened attention of 15 Love after the runaway success of Suntub should draw ears towards this incredible talent outside of her home country.

Vind is 12 pieces written and performed by CTM and produced by Jakob Littauer.

The album consists of cello compositions with few exceptions – a daf enhancing the rhythm, a distant memory of the kora, a pensive flute or folly sounds. The softness of the acoustic instruments is counterplayed by concise compositions and hyperreal productions.

The music presents itself as part spirit, part form; the movement in the moment, repetition, anticipation, what happened and what is to come. It’s a sensuous search into stretched out moments, captured and held in one’s hand for a little while. It finds play and devotion, love and light.