In a unique collaboration with the world famous MUNCH museum in Oslo, Norway, SATYRICON have created a musical composition in album format, entitled “Satyricon & Munch”. The album was released on June 10th through Napalm Records.
The new music, created by SATYRICON mastermind Satyr, is written in the shape of a so-called musical work, it is 56 minutes long and transcends any genre barriers. Although the music was written for the art exhibition, it clearly has the emotional depth to take on any environment outside the exhibition room. The new, astonishing and critically acclaimed art exhibition of the same title is on display at the MUNCH museum in Oslo until August 28th, 2022.
Satyr comments: “In the musical work ΄Satyricon & Munch’, you will find my musical response to the emotions that the works of Edvard Munch instilled in me when working on the art exhibition. One could therefore say that the album release is not only a consequence of the making of an exhibition, but also a reflection of my studies of Edvard Munch’s life and philosophy on the making of art – and my eagerness to push myself as an artist. I deeply appreciate his emphasis on feeling over technique, his will to experiment and his determination to walk his own way. Of course these are also core values to SATYRICON, which in this particular case becomes even more important.
To make this into what it is, it became clear early on that we needed to reverse the roles in the instrumentation: What has been complimentary in the past must now perhaps take more of a lead role, what is given in a regular song is perhaps not needed at all for this project. These types of reflections. To create the layers of emotion and atmospheres that we aspired to, the instrumentation needed to be rich in diversity. That is why we have a wide range of old school analog synthesizers, electric guitar, baritone guitar, bass guitar, drums, theremin, cello, viola, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, jouhikko, Hardanger fiddle, grand piano to name some. Some of these instruments are particularly receptive to the personal input of the musician and very suitable for creating the depth of layers that was necessary for this project. It has been important to us to break away from formatted approaches and focus strictly on what this project needs.
Black Metal’s true nature is being limitless and while the format is unlike anything you’ve heard from SATYRICON before, the tonality and personal signature is highly recognizable to those who know their SATYRICON. We encourage everyone to refrain from trying to label the music and just accept that there is no need to. It is certainly not film music, it is not ambient and it is not something you have to make up a word for. It is SATYRICON.”
You can listen to “Satyricon & Munch” in the following video:
