The young Danish musicians Elias Ronnenfelt and Loke Rahbek make songs that sound like dance music played through a long PVC tube filled with steel wool and muddy gauze. Lo-fi, punk-inspired sounds are in the duo's musical DNA: Ronnenfelt also plays in the band Iceage and Rahbek sings for Sexdrome and runs the Copenhagen-based punk label Posh Isolation.
Known until today as War (another band with the same name objected), the duo are announcing a new name today: VÅR. Along with the change, we're happy to offer a taste of the band's latest music.
In an email, Ronnenfelt and Rahbek said that the new track, "In Your Arms (Final Fantasy)," "was recorded in the middle of winter in a small warm room. And it's about looking for a thing for years and years and suddenly realising that you have there in your own eye and that you can put it onto everything you might look at."
"In Your Arms (Final Fantasy)" is based around a repeating synth loop and a basic drum machine pattern, and in its matter-of-fact depiction of longing, reminds me a little bit of the early music of The Cure. As for the band's new name: VÅR is pronounced like "War," but the meaning and the date the band chose to announce the change suggest a shift. Vår is the Danish word for "spring," and May 5 marks the anniversary of end of the Nazi occupation of Denmark.
"The name change happens in spring and is named thereafter," the duo wrote. "The name also states a new beginning for the project, that has been going on for already a few years by now. Starting as a post-industrial project releasing ltd. cassettes and now to be a multi media project, where in sound and image is of equal importance.
"VÅR is not music in a sense. its more like a way to wear your shirt and holding an arm around your friends."
VÅR's label, Sacred Bones, says it expects to release a full-length next spring.
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