Francis Harris’ Kingdoms imprint will release Rasmus Juncker’s debut Ophold LP, featuring six tracks “of sublime atmospheres and textures.”

Juncker has a background in studying jazz drumming and has been playing improvised music for many years. He also started to DJ at the age of 14 and was introduced to the world of electronic music production at the same time. Besides being an in-demand musician, his current work spans wide from sound design for performing arts, sound installations, and music engineering. 

When Rasmus started to work on the album, he spent several months trying to find his own way to combine his favorite musical influences, improvisation, electronics and classical music. “Almost a year later,” Juncker says, “I went to a sensory deprivation floating tank in Copenhagen and while I was lying there, floating in the water, deprived of most of my senses, I got the idea to do something really drastic in my musical process. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant describe this deprived state as a mental “Cesura,” which became some sort of guideline for the album.”

So Juncker decided to start working on the album by leaving the process as well as the final result completely open. “I wanted to create sounds and music that I had no absolutely no idea what would sound like, but would feel like a mental “Cesura,” an ‘Ophold’ (in Danish),” he states. He invited musicians, one after the other, to his studio. 

“First I sat down with an electronic musician and we improvised synthesizer patterns and new interesting sounds inspired by my experience in the deprivation tank. I chose some of the takes and, weeks later I invited a jazz guitarist to listen and improvise on top of what he heard. Then a classical string quartet and a double bass player came to my studio months later, and in the end, I recorded myself improvising on percussion, drums, and synthesizers.”

The material used was all first take improvisation which was then arrangd, layered, and edited into compositions. The final pieces were mixed by Andreas Pallisgaard with the same improvised and experimental approach of the recording and the production. None of the musicians met each other, “but their sounds developed into something completely fantastic I think,” Juncker explains. 

The LP will be the label’s sixth release. 

Ophold LP is scheduled for June 1 release, with clips streaming below.