DEBUT EP ‘MINUTES VOLUME 1’ OUT NOVEMBER 20TH
Following on from the release of their wonderfully wistful single ‘Something New’ ft. Chloe Rodgers earlier this month, which also landed on Spotify’s Editorial Playlist ‘Easy’, Scandinavian collective Twenty Committee, led by producer Anders Källmark, are swiftly establishing themselves as ones to watch as they enlist the Studio Barnhus legend Kornél Kovács for remix duties on their track ‘This Town‘ featuring vocals once again from Chloe Rodgers.
The Swedish dance music aficionado effortlessly preserves the emotive feel to the original whilst adding a dose of his addictive electronic productions throughout. Cutting and looping the vocals, he allows the vocal prowess of Chloe Rodgers to still shine through, adding sweeping synth sounds, warm baselines, and snippets of intricate piano, all intertwine idyllically for an emotive and moving piece.
Kovács speaking about his new remix, “I had a blast making this remix for Twenty Committee, for which I channeled end-of-summer melancholia, old Matthew Herbert records, and the dadaist sound poetry of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Big up Chloe Rodgers’ voice for sounding so good pitched down and shout out to the Luke Vibert breakbeat sample pack for always being there for me in times of need.”
Anders of Twenty Committee added, “I love a mix that nods to the original writing but expands and puts some lovely tension on the track. Kovács mix really does this”
A legend amongst the Studio Barnhaus scene, Swedish producer Kornél Kovács has been quick to cement himself with a string of bold and impressive releases. His debut album ‘The Bells’ was released in 2016, and went onto receive huge acclaim, landing in second place on Mixmag’s Albums Of The Year, as well as number five on DJ Mag’s, and featuring in Pitchfork’s Top 20 Electronic Albums Of The Year list.
His follow-up LP ‘Stockholm Marathon’ in 2019 received similar praise, with Pitchfork describing it as “the photographic negative of a peak time banger” and a “snapshot of one of house music’s sharpest minds”. He has since gone onto provide remix work for Moby, Studio Barnhaus regular Bella Boo, and HONNE.
Twenty Committee will release their debut EP ‘Minutes Volume 1’ on 20th November.
Tracklisting:
- Bones (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
- This Town (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
- John (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
- Sick of It All (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
- Something New (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
- Is It Real (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
- In A Rush (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
- Stay (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
- Miss You (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
They may or may not have taken their name from a counter-espionage operation, or that’s what they would like you to think anyway. Twenty Committee is the brainchild of Anders Källmark, an acclaimed music producer, composer and engineer, who has always had a direct and deliberate approach to the sound he is looking to create. Born in Sweden and a long-term resident of Stockholm now residing in London, Källmark came to the UK to study before quitting to pursue a career at Sony Classics, where he worked with composer Richard Horowitz, and has also been the mastermind behind the new EP ‘Whale’ from rising Swedish songstress Rebecka Reinhard.
As the power behind renowned record label Crowds and Power, an imprint named after an Elias Canetti book, published in 1960, that focuses on the dynamics of crowds and packs and asks why crowds obey the power of rulers, his label looks to take an equally rebellious route as it navigates the music turmoil to uncover truly hidden gems snuck into the fabric of our lives.
Correspondingly, as part of Crowds and Power’s diktat, Källmark has recruited a collection of Swedish and British songwriters and vocalists who make Twenty Committee’s debut album ‘Minutes’ something of an esoteric masterpiece. Amongst its rotating cast of characters lies Chloe Rodgers, a 23-year-old singer whose voice is so fiercely independent that she is in danger of becoming the Liz Fraser of the enterprise, and an artist that Källmark discovered whilst trawling through YouTube.
Originally from Nottingham, Rodgers’s vocal delivery is so obviously unaffected – and so delicately nuanced – you could be forgiven for thinking she could be of Scandinavian origin, or even Bjork’s younger sibling. This is particularly apparent on ‘Bones’, one of the more extraordinary songs that make up ‘Minutes’. ‘Bones’ is about jealousy and kicks off like Brian Eno’s Airports before morphing effortlessly into the kind of dewy-eyed synth pop (featuring some lovely Cure-type guitar) you’ve all been waiting for. It’s revelatory, of course, although no more so than ‘This Town’, a song that features looped techno-violin string arrangements, a perfectly positioned vocal you could put your arms around, and a story line centred on our intrepid hero venturing into the big city for the first time.
Elsewhere, the bitterly-prescient ‘In A Rush’ is a post-punk Banshees/Bjork/Modern Eon-esque delight, spotlighting a murderously bad relationship – it’s Källmark’s favourite song of the collection – that includes a murderously-sampled loop of one note of a cello recorded on a tomato farm in South Africa, whilst ‘Something New’ is a deceptively-sweet, piano-led ballad featuring a protagonist with a pathological need to move on even as they appear to be happy as part of a relationship. Best of all, is ‘Sick Of It All’, a song that started on an MS20 upright piano – originally used by Ultravox back in their heyday – at RAK Studios, before being managed and massacred as part of a sequential circuit that utilizes a Studio 440 drum machine. It’s part of a Lost Future netherworld last explored by those performing at the 1980 Leeds Futurama Rock Festival, a sound writ larger on ‘John’, which is all double-tracked vocals and a weird Prophet VS7 sitting on top of countless levels of delay. Told you they were clever.
With so much incredible new music on the horizon, Twenty Committee look set to become the next big name to emerge from Scandinavia. Bringing more of that diverse and ground-breaking aesthetic that we have come to love from that part of the world, Anders Källmark is a man with a purpose, and that is to give us the very best that his kaleidoscopic mind has to offer.
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