READER: SELVHENTER
30.07.2025
Sonja LaBianca (Saxophone)
Maria Bertel (Trombone, Synthesizer)
Jaleh Negari (Drums, Percussion)
Anja Jacobsen (Drums, Percussion, Keyboard)
Since forming in Copenhagen in 2010, drummers Jaleh Negari and Anja Jacobsen, saxophonist Sonja LaBianca and trombonist Maria Bertel have forged a unique approach to making music that starts with their instrumental setup: two drummers that interlock as frequently as they go their own way, a trombone put through a bass amplifier loud enough to rattle your chest and a saxophone put through a range of effects so that it often sounds unrecognisable. Selvhenter work within their own idiom, drawing from the individual players‘ personalities and interests to make a highly collective music, where all four musicians are absorbed into a total sound where an improvised free jazz approach collides with experimental electronic music and avant-garde noise/post-punk sonorities.
SELVHENTER – MESMERIZER
Their new LP Mesmerizer – which marks their first physical album release in nearly a decade and their debut on the French label Hands in the Dark – carries forward this process of exploration, deploying original and complex patterns of rhythm through various percussive instruments and finely textured horns and synths. The attention to sonic details is also almost pushed to an extreme on this new offering, making the open auditory adventure suggested by the title of the album all the more captivating. These creative developments have brilliantly kept Selvhenter’s music alive to new uncharted moods and possibilities, while at the same time strengthening their core elements: a propulsive, dense and often ecstatic music.
The Quietus on „Mesmerizing“
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Selvhenter are masterful spurrers-on of their own brand of crisis. Jarring tracks like ‚Heftig‘ and moments within individual tracks themselves rattle listeners‘ brains back into action, serving up something like a full reboot of their attention spans and expectations. This leaves the band free to change tack, their listeners rapt, fully present in the moment, and open to whatever happens next.
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There are no moments on Mesmerizer that feel forced, or like the imposition of one player’s will upon the rest. Instead, the group moves like an off-kilter communal organism connected by energy, flowing – OK, maybe more like lurching – freely from one idea to the next, and really working through those ideas, knocking blockages free left and right. The result is that the percussionless exploration of brass on ‚Open Cluster‘ and the smoggy, repeat-o sludge noise of ‚L.A.‘ sound like natural expressions of the same whole, each equally at home on the album.
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Bernie Brooks @ The Quietus, see link below
SELVHENTER ON THEMSELVES
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Sonja LaBianca: We are part of an experimental music scene in Copenhagen, a network of relations, friends and colleges. Some of us had played together previously in different constellations and others met through musician friends. This is how we became aware of each other and recognised a mutual energy driven by the curiosity to adventure into new musical territory. The two horns and violin started things off, exploring the electrification and modulation of our instruments with amplifiers and pedals. We played a few concerts like this and released a mini CD [2007’s Lun Elegance], but then came up with the idea of inviting the two drummers. This worked really well and so we took off from there.
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Maria Diekmann: As we have all been schooled in quite different traditions – jazz, free jazz, classical, folk, rock, experimental and visual art – we have at the same time been listening to all kinds of music and sometimes felt restricted in what we were expected to do with our instruments. I think the concept of noise music was actually quite an eye-opener for us, as it opened up the genres and made it possible to work more in terms of sound and texture. It also helped developing a language that relates [as much] to the visual world as it does to musical terms and genres.
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Source: Interview with Danny Riley @ The Quietus, link below