Biography

As a musician and songwriter, Angu is in cultural terms a child of modern globalisation – an artistic hybrid. Born in 1976 in Julianehåb, Greenland, he lives and works as a singer and musician in Copenhagen, writing his lyrics and singing in English. Growing up in Greenland on the periphery of traditional Greendlandic culture – but never far from a guitar and record player – meant that Angu’s magnificent natural surroundings were accompanied by politically aware 1970s music and a wide range of pop and rock rhythms. Already in his early teens, Angu was fortunate enough to have his own keyboard and guitar – and he was soon writing songs, preferring English lyrics from the very start. After some initial “angry” years with long hair and heavy rock and grunge pounding in his ears, Angu turned his attention towards the classical singer-songwriter tradition. Here was a means of expression well suited to working with deep-felt inner conflicts – formulating them linguistically and musically, and thus creating a healthier distance to them.

In 1996, Angu moved to Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, where he was soon caught up in the city’s very close-knit music scene, where everyone knows everyone. He began to write more intensely, sometimes collaborating with friend Jeppe Dorff, while trying in vain to finish his education in computer science. Angu gradually began working as a studio musician, while continuing to write his own material and write for a number of other artists as well. Angu was prompted by producer Michael Christensen to write a few songs for the Greenlandic singer Tupaarnaq Mathiassen. When Mathiassen’s voice gave out one day, however, Angu had to fill in for her. The producer was so pleased with the results that he and Angu secretly began recording a demo. Ejvind Elsner, the head of Atlantic Music in Nuuk, heard the demo and was so impressed that he offered Angu a contract on the spot with Atlantic – the biggest and most influential record company in Greenland.


Angu and Christensen completed the pre-production work in Nuuk and then travelled to Copenhagen, where guitarist Mads Kamstrup helped them assemble a band to finish recording the album at Sweet Silence studios. The recording was going well, and there was a great chemistry among the people working on the project. With Troels Alsted producing, the band decided to record the last two cuts live in the studio, to capture the spirit and spontaneity that had evolved during the recording process. The album was a huge success in Greenland, selling more than 3,300 copies in just seven months – in a country with a population of only 55,000. So little wonder the newly formed Copenhagen Records is now releasing “Angu” in Denmark.

For Angu, the songs work as small mental soundtracks – emotionally charged short narratives that aim to dramatise in music the critical junctures in life, moments of great emotional fascination, and heavy breaking points – situations that he writes his way both into and out of again. The songs comprise a musical language that can both capture memories and objectify them, keeping them at a distance, where they are easier to deal with and think about – yet in a form that never allows powerful emotions to become too sugar-sweet, but instead hidden away in nuances that need to be decoded by the listener. A collection of songs that are permeated with melancholic longing and an undercurrent of unfulfilled dreams.

The Songs on “ANGU”

The single “Time for Time” is already in rotation on Danish radio stations. A rhythmically pregnant mental dreamscape in which Angu tries to hold back time in order to hang on to the here and now – that precarious moment between a secure past and an uncertain near future. “Red Lights” is a quieter song musically, and features a classic ear-catching chorus dominated by Angu’s casual but intensely present singing style. This song is about letting go, being willing to dare, giving in, without reservations, to your feelings – and ignoring your inner stoplight.

“Front Row Girl” is an acoustic-based portrait of the unavoidable, unforgettable girl, who has long been sitting in the front row of your own mental circus, but in a circus where you always arrive too late and nothing ever gets beyond the mind’s eye. Front Row Girl also uses a muted string section and a discretely seductive choir. By contrast, the rocking “Tomorrow’s Page” is a classic portrait of a femme fatale – the siren against whom everyone has warned you, but who you can’t resist anyway.

“Infinity Calling” introduces a new theme. A rhythmically surprising, aggressive or almost desperate arrangement hitched up to the melancholically resigned vocal. A hopelessly despairing but also understated song about people who are inexplicably drawn to the eternal final solution, and who capitulate to the pressures of the modern world.

The labyrinthine paths of love are dealt with in “Keep It”, one of Angu’s earliest songs and one in which the melodic tones provide the perfect framework for that unique interplay between Fate and chance. This theme is also dealt with in “Year after Year”, which portrays love’s eternal, unavoidable consorts – melancholy and emotional emptiness. These two tracks are related in terms of content to “Has Been”, which describes the emotional consequences of being used and spent – and which is held together musically by a surprisingly elegant sweepingly vibrant guitar line. This cut is closely linked to the break-up song “Word Goodbye”.

The last two tracks, “Fearless Lioness” and “I Won’t Be Here”, are musically distinct from the rest of the songs on the CD because of their dense, organic sound. They were recorded live in the studio – laid down in just one take in order to capture the special chemistry that the band had developed in the recording sessions. “I Won’t Be Here” is a classic up-tempo ballad, based on the piano and featuring a big choir and rhythmic organ part. The kind of tune that almost plays itself when everything suddenly just seems to come together.