Jura, the composer born Ani Liv Kampe, is part of Copenhagen's thriving avant-garde pop scene. On Friday, she gave us that community's version of a posse cut. The nine-minute "You Make A Fire, You Make A Camp" brings Jura together with ML Buch, Ydegirl, Clarissa Connelly, and Helene Due. The song has a narrative premise:
Far away from the continental war, and set on the freezing deserted island of South Georgia, Jura distills and discards the core elements of marooned-on-a-deserted-island tropes in a scenario in which five strangers, comfortable and safely isolated, are going to spend five years together without the classic elements of a survival scheme and explorer expeditions.
Despite the framework, "You Make A Fire, You Make A Camp" is woozy, surreal, and intimate. It's written like a one-act play but performed like a series of entries by the different authors scrawled into the same diary. In terms of pure enjoyment, I'm not sure it justifies that runtime, and the parts when the vocals clash drive me crazy, though I expect they're designed to chafe. Still, it's a fascinating exercise, and when it popped up in Philip Sherburne's latest Futurism Restated newsletter today, I felt compelled to share it. Listen below.
