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EB Premiere: Asbjørn – “Kiddo”

Pop music has an illustrious history of tearing down gender binaries. Danish singer and producer Asbjørn is aligned with such a history, using his music to challenge established mainstream ideas of heteronormativity. In Asbjørn’s own words: “Being an ‘independent man’, exploring your sexuality and playing with the masculine ideal is still hard in pop culture, and most men who try will be labelled ‘less men’. I believe that every man should find his own balance between femininity and masculinity.”

This video, accompanying the sixth release in his ongoing Pseudo Visions series, is an unsettling number: Naked man falls out of bed, is beset with visions, first in his head and then on the TV (which is, befitting of the high concept/high contrast eighties aesthetic, is hooked up to a VCR). Cue a barrage of video nasty clips and war imagery juxtaposed with sensual body-on-body contact or, you know, some sperme. All while Asbjørn looks on, sadistically. What does it all mean? Who knows. But the moment when the song’s icy atmospherics splinter to reveal a rapid 4/4 kick gets us every time.

The Pseudo Visions series will eventually lead to his follow-up album to 2012’s Sunken Ships, to be released early 2015 on Body of Work. You can catch Asbjørn before then when he brings his sophisticated dance-pop to Electronic Beats Festival Leipzig on November 21st. Our appetite is certainly whetted.

Published August 29, 2014. Words by EB Team.