#Elias Bender Rønnenfelt

[utronabalcone]

iceage - "you're blessed" / "count me in" & "you're nothing" (bbc session 2011)

[zombinarys]

what genre of man is this…

[total-derangement-of-the-senses]

Like the serpent with its tail in its mouth, the end culminates into a

         beginning

Nothing ends, never

All must move on

To give is not an investment

Without hope of recompense

Framing something is in itself idle

One can only love our failed attempts

Coherence is an illusion

Not to feel the weight of the brightest star, just to be kissed by its

       delicate rays

Hold my hand

A substance without weight

I have seen paw prints in the snow from creatures that will never exist

Excerpt from 2., Sunken Heights, Elias B. Rønnenfelt

[lnsectica]

[feversxmirrors]

Elias Bender Rønnenfelt's instagram story on Dec. 13, 2022

[earstab]

Elias Bender Rønnenfelt (2022)

I want to be him so bad

[rastronomicals]

March 24:

Iceage singer Elias Bender Rønnenfelt was born on this day in 1992, so turns 32 today.

[reboundernyc]

film photo

[samusique-concrete]

Plowing Into the Field of Love (2014) — Iceage

The first album i wanna talk about at length happens to be this one here, and i’ve been wanting to talk about it for a while now. Not only because it’s one of my personal faves, but also because i think it has a lot of fantastic stuff going on and it showcases just how much is possible within an album’s length of straight ahead, guitar, bass and drums music. Let’s begin!

You might know this, but Iceage started off as punk band. I mean, they certainly still are to this day, specially when it comes to their musical attitude and/or general ethos, but that first record of theirs is like punk punk —so much so i even hesitate calling it post-punk, which is what it probably best falls into. I, however, did not start listening to them from the beginning, nor from their sophomore record, nor from Plowing, which is their third. I actually sorta didn’t start listening to them at all, but another outfit entirely by the name of Marching Church.

Marching Church started as Iceage’s lead singer Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s solo project, and somewhere along the way it got turned into a kind of full band. It was their 2016 album, Telling It Like It Is, which i discovered first in this Iceage journey. It dropped right around the time when i was starting to seriously pay attention to as much music that was coming out as i could. I found the youtube channel theneedledrop and they had a review up for Telling It Like It Is. Its album cover  —the image of a pink, blurry photograph where you could still make out the features of a beautiful man (yes i have a crush on him)— enticed me. I checked it out. I loved it immediately. It was one of those experiences where the feelings a piece of art evokes in you come at you so instantly that you become addicted to it. It was weird though, cuz i learned soon after that this was the product of somewhat of a Copenhagen underground super-group, with members of Lower and Hand of Dust (bands whose output i would later devour), but the main guy’s band, or so the internet would keep telling me, was so much better. I refused to believe this.

I checked out Iceage’s debut, New Brigade. It wasn’t for me. I wouldn’t start appreciating punk music until later, albeit thanks to this band here. Elias’ singing was like nothing i’d heard up to that point, but whereas it glided and resonated in a certain way within Marching Church’s context, in this other younger, wilder sound it was a little much for me. I then listened to You’re Nothing, Iceage’s second record, and though i could hear an immediate evolution i still felt like it wasn’t for me. So powerful was this feeling that i didn’t even make it to Plowing. I’m not sure why, but i think my reasoning went somewhere along the lines of “Well, the album *i* like is from 2016, and it rules, so why would i listen to older material that simply by preceding it is sure to be lesser in comparison?” As if that could only be the case. When i did eventually make it to Plowing i found out it was the Iceage/Marching Church record i needed.

I actually feel kind of ashamed admitting how quick the switch happened in my heart regarding these two records. Don’t get me wrong though, i still love Telling It Like It Is and it is still one of my favorite albums (i mean, if you haven’t, please go listen to the song Florida Breeze, at least), but 2014′s Plowing Into the Field of Love (a record that preceded it!) just blows it out of the water dude. Punk yet artsy, noisy yet heartfelt, wild yet focused. A record like this is just too good to put into words. Just like how i’d never heard vocals like Elias’, i’d never heard guitar (that’s what i play!) playing like Johan Wieth’s. Well, i mean... tecnically i had cuz he’s one of the guys playing guitar on TILII, but... u get me. Hell, i hadn’t heard music being perfomed like this, ever. Obviously thanks to its punk origins, Plowing’s music —which is not so much punk but more of a deeply explored, Bad Seeds-ian way of making rock music—, and by extention Iceage’s sound, has this way of getting stretched and then compressed and then stretched again as it flows from section to section within a single song, kind of beautifully not giving that much of a fuck about pulse. These instruments, these musicians, don’t all perfectly hit the beat at the same time, but it never sounds like they’re failing. It sounds like they’re injecting life into their music, and not because they’re trying to, but because this is how they learned to play. This, in tandem with some of the songs completely changing time signatures on a whim, tempos organically accelerating and slowing down, and multiple other musical hijinks, make Elias’ weird guy singing hit that much harder. It is SO refreshing to listen to music that doesn’t sound like most of the stuff out there, and not in terms of genre or production or whatever, but first and foremostly because of its unique approach to how to perform music.

As a side note i just want to mention how funny it was to me, a guy who not so much loved The Beatles but held them in high regard, when i stumbled upon an interview of the band when they released this album’s follow up, Beyondless (its album cover has been my phone background for years and i don’t plan on changing it any time soon), where the interviewer asked them whether they preferred The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. The band looked at each other for like 0.5 seconds and with a fed up and tired tone they all replied in unison: “Stones”. It’s funny cuz their newest material seems to be waaay more on The Beatles’s side of the spectrum than on The Stones’ side.

As a side side note, i hadn’t thought much about the cover of this album until i read in another interview (sorry, i forget which publication) that they initially intended for it to be a big painting that each of them would contribute to and it’d be this cool group effort thing. They then did it and found the results horrendous and unpublishably ugly, and when they realized they still had to meet a deadline and had to present something to the label they hurried to one of the members’ house and took this photo of their younger brother like, just because it looked like, idk, something. It’s not a premeditated piece of imagery. But even though this is the case, it made me think it’s... kinda perfect? What other beautiful image could exemplify the sentiment of “plowing into the field of love” than that of a young person trying to fit themselves into a symbol of adulthood before inevitably and miserably failing? I mean, i’m sure many, but this to me serves its purpose wonderfully.

Anyway. As for the specifics of each song, i mean... just go and listen to it! Hopefully you’ll be delighted like me to hear instruments that are not usually associated with this kind of sound coloring in the spaces. This thing’s got piano, trumpets, violins, and even a mandolin i think on Abundant Living. On My Fingers is one of the best album openers i’ve heard period, The Lord’s Favorite is a hilariously catchy mix of punk and country by way of The Gun Club, Forever is just a musical and philosophical masterpiece, and the parting words to the album’s title track, which also serves as its closer, will probably haunt you for years like they have me:

I am plowing into the field of love

They will place me in a hearse

[henryrodhamkissinger]

There’s no hotter dude than Elias Bender Rønnenfelt

[slimaneswhore]

Birthday Boy 🖤

[utronabalcone]

elias bender rønnenfelt

[auxoubliettes]

[total-derangement-of-the-senses]

Many of us keep ourselves going through the notion of more

We do not have to search all the way to the galaxy to be greeted by the

           unknown

I wish to die, in time, with legions of unanswered questions

Long ago my heart answered many, but the head has a hard time keeping up

Excerpt from 9., Sunken Heights, Elias B. Rønnenfelt

[strange-hell]

[feversxmirrors]

elias bender rønnenfelt crowd surfing during last night's show in copenhagen (10/21/2022)