by Khagan Aslanov (@virgilcrude)
“I was always drawn to metallic and distorted sounds, these overtones you get. They were always a soothing sound to me. So it was really nice to produce these sounds myself.”
Chuckling, this is how Maria Bertel explains her existence early into our conversation. Transmitting from a non-descript hotel room somewhere in Poland, the day before a show, she was kind enough to acquiesce to my plea to interview her. After diving head first into her life’s work, I didn’t feel I had a choice.
In expected Scandinavian fashion, she answers my questions in direct, economic gusts. There’s little pretense to attempt to mirror the artful course of her music, or try to embellish, or use six words when two will do. Without these token ostentations, there is little to betray that the person sitting in front of me uses sound to sculpt extraordinary monoliths, a vast and pulsing mass of frequency and tone, or that she is responsible for creating two of the most singular and electrifying records of last year.
Maria Bertel by Lin Wuqi
Maria Bertel was born and grew up in a small rural town in Jutland, on the Danish Peninsula, a place that still today is marked by self-sustained stoicism and a predilection for a socially conservative, religiously-informed way of life that has long since been abandoned by the country’s center. Far away from Copenhagen and its omnivorous approach to noise and the avant-garde, her passion for sound was nourished more by an internal awareness, than any formalized introduction.
“The two options where I grew up were either playing in a local brass band or handball. I chose music. I picked up the trombone, and just had to wait until my arms were long enough to play it.”
After graduating school, she moved to Aarhus, to take a jazz course. She was hooked. From there, she was accepted into a conservatory to study music in a more ceremonious manner. Like so many other avant-gardists, the strictures of an academic habitat felt like a restraint. She questioned her choice of instrument, feeling like she would always be relegated to a horn section or a soloist. An exchange program in Berlin in 2005 proved to be a new embarkation.
“I had the freedom to listen to a lot of crazy music. I was inspired to look at my horn differently. It was a gliding movement out of the ordinary (for lack of a better word).”
Predictably, returning from the exchange year back into proper notation and traditional learning paled in comparison. Bertel began moving fully over to the experimental. By then, the underground scene in Copenhagen was beginning to flourish in earnest. She had been aware of a collective with an evolving cast of actors, called Selvhenter, who were making a shape-shifting alloy of noise and free improvisation. A chance to play with them solidified everything.
Like the best left-field artists, Selvhenter defies standard categorization. The free all-female ensemble roots their compositions in jazz forms, subverting the fold by merging noise, avant-punk, warping electronica, dense doom textures, nervy percussion and even some fluid dub into the proceedings. No sonic venture seemed off-limits. Bertel’s by-then firm understanding that experimenting with the sound of her instrument was the way forward made Selvhenter the perfect place to be. Her entrance into the collective was in trio formation – saxophone, violin and trombone.
“We used the conservatory. We took all these instruments and guitar pedals that we didn’t have, locked ourselves in a room, turned on the amplifiers and messed around, not having any idea of what we were doing. On my part, it was also, in part, a protest against not fitting in. I was still at the school and was supposed to do these things to develop myself in that direction. To use the room of the conservatory was a protest.”
In the end, Bertel’s final exam for the conservatory was one of her first concerts with Selvhenter. Since then, she has been devoting herself fully to the mercurial and thrilling pathways that sound can take on when it’s allowed to travel freely.
All of this leads us to Monophonic. The record, released in the spring of last year, was a series of studies of a singular sound. Through her amplified trombone, Bertel crafted a sequence of dense drone pieces, heavy, viscous and intoxicating. Each part of the record would usher itself in in media res, in imposing caterwauls and angular jabs, slowly unwinding to reveal more and more micro-detail. It was a commanding musical statement, one of the finest albums released that year, a minimalist surface that disentangled into a shocking profusion of harmonics and dynamics.
Khagan Aslanov: On Monophonic, how did you amplify the trombone? Did you use a PA or something like a keyboard amp?
Maria Bertel: I used a bass amp. I’ve been playing with this one for many years, a Marshall amp from the 80s. Super heavy, but very sturdy. And a fantastic sound. I guess for many people in the same sound realm, it might be a bit too metal, Marshalls are usually associated with metal music. But for me, I’m not a guitar or bass player, it just fits perfectly.
KA: How much of your composing is notated, how much is improvised?
MB: On Monophonic, I knew where to start and the development of the path I would follow, but I had no idea where it would end. I was at my friend’s studio in the countryside. When we started recording, it was four mics. By the time we ended, it was nine. It was really nice to just be able to work with the material and develop the ideas, and then choose the modes that were best, as we went along. He also introduced me to the microphone that I’m using now, a Piezo, which changed the sound completely.
KA: Do you find that stressful, learning these new technologies and modes? On the one hand, it does make you more self-sustaining, but it’s also this practical toil?
MB: Yes, exactly! It’s both. When it’s something new, and it doesn’t work, you have to sit down and figure it all out, what you did wrong. That’s very stressful. But just on the other side, when you almost know it, then it’s the perfect time. When you still feel like there’s a lot to discover about the equipment. I like that phase.
KA: Was the sound processed at all after recording?
MB: I don’t know if it’s my jazz background, but I’m still very Dogme* in my head. I played the entire pieces and we chose the best ones. We didn’t do any cutting or after-editing on this album. I wanted it to be one voice, so I didn’t want any dubs, played close to live.
Bertel’s previous output was released by Eget Værelse, a formalized space that Selvhenter formed to write, record and perform. The name is a translation and nod of the head to Virginia Wolfe’s 1929 essay, A Room of One’s Own, an edict about women’s right of access to resources and information, and the importance of a devoted space to create.
As part of Eget Værelse, the process of creating and disseminating their projects was a fairly insular one. Things changed in 2024, as she embarked on finishing and releasing Monophonic.
KA: There are a lot of artists right now, who do everything themselves. They write, record, mix and master, do the artwork, the advertising. In a way, the art has no choice but to become secondary. First, you create it, then you immediately have to go off and do all these things.
MB: It’s also getting to know myself in the studio. It’s been a very good process. Before, I used to record myself, but it was so nice having someone in charge of that. A gift. And also, the view I have can be very narrow, so it’s good to have someone there saying things like ‘Keep that one, or choose later.’ I also can get lazy when it’s just me. It kept me on my toes, playing for this person as an audience. Also, having Relative Pitch put it out was truly a gift. To have someone handle all the promotions, and helping it along was fantastic.
Bertel’s other musical statement last year was KNÆKKET SMIL, a collaboration with Nina Garcia, a Parisian noise guitarist. The album, whose title translates as BROKEN SMILE, was a similar descent into clamor and dissonance, with the pieces plaiting into a continuous clang that felt like it was trying to eat you alive. Garcia, a powerfully emerging presence in the realm of free guitar, like Bertel, had plied a trade in extracting massive amounts of beauty from metallic soundscapes that somehow embody rhythm, percussion, atmosphere, and texture, all while maintaining a decidedly abstract fold. Nothing on KNÆKKET SMIL sounds like either guitar or trombone were involved. Their coming together was exactly what fans of either artist, and noise in general, would want - strange mangled analogue organisms, a bristling maw. Brought together by electroacoustic maestro Arnaud Rivière, the duo’s aural and personal connection sparked instantly.
“We practiced maybe once, played together once, and then we went on a ten-day tour around France. We have played together ever since,” says Bertel, wistfully looking past the screen, as if imagining some new all-consuming drapery of noise they will someday make together.
So this is Maria Bertel – a fearless artist, at the peak of her creative pursuit, as humble as she is virtuosic, a dazzling display of how, with a knowing hand, so much symphony can be coaxed out of cacophony.
*Dogme 95 was an aesthetic set of rules pioneered by Gen X Danish filmmakers, a “vow of chastity,” which prohibited interference with or heavy editing of artistic product, and prioritized natural, unadorned elements.