Trentemøller – Obverse review: Accomplished electronica needs you to go with the flow

The best way to enjoy Obverse is to go with its flow.

The fifth studio album by electronic Danish composer/ producer Anders Trentemøller is at many points a soundscape: it’s not always clear where one song ends and a new one begins, and it is by turns discordant, floaty, melodic, lyrical or fizzing with synth. Which is a roundabout way of saying it is technically accomplished, a riot of different sounds wrestled into a (mostly) coherent — though often surprising — whole.

Cold Comfort cues up the album: languid electronica that soars and plummets from major to minor, high to low. It’s long but passes over you like (accomplished) elevator music.

Meanwhile, Blue September builds with a dramatic pulse before giving way to slow, haunting lyrics, while In the Garden is reminiscent of Interpol (high praise indeed) but with a female singer, in the form of Lisa Tullgren.

And Try a Little is a highlight: a collaboration with Warpaint’s Jenny Lee Lindberg (aka jennylee), it’s a futuristic indie anthem with feeling. Indeed, feelings plural: it’s about love and disappointment and disillusionment that has flashes of Joy Division.