“We love all sorts of club music and we never were able to hold ourselves back,” says co-leader Silas Moldenhawer. “We put all sorts of different styles together and then we take stuff out until the idea makes sense. We started out listening to trance music and I think that melancholy you can find in some trance music kind of stuck with us. We also would like our music to transcend club culture a bit. In that sense, it should be something a person that never goes clubbing could listen to in a different setting.”
When you scan through Kenton Slash Demon’s releases from the last couple of years, Skydancer I and the 2013 single Ore stand out as more straightforward dance songs. But over the course of the last half-decade, they’ve also produced some fairly minimal tracks, as well as those with an outwardly positive flavour.
“An idea can start anything and it often evolves into something completely different than we expected,” says Jonas Kenton. “Even though we set out to do something straight club-minded, it often ends up being a bit more abstract.”
No matter a song’s particular personality, all of their productions sound very sure of themselves, which can be attributed to Moldenhawer and Kenton’s upfront and honest collaborative arrangement.
“It’s kind of like a marriage where you both want the same thing – in our case to make great electronic music,” says Moldenhawer. “You don’t have to agree on everything, but it’s in the compromises you discover the great ideas. When you are two people that are both ambitious about the music, it’s just about finding the balance in the studio. We’ve been making music together for over ten years but we still have days where it feels like a first date.”
The pair actually grew up together in Copenhagen, and formerly played in the electropop outfit When Saints Go Machine. Knowing each other since youth seems to have given them an intuitive connection.
“It’s difficult to define exactly what, but KSD is who we are as humans too. We have the same circle of friends and have been partying together since we were 15. Copenhagen club culture is and has been a huge inspiration for our sound and approach.”
Kenton Slash Demon’s music has long since surpassed the confines of their home country. In fact, both Skydancer and Harpe/Syko came out via Sydney’s Future Classic label. Future Classic have had an excellent run of success in recent years, but the label’s largely known for working with Australian artists, such as Flume, Jagwar Ma, and Seekae.
“We actually didn’t know of Future Classic before they approached us, but from the first conversation with them we had a great vibe. They are such good people and they were totally in sync with what we wanted to do. But we kind of feel like the weird cousin from a foreign country.”
That’s bound to change when Kenton Slash Demon touch down for a run of Australian shows this month, including a slot at the Former Royal Women’s Hospital hosted by Jack Daniel’s Future Legends for Melbourne Music Week. Put your genre preconceptions aside, as the performance will indeed be live.
“The brain in our setup is the Elektron Octatrack. Beside that we use the Elektron Analog Rytm, a Prophet 8, some samplers and different effects, and the R&S mixer. We wanted to get rid of the laptop and be free from looking into a screen when playing.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
