august engkilde

August Engkilde is a jazz professional who enjoys shattering the genre´s boundaries without throwing the entire tradition overboard: Born 1970 in Copenhagen he soon learned to play the piano and upright bass, later on he studied at the New School of Contemporary Music in New York with bass legends like Gary Peacock or Eddie Gomez. In the early 90s Engkilde began to assemble his first own ensembles. Ever since, he has been on the lookout for interesting co-operations with different styles, cultures and artistic disciplines to move beyond the scope of what is usual and accepted.


To date, Engkilde has been involved in around 30 releases and countless of other projects, of which only the most important will be mentioned here: In 1997 he published his first, Latin-jazz inspired solo album "Band of Inner Urge" on Storyville. In the same year, he founded both the BIOBAS studio in Copenhagen and the Musicsystem label, which, as the musical outlet for artist group Superflex, has released experimental recordings ever since. Together with scratch maestro Mr. Kruzh'em and video artist Mbrain he founded Elektrazz in 1998. A year later, Engkilde¹s second solo album saw the light of day "Police Beat Box" (Cheap Records), his remix of a live performance of his own first record cut with recordings from Bollywood movies. In 2000 he produced the soundtrack for the 8-hour art movie "The Wake" by Christian Lemmerz and Mikael Kvium. As a DJ and live electronics specialist Engkilde went on a number of tours with a multimedia stage version of this film (based on James Joyce´s "Finnegan´s Wake"). In 2001 he joined the Mindspray Orchestra, also featuring poet Peter Laugesen, DJ Wunderbaum and trumpeter Lars Vissing. He then toured Europe and Mexico as a bassist for Atomheart´s Señor Coconut, performing Latin versions of Kraftwerk songs. Above and beyond, he played bass at the Royal Danish Theatre, for Flanger (2001) and on Pole´s album "pole" (mute 2003). In 2002 Engkilde decided to found the Electric Panorama Orchestra (EPO) to explore the amalgamation of electronics and jazz on the basis of continuous improvisation. Their eponymous debut album is due for release by popscape end of May 2004.


The many different influences August Engkilde has been exposed to over the years have spilled back into his own work: in this he avoids explicit correlation, but rather draws suspense out of the attrition between different styles and participants. Engkilde sketches a mix that brings together many approaches, but always leaves scope for cross references and open improvisation. His agile tightrope walk between the arts, between old and new, between jazz, pop and experiment, turns every single one of his works into a fascinating exploration of a very special microcosm.

boooking: mo@gostimirovic.com