” I want the releases and even the performances to be rooms much more than narratives, so that the music becomes an invitation to go into that room and do whatever you want in there. It’s architecture, and I would like for it to be a very emotional and loving piece of architecture ” – LOKE RAHBEK OF DAMIAN DUBROVNIK

Arrow 5, from Damian Dubrovnik’s sixth studio album released under the Copenhagen label Posh Isolation, has remained one of the most poignant tracks in my life. The collaboration between Loke Rahbek and Christian Stadsgaard explores poetry, sublime dissonance, fragility, and grief — all delicately balanced between power electronics and contemporary classical/electroacoustic music.

The juxtapositions in Arrow 5 — consisting of minor chord drone melodies, atonal string work, recognizable tropes of melancholia, and the use of reversed sounds to create dissonance — guide the listener through a slow procession of tragedy and beauty. The textural quality evokes both nature and the machine: reeds, chains, metal, and wood are balanced together to form a unique harmony of emotion and sound.

Loke’s vocals progressively become more direct and forceful; through distortion and overdrive, the poetry transforms into immolation. The careful balancing of the familiar and the unfamiliar creates a powerful sense of duality — pain and pleasure, grief and awe, anguish and relief.

Arrow 5 is, ultimately, an expression of duality in sound: a push and pull, heartbreak and romance, glory and disgust.

That morning
Great many arrows
Formed a flight
And
I formed
A cage
With my fingers
To hold you in